dock.
The result of a naval court inquiry was to put all the blame for the collision on the Olympic. Captain Smith, in his testimony before the naval court, said that he was on the bridge when he saw the Hawke overhauling him. The Olympic began to draw ahead later or the Hawke drop astern, the captain did not know which. Then the cruiser turned very swiftly and struck the Olympic at right angles on the quarter. The pilot gave the signal for the Olympic to port, which was to minimize the force of the collision. The Olympic’s engines had been stopped by order of the pilot.
Up to the moment the Hawke swerved, Captain Smith said, he had no anxiety. The pilot, Bowyer, corroborated the testimony of Captain Smith. That the line did not believe Captain Smith was at fault, notwithstanding the verdict of the board of naval inquiry, was shown by his retention as the admiral of the White Star fleet and by his being given the command of the Titanic.
Up to the time of the collision with the Hawke Captain Smith when asked by interviewers to describe his experiences at sea would say one word, “uneventful.” Then he would add with a smile and a twinkle of his eyes:
“Of course there have been winter gales and storms and fog and the like in the forty years I have been on the seas, but I have never been in an accident worth speaking of. In all my years at sea (he made this comment a few years ago) I have seen but one vessel in distress. That was a brig the crew of which was taken off in a boat by my third officer. I never saw a wreck. I never have been wrecked. I have never been in a predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.”
Once the interviewer stopped asking personal questions, Captain Smith would talk of the sea, of his love for it, how its appeal to him as a boy had never died.
“The love of the ocean that took me to sea as a boy has never died.” he once said. “When I see a vessel plunging up and down in the trough of the sea, fighting her way through and over great waves, and keeping her keel and going on and on—the wonder of the thing fills me, how she can keep afloat and get safely to port. I have never outgrown the wild grandeur of the sea.”
When he was in command of the Adriatic, which was built before the Olympic, Captain Smith said he did not believe a disaster with loss of life could happen to the Adriatic.
“I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to the Adriatic,” he said. “Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that. There will be bigger boats. The depth of harbors seems to be the great drawback at present. I cannot say, of course, just what the limit will be, but the larger boat will surely come. But speed will not develop with size, so far as merchantmen are concerned.
“The traveling public prefers the large comfortable boat of average speed, and anyway that is the boat that pays. High speed eats up money mile by mile, and extreme high speed is suicidal. There will be high speed boats for use as transports and a wise government will assist steamship companies in paying for them, as the English Government is now doing in the cases of the Lusitania and Mauretania, twenty-five knot boats; but no steamship company will put them out merely as a commercial venture.”
Captain Smith believed the Titanic to be unsinkable.
And though the ship turned out to be sinkable, the captain, by many acts of bravery in the face of death, proved that his courage was equal to any test.
Captain Inman Sealby, commander of the steamer Republic, which was the first vessel to use the wireless telegraph to save her passengers in a collision, spoke highly of the commander of the wrecked Titanic, calling him one of the ablest seamen in the world.
“I am sure that Captain Smith did everything in his power to save his passengers. The disaster is one about which he could have had no warning. Things may happen at sea that give no warning to ships’ crews and commanders until the harm comes. I believe from what I read that the Titanic hit an iceberg and glanced off, but that the berg struck her from the bottom and tore a great hole.”
Many survivors have mentioned the captain’s name and narrated some incident to bring out his courage and helpfulness in the emergency; but it was left to a fireman on board the Titanic to tell the story of his death and to record his last message. This man had gone down with the White Star giantess and was clinging to a piece of wreckage for about half an hour before he finally joined several members of the Titanic’s company on the bottom of a boat which was floating about among other wreckage near the Titanic.
Harry Senior, the fireman, with his eight or nine companions in distress, had just managed to get a firm hold in the upturned boat when they saw the Titanic rearing preparatory to her final plunge. At that moment, according to the fireman’s story, Captain Smith jumped into the sea from the promenade deck of the Titanic with a little girl clutched in his arms. It took only a few strokes to bring him to the upturned boat, where a dozen hands were stretched out to take the little child from his arms and drag him to a point of safety.
“Captain Smith was dragged onto the upturned boat,” said the fireman. “He had a life-buoy and a life- preserver. He clung there for a moment and then he slid off again. For a second time he was dragged from the icy water. Then he took off his life-preserver, tossed the life-buoy on the inky waters, and slipped into the water again with the words: “I will follow the ship.”
Nor was the captain the only faithful man on the ship. Of the many stories told by survivors all seem to agree that both officers and crew behaved with the utmost gallantry and that they stuck by the ship nobly to the last.
“Immediately after the Titanic struck the iceberg,” said one of the survivors, “the officers were all over the ship reassuring the passengers and calming the more excitable. They said there was no cause for alarm. When everything was quieted they told us we might go back to bed, as the ship was safe. There was no confusion and many returned to their beds.
“We did not know that the ship was in danger until a comparatively short time before she sank. Then we were called on deck and the life-boats were filled and lowered.
“The behavior of the ship’s officers at this time was wonderful. There was no panic, no scramble for places in the boats.”
Later there was confusion, and according to most of the passengers’ narratives, there were more than fifty shots fired upon the deck by officers or others in the effort to maintain the discipline.
A young English woman who requested that her name be omitted told a thrilling story of her experience in one of the collapsible boats which had been manned by eight of the crew from the Titanic. The boat was in command of the fifth officer, H. Lowe, whose actions she described as saving the lives of many people. Before the life-boat was launched he passed along the port deck of the steamer, commanding the people not to jump in the boats, and otherwise restraining them from swamping the craft. When the collapsible was launched Officer Lowe succeeded in putting up a mast and a small sail. He collected the other boats together, in some cases the boats were short of adequate crews, and he directed an exchange by which each was adequately manned. He threw lines connecting the boats together, two by two, and thus all moved together. Later on he went back to the wreck with the crew of one of the boats and succeeded in picking up some of those who had jumped overboard and were swimming about. On his way back to the Carpathia he passed one of the collapsible boats which was on the point of sinking with thirty passengers aboard, most of them in scant night-clothing. They were rescued just in the nick of time.
There were brave men below deck, too. “A lot has been printed in the papers about the heroism of the officers,” said one survivor, “but little has been said of the bravery of the men below decks. I was told that seventeen enginemen who were drowned side by side got down on their knees on the platform of the engine room and prayed until the water surged up to their necks. Then they stood up, clasped hands so as to form a circle and died together. All of these men helped rake the fires out from ten of the forward boilers after the crash. This delayed the explosion and undoubtedly permitted the ship to remain afloat nearly an hour longer, and thus saved hundreds of lives.”
In the list of heroes who went down on the Titanic the names of her engineers will have a high place, for not a single engineer was saved. Many of them, no doubt, could not get to the deck, but they had equally as good a
