Frederick Fleet, pictured here in 1912, had warned the officers on the bridge about an iceberg in the distance. In the crow’s nest, Fleet braced himself for a collision as the ship steamed toward the iceberg.
THE OFFICERS ON THE TITANIC’S BRIDGE reacted very quickly.
“Iceberg right ahead!” Junior Officer James Moody repeated to First Officer William Murdoch.
“Hard-a-starboard,” Murdoch quickly ordered. The quartermaster, the sailor at the ship’s wheel, spun the wheel hard to the right until it would turn no more.1
Seconds later, Murdoch ordered the engine room to stop and reverse the engines. This was done to slow the ship’s movement toward the iceberg. Preparing for the worst, Murdoch also hit the switch that closed the watertight doors to the hull compartments. As the officers on the bridge and the men in the engine room waited, the Titanic slowly turned.2
But the ship had been going too fast. Its speed made it impossible to stop the giant vessel before it reached the iceberg. The ship was also not turning fast enough. The order to stop and reverse engines made the ship’s steering more sluggish. If the engines had only been slowed, rather than reversed, the ship would have actually turned faster.
Frederick Fleet, pictured here in 1912, had warned the officers on the bridge about an iceberg in the distance. In the crow’s nest, Fleet braced himself for a collision as the ship steamed toward the iceberg.
In the crow’s nest, Fleet and Lee braced themselves for a collision. Several large chunks of ice fell onto the ship’s decks as the Titanic brushed along the iceberg and drifted onward to a stop minutes later. Crew members on the deck were relieved. The ship’s bow, or forward section, appeared to have missed the iceberg.3
But many of those elsewhere in the ship knew better. Passengers and crew in different parts of the ship either felt a strong shock or heard a scraping noise. The Titanic had struck a part of the iceberg below the waterline. Engineers Fred Barrett and James Hesketh were working in the number six boiler room near the front of the ship. Suddenly, the right-side wall of their room crashed open and water gushed in. Hesketh escaped the flood of seawater in the room just before the huge, watertight door slammed shut, sealing the room off from the rest of the ship. Barrett used the emergency escape ladder. The two men were safe for the moment. But the damage to the Titanic was more serious than a single hole in a single compartment.
A hard, jagged piece of ice had cut into the lower part of the bow as the ship passed by. It had left a line of holes and crumpled steel along a three-hundred-foot stretch of the hull. Cold seawater was rushing into the number one hold, number two hold, number three hold, number six boiler room, and number five boiler room.
“What have we struck?” asked Captain Smith when he stepped onto the bridge.
“An iceberg, sir,” First Officer Murdoch replied. He explained that he had turned the ship, cut the engines, and closed the watertight doors.4
The collision had lasted only ten seconds, but the wound the iceberg had inflicted was fatal. The water flowing into the forward portion of the ship belowdecks could not be stopped.
The Titanic’s chief designer, Thomas Andrews, was unaware that anything had happened until he heard a knock at his cabin door. A crewman told him to report quickly to the bridge. When Andrews arrived, Captain Smith informed him of the collision. He asked Andrews to accompany him on an inspection of the damage. Their inspection of the shocking scene belowdecks at the ship’s forward area lasted less than ten minutes. The compartments were flooding, and Andrews slowly realized that the watertight doors were not going to stop the inflow of water. The men returned to the bridge, where their discussion was brief.
The iceberg had cut a gash so long that it was filling the front five compartments with water. The watertight doors in boiler rooms six and five went only as high as the ship’s E deck. As the weight of the water pulled the front of the ship down, the water from the number six boiler room would flow into number five. This would pull the ship even lower, causing the water to flow into the number four boiler room. It would then flow into number three, then number two, and so on.
Andrews’s conclusion was grim. There was nothing they could do to change the ship’s fate. It was already certain. The Titanic was doomed.
“How long have we?” Captain Smith asked.
“An hour and a half,” Andrews replied. “Possibly two. Not much longer.”
Wasting no time, Captain Smith immediately mobilized his crew. “Uncover the boats,” he ordered.5
The Titanic’s chief designer, Thomas Andrews, informed Captain Edward Smith that the ship had less than two hours before it sank. The ship’s officers and crew had to immediately prepare the lifeboats. This photo shows the Titanic’s officers. Standing left-to-right are Herbert McElroy, Charles Lightoller, Herbert Pitman, Joseph Boxhall, Harold Lowe, and seated left-to-right are James Moody, Henry Wilde, Captain Smith, and First Officer Murdoch.
The ship’s general alarm was never sounded. The alarm might have caused a mad panic among the passengers that would have made abandoning the ship more difficult. Instead, officers were sent through the ship to inform the rest of the crew of the collision. Stewards walked through the decks, telling passengers, many of whom were in bed, to dress and put on lifejackets. When the ship’s position was calculated, Captain Smith delivered it to John Phillips and Harold Bride, the ship’s wireless operators.
“We’ve struck an iceberg,” Smith told them. “Send the call for assistance.” Phillips and Bride went to work at once.6
Details about the ship’s damage were not communicated to every crew member. Some stewards were unable to tell passengers exactly what had happened, and many passengers could not believe there was any real danger. The result was confusion about the urgency to get to the lifeboats.
At 12:10 A.M., passenger Elizabeth Shutes saw a ship’s officer and asked if there was any danger.
“No,” the officer responded, trying to avoid the spread of panic. But as he went further down the corridor, Shutes overheard him say to another crewman, “I think we can keep the water out a bit longer.”7
Margaret “Molly” Brown heard the news that they were to get ready to abandon ship. After traveling in Egypt, she had a collection of important Egyptian relics in her cabin. Just before leaving, Molly grabbed one of the pieces. It was a small figurine. She took it with her for good luck.
Ruth Becker was only twelve years old. She was traveling with her mother and younger brother and sister. A steward told them to get ready to leave quickly.
“Do we have time to dress?” Ruth’s mother asked.
“You have time for nothing,” the steward replied. “Put on your lifejackets and come up to the boat deck.” Ruth helped her mother dress her baby brother and sister. They were in such a hurry they forgot to put on their lifejackets.8
At that moment, few, if any, passengers knew the grim truth about the lifeboats. There were not nearly enough. The sixteen wooden lifeboats and the four collapsible boats on board could keep a total of 1,178 people afloat. But there were 2,208 aboard the Titanic. That meant that 1,030 people would be without lifeboats. Strangely, the law did not require the ship to carry enough boats for everyone.
Anyone who tried to escape the ship by jumping into the water with or without a lifejacket would freeze in a short time in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Unless another ship came, those without a lifeboat would not survive.
Despite the fact that the crew had never conducted a lifeboat drill on the Titanic, they were orderly in getting the boats ready to be loaded. At 12:25 A.M., nearly an hour after the collision, Captain Smith gave the order to start loading the lifeboats with women and children.
First Officer Murdoch was in charge of the boats on the ship’s port, or left side, while Second Officer Charles Lightoller was responsible for the boats on the starboard, or right, side. When Lightoller made the first call for women and children to get into lifeboat No. 6, some passengers were still not convinced of the danger. They felt certain that rescue ships would arrive long before the Titanic went under, if it ever went under at all. John Jacob Astor, the richest man on the ship, was not ready to depend on a wooden lifeboat for his survival.
“We are safer here than in that little boat,” he said to people standing around him.9
Louis and Michel Navratil of Nice, France, sit on their mother’s lap for this photograph taken after they survived the Titanic shipwreck. Captain Smith first ordered the lifeboats to be filled with women and children, but some women refused to leave without their husbands.
The ship’s small orchestra had set up their instruments on the boat deck and were playing music. Their presence helped add a sense of calm to what was happening on the deck.
A few of the women refused to get into a lifeboat without their husbands. When no more women came forward, a few couples and a few other men were allowed to get in. At 12:45 A.M., boat No. 7 on the ship’s port side became the first boat to be lowered into the water. It was large enough to carry sixty-five people. But because of confusion, and many passengers’ reluctance to leave the Titanic, the boat was lowered with only twenty-eight people in it.
Up on the ship’s bridge, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall ordered quartermaster George Rowe to begin firing distress rockets. Rowe fired the first rocket, which scattered twelve brilliant flares into the sky. Rowe fired a new rocket every five minutes so that any passing ships could spot the Titanic.
At about the same time, Boxhall observed the faint lights of a ship passing within five or six miles of the Titanic. He used a Morse code lamp to send flashes of a distress code to the other ship. But the ship slowly turned and vanished over the horizon. More than an hour after the collision, there was no rescue in sight.
Wireless operators John Phillips and Harold Bride continued to send out calls for assistance. A number of ships had responded, but they were all too far away to help the Titanic. Carpathia was the closest ship to respond. Its wireless operator tapped out a message that it was fifty-eight miles away and heading full steam to the Titanic’s rescue.
But the Carpathia would not arrive in time. The Titanic’s bow was already dipping far into the water. The tilt of the decks was growing steeper. Those who had doubts earlier could now see that the mighty ship was really sinking. Passengers began to crowd around the lifeboats. They started loading into the lifeboats in larger numbers.
Many of the third-class passengers were kept belowdecks to keep the boat decks from getting too crowded. This meant that only first- and second-class passengers were getting into the lifeboats. Third-class passengers were not. As the ship’s decks tilted further, the ship’s doom became clear to everyone, and panic was brewing belowdecks.
A lifeboat from the Titanic is photographed as it approaches the Carpathia. Despite the crew’s best effort to keep loading the lifeboats in an orderly fashion, it was a difficult task. Several lifeboats were launched only half-full. As panic spread through the ship, it was clear that hundreds of people would go down with the Titanic.
Crewmen continued to load the boats with mostly women and children. Molly Brown was walking away from the deck area when she was grabbed and dropped into boat No. 6.
Wealthy businessman Isidor Straus decided that he would stay with the big ship and leave space for others on the lifeboats. Crewmen and others on deck encouraged his wife to get into one of the boats.
“We have been living together for many years,” she told her husband. “Where you go, I go.”10
The wife of French novelist Jacques Futrelle also would not get into a lifeboat.
“For God’s sake, go!” her husband told her. “It’s your last chance! Go!” As she continued to protest, an officer decided the matter by forcing her into a lifeboat.11
Twelve-year-old Ruth Becker watched her younger brother and sister get loaded into boat No. 11. The crew suddenly began to lower the boat.
“Oh, let me go with my children!” Ruth’s mother screamed, and jumped into the boat with them. Ruth was left standing on the deck.12
Her mother called back to Ruth to get into another lifeboat. Ruth went down the deck to the next lifeboat. She asked the officer if she could get in. The officer picked her up and put her in a boat. It was so full that she had to stand up. As the crowded boat neared the water, another boat was lowered nearly on top of them. A man in Ruth’s boat pulled out a knife and cut their boat free from the ropes. The lifeboat pushed away from the side of the ship just seconds before the other one would have landed on top of it.
By 1:30 A.M., panic was spreading. The Titanic’s bow was submerged. The decks continued to slant toward the water. Many people were still aboard and only a few lifeboats were left. The Titanic’s time was running out.