20

The Tragic Story of the Titanic Disaster

“THE TITANIC IN COLLISION, BUT EVERYBODY SAFE”—ANOTHER TRIUMPH SET DOWN TO WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY—THE WORLD GOES TO SLEEP PEACEFULLY—THE SAD AWAKENING

Like a bolt out of a clear sky came the wireless message on Monday, April 15, 1912, that on Sunday night the great Titanic, on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic, had struck a gigantic iceberg, but that all the passengers were saved. The ship had signaled her distress and another victory was set down to wireless. Twenty-one hundred lives saved!

Additional news was soon received that the ship had collided with a mountain of ice in the North Atlantic, off Cape Race, Newfoundland, at 10:25 Sunday evening, April 14. At 4:15 Monday morning the Canadian Government Marine Agency received a wireless message that the Titanic was sinking and that the steamers towing her were trying to get her into shoal water near Cape Race, for the purpose of beaching her.

FACTS ABOUT THE WRECK OF THE TITANIC

Number of persons aboard: 2,224

Number of lifeboats and rafts: 20

Capacity of each lifeboat: 50 passengers and crew of 8

Utmost capacity of lifeboats and rafts: about 1,100

Number of lifeboats wrecked in launching: 4

Capacity of lifeboats safely launched: 928

Total number of persons taken in lifeboats: 717

Number who died in lifeboats: 6

Total number saved: 711

Total number of Titanic’s company lost: 1,513

The cause of the disaster was a collision with an iceberg in latitude 41.46 north, longitude 50.14 west. The Titanic had had repeated warnings of the presence of ice in that part of the course. Two official warnings had been received defining the position of the ice fields. It had been calculated on the Titanic that she would reach the ice fields about eleven o’clock Sunday night. The collision occurred at 11:40. At that time the ship was driving at a speed of 21 to 23 knots, or about 26 miles, an hour.

There had been no details of seamen assigned to each boat.

Some of the boats left the ship without seamen enough to man the oars.

Some of the boats were not more than half full of passengers.

The boats had no provisions, some of them had no water stored, some were without sail equipment or compasses.

In some boats, which carried sails wrapped and bound, there was not a person with a knife to cut the ropes. In some boats the plugs in the bottom had been pulled out and the women passengers were compelled to thrust their hands into the holes to keep the boats from filling and sinking.

The captain, E. J. Smith, admiral of the White Star fleet, went down with his ship.

Wireless dispatches up to noon Monday showed that the passengers of the Titanic were being transferred aboard the steamer Carpathia, a Cunarder, which left New York, April 13, for Naples. Twenty boatloads of the Titanic’s passengers were said to have been transferred to the Carpathia then, and allowing forty to sixty persons as the capacity of each lifeboat, some 800 or 1,200 persons had already been transferred from the damaged liner to the Carpathia. They were reported as being taken to Halifax, whence they would be sent by train to New York.

Another liner, the Parisian, of the Allan Company, which sailed from Glasgow for Halifax on April 6, was said to be close at hand and assisting in the work of rescue. The Baltic, Virginian, and Olympic were also near the scene, according to the information received by wireless.

While badly damaged, the giant vessel was reported as still afloat, but whether she could reach port or shoal water was uncertain. The White Star officials declared that the Titanic was in no immediate danger of sinking, because of her numerous watertight compartments.

“While we are still lacking definite information,” Mr. Franklin, vice president of the White Star Line, said later in the afternoon, “we believe the Titanic’s passengers will reach Halifax, Wednesday evening. We have received no further word from Captain Haddock, of the Olympic, or from any of the ships in the vicinity, but are confident that there will be no loss of life.”

With the understanding that the survivors would be taken to Halifax, the line arranged to have thirty Pullman cars, two diners, and many passenger coaches leave Boston Monday night for Halifax to get the passengers after they were landed. Mr. Franklin made a guess that the Titanic’s passengers would get into Halifax on Wednesday. The Department of Commerce and Labor notified the White Star Line that customs and immigration inspectors would be sent from Montreal to Halifax in order that there would be as little delay as possible in getting the passengers on trains.

Monday night the world slept in peace and assurance. A wireless message had finally been received, reading:

“All Titanic’s passengers safe.”

It was not until nearly a week later that the fact was discovered that this message had been wrongly received in the confusion of messages flashing through the air, and that in reality the message should have read:

“Are all Titanic’s passengers safe?”

With the dawning of Tuesday morning came the awful news of the true fate of the Titanic.