A Night to Remember

could detect any clue.

Some of the crew weren’t so guarded. In D-60, when Mrs Henry Sleeper Harper asked Dr O’Loughlin to persuade her sick husband to stay in bed, the old doctor exclaimed, ‘They tell me the trunks are floating around in the hold; you may as well go on deck.’

In C-91 a young governess named Elizabeth Shutes sat with her charge, nineteen-year-old Margaret Graham. Seeing an officer pass the cabin door, Miss Shutes asked him if there was any danger. He cheerfully said no, but then she overheard him further down the hall say, ‘We can keep the water out for a while.’

Miss Shutes glanced at Margaret, who was uneasily nibbling at a chicken sandwich. Her hand shook so badly the chicken kept falling out of the bread.

No one was asking questions along the working alleyway on E deck. This broad corridor was the quickest way from one end of the ship to the other—the officers called it ‘Park Lane’, the crew ‘Scotland Road’. Now it was crowded with pushing, shoving people. Some were stokers forced out of boiler room No. 6, but most were steerage passengers, slowly working their way aft, carrying boxes, bags and even trunks.

These people didn’t need to be told there was trouble. To those berthed far below on the starboard side, the crash was no ‘faint grinding jar’. It was a ‘tremendous noise’ that sent them tumbling out of bed.

Mrs Celiney Yasbeck—a bride of fifty days—ran out into the corridor with her husband. Instead of making the long hike to the deck, it was easier to look below for trouble. In their night clothes they walked along to a door leading down to the boiler rooms and peeked through. Engineers were struggling to make repairs and get the pumps going. The Yasbecks needed no second glance—they rushed back to their cabin to dress.

Far above on A deck, second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley noticed a curious thing. As he started below to check his cabin, he felt certain the stairs ‘weren’t quite right’. They seemed level, and yet his feet didn’t fall where they should. Somehow they strayed forward off balance… as though the steps were tilted down towards the bow.

Major Peuchen noticed it too. As he stood with Mr Hays at the forward end of A deck, looking down at the steerage passengers playing soccer with the loose ice, he sensed a very slight tilt in the deck. ‘Why, she is listing!’ he cried to Hays. ‘She should not do that! The water is perfectly calm and the boat has stopped.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Mr Hays replied placidly, ‘you cannot sink this boat.’

Others also felt the downward slant, but it seemed tactless to mention the matter. In boiler room No. 5, fireman Barrett decided to say nothing to the engineers working on the pumps. Far above in the A deck foyer, Colonel Gracie and Clinch Smith had the same reaction. On the bridge the commutator showed the Titanic slightly down at the head and listing five degrees to starboard.

Nearby, Andrews and Captain Smith did some fast figuring. Water in the fore-peak… No. 1 hold… No. 2 hold… mail room… boiler room No. 6… boiler room No. 5. Water fourteen feet above keel level in the first ten minutes, everywhere except boiler room No. 5. Put together, the facts showed a 300-foot gash, with the first five compartments hopelessly flooded.

What did this mean? Andrews quietly explained. The Titanic could float with any two of her sixteen watertight compartments flooded. She could float with any three of her first five compartments flooded. She could even float with all of her first four compartments gone. But no matter how they sliced it, she could not float with all of her first five compartments full.

The bulkhead between the fifth and sixth compartments went only as high as E deck. If the first five compartments were flooded, the bow would sink so low that water in the fifth compartment must overflow into the sixth. When this was full, it would overflow into the seventh, and so on. It was a mathematical certainty, pure and simple. There was no way out.

But it was still a shock. After all, the Titanic was considered unsinkable. And not just in the travel brochures. The highly technical magazine Shipbuilder described her compartment system in a special edition in 1911, pointing out, ‘The captain may, by simply moving an electric switch, instantly close the doors throughout and make the vessel practically unsinkable.’

Now all the switches were pulled, and Andrews said it made no difference.

It was hard to face, and especially hard for Captain Smith. Over fifty-nine years old, he was retiring after this trip. Might even have done it sooner, but he traditionally took the White Star ships on their maiden voyages. Only six years before, when he brought over the brand-new Adriatic, he remarked: ‘I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.’ Now he stood on the bridge of a liner twice as big—twice as safe—and the builder told him it couldn’t float.

At 12.05 a.m.—twenty-five minutes after that bumping, grinding jar—Captain Smith ordered Chief Officer Wilde to uncover the boats… First Officer Murdoch to muster the passengers… Sixth Officer Moody to get out the list of boat assignments… Fourth Officer Boxhall to wake up Second Officer Lightoller and Third Officer Pitman. The captain himself then walked about twenty yards down the port side of the boat deck to the wireless shack.

Inside, first operator John George Phillips and second operator Harold Bride showed no sign that they realized what was happening. It had been a tough day. In 1912 wireless was still an erratic novelty; range was short, operators were inexperienced, and signals were hard to catch. There was a lot of relaying, a lot of repeats, and a lot of frivolous private traffic. Passengers were fascinated by the new miracle, couldn’t resist the temptation of sending messages to friends back home or on other ships.

All this Sunday the messages had piled up. It was enough to fray the nerves of any man working a fourteen-hour day at thirty dollars a month, and Phillips was no exception. Evening came, and still the bottomless in-basket, still the petty interferences. Only an hour ago—just when he was at last in good contact with Cape Race—the Californian barged in with some message about icebergs. She was so close she almost blew his ears off. No wonder he had snapped back, ‘Shut up, shut up! I am busy; I am working Cape Race!’

It was such a hard day that second operator Bride decided to relieve Phillips at midnight, even though he wasn’t due until 2.00 a.m. He woke up at about 11.55, brushed by the green curtain separating the sleeping quarters from the ‘office’, and asked Phillips how he was getting along. Phillips said he had just finished the Cape Race traffic. Bride padded back to his berth and took off his pyjamas. Phillips called after him that he thought the ship had been damaged somehow and they’d have to go back to Belfast.

In a couple of minutes Bride was dressed and took over the headphones. Phillips was hardly behind the green curtain when Captain Smith appeared: ‘We’ve struck an iceberg and I’m having an inspection made to see what it has done to us. You’d better get ready to send out a call for assistance, but don’t send it until I tell you.’

Then he left but returned again in a few minutes. This time he merely stuck his head in the doorway:

‘Send the call for assistance.’

By now Phillips was back in the room. He asked the captain whether to use the regulation distress call. Smith replied, ‘Yes, at once!’

He handed Phillips a slip of paper with the Titanic’s position. Phillips took the headphones from Bride, and at 12.15 a.m. began tapping out the letters ‘CQD’—at that time the usual international call of distress—followed by ‘MGY’, the call letters of the Titanic. Again and again, six times over, the signal rasped out into the cold, blue Atlantic night.

Ten miles away, Third Officer Groves of the Californian sat on the bunk of wireless operator Cyril F. Evans. Groves was young, alert and always interested in what was going on in the world. After work he liked to drop by Evans’ wireless shack and pick up the latest news. He even liked to fool with the set.

This was all right with Evans. There weren’t many officers on third-rate liners interested in the outside world, much less the wireless telegraphy. In fact, there weren’t any others on the Californian. So he used to welcome Groves’ visits.

But not tonight. It had been a hard day, and there was no operator to relieve him. Besides, he had been pretty roughly handled around 11.00 when he tried to break in on the Titanic and tell her about the ice blocking the Californian. So he lost no time tonight closing down his set at 11.30, his scheduled hour for going off duty. Now—dead tired—he was in no mood for chatting with anybody. Groves made a brave try: ‘What ships have you got, Sparks?’

‘Only the Titanic.’ Evans scarcely bothered to glance up from his magazine.