2

Far from Okay

Crushed and half sunk on the bed of the Atlantic, the Titanic's entire stern section and most of its debris would eventually be found at latitude 41 degrees 43 minutes north and longitude 49 degrees 56 minutes west (just over 960 miles northeast of Manhattan). Only twelve hours before the convergence of the iceberg and the Titanic, a Marconi operator aboard SS Mesaba had radioed that ice was drifting southward into this same path:

Latitude 41 deg. 50 min. north—Longitude 49 deg. 15 min. west, passed a quantity of bergs, some very large. Also, a field of pack ice about five miles long, with numerous bergs intermixed… . Had to steer about twenty miles south to clear it. The ice seemed to be one solid wall—[of bergs] at least sixteen feet high, as far as could be seen. In Latitude 41 deg. 35 min. north, Longitude 50 deg. 30 [min.] west, we came to the end [of the ice field], and we were again able to steer to the westward [toward the United States].

The airwaves were buzzing with such news. The steamer La Bretange reported, “Latitude 41 deg. 39 min. and Longitude 49 deg. 21 min. [through] 50 deg. 21 min., steamed through an ice field with numerous icebergs for four hours—7:30 to 11:38 a.m.” At 11:52, another ship, the Baltic, reaffirmed what lay in the path of the Titanic's final resting place, warning, “Icebergs and large quantity of Field Ice today at Lat. 41.51n Longitude 49.52w.” The Baltic's Marconi operator added that the German oil tank steamer Deutschland—also along the Titanic's path at latitude 40 degrees 42 minutes north—was no longer under control, it was low on coal, and it was calling out to other steamers.

With the wisdom of perfect hindsight, no one later believed that these clear warnings of danger ahead could have been responded to with anything but increased vigilance.

Down in third class, close to the waterline and approximately forty minutes before impact, Neshan Krekorian became the first and only known survivor positioned low enough to witness the deadly fleet edge-on, along the horizon line. Located in quarters only two decks above the ship's waterline, he had gone to sleep in a room where heating problems were correctable only after his bunkmates opened both portholes. By 11 p.m., the temperature in the room had shifted from unbearably hot to unbearably cold.

When Krekorian arose from his bed to close the portholes (according to his report to the Hamilton, Ontario, Spectator, dated April 25, 1912), he saw distant dark shapes moving against the starry horizon. “I noticed many icebergs in the water of a comparatively large size,” he said. “I thought little about them, however, despite the fact that they were the first I had ever seen, as they were hardly perceptible from the distance they were from the boat.”

Several decks higher, the icebergs would not likely have been perceptible on the horizon at all. From where Krekorian stood, about twenty feet above the surface of the Atlantic, an iceberg standing seventy feet tall, half a mile away, would be barely discernible as a dark nub protruding above the horizon, moving against the backdrop of stars. Viewed from an angle almost sixty feet above Krekorian, on the Titanic's bridge, an observer would be looking down upon that same iceberg—an invisible black shape lower than the horizon, silhouetted against black seas. Thirty feet above the bridge, in the crow's nest, where the Titanic's two lookouts stood, a berg reaching even as tall as the bridge could remain undetectable until the ship was almost upon it.

How many icebergs the Titanic passed during the forty minutes between Krekorian's sighting and the moment of impact was a question answerable only with astonishment that the steamer had penetrated so deeply into the ice field without colliding with something much sooner.

Krekorian's mention of the two open portholes raised another question. A single F-deck porthole, if propped completely open until the sea reached it, would have increased the twelve square feet of initial iceberg damage by nearly 10 percent. Krekorian stated that he closed his two portholes, but how many other portholes of various widths on multiple decks were open because of excessive and otherwise uncontrollable heat from the boiler rooms, and how many of these remained open through the 11:40 p.m. crash and were then forgotten? The number could only be guessed at. One might just as well have asked how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

At the critical moment, six decks above Krekorian's position, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall was walking toward the bridge, along the starboard side of the boat deck. He had just passed beneath the leading edge of the first smokestack and was abreast of Captain Edward J. Smith's quarters when he heard the three-bell warning from the crow's nest signaling that danger had been sighted directly ahead. At the same moment, he heard First Officer William Murdoch inside the bridge, shouting, “Hard astarboard!”

On the bridge, quartermaster Robert Hitchens received the order and began immediately to respond. Murdoch had come running indoors from the starboard wing bridge—apparently even before Boxhall heard the three bells from the crow's nest, for Boxhall did not see Murdoch outside, even though the open-air wing bridge on which Murdoch had been standing was directly in Boxhall's path, barely ten paces ahead.

Three stories lower than the crow's nest lookouts, Murdoch had been positioned nearer the sea's surface, and even though he was not at the optimum viewing point of Neshan Krekorian, he was at a lower, better angle than the lookouts for detecting the telltale shadow climbing above the horizon and eclipsing the stars.

From Boxhall's perspective, it was all over by the time he heard Murdoch's order to Hitchens. Simultaneously with that order, the engine telegraph was ringing an order for evasive action, from the bridge to the engineers' platform in the reciprocating engine room. Even as the impact occurred, Boxhall did not slow his stride toward the bridge. He felt the first jolts of the crash a startlingly short time after he heard the three bells from the crow's nest.

From the moment the three-bell alarm was sounded, Boxhall had scarcely more than twenty feet to walk before reaching the bridge—and yet, during that brief interval of ten steps, Murdoch's orders for turning the wheel could be heard, and the clash of ice and steel had already begun.

THE EXAMINATION

Boxhall would live to testify before the examiners (during the first of two official investigations into the loss of the Titanic, the American inquiry during the spring of 1912, followed quickly by the British inquiry). Boxhall stated that when he reached the bridge, he saw Murdoch still in the act of pulling the lever to close the watertight doors below. Fortunately—and contrary to self-perpetuating textbook dogma about the stop order disabling the rudder and all but guaranteeing that the Titanic could not be steered out of harm's way—the ship had enough forward momentum, even with all three propellers stopped, to carry it through Murdoch's avoidance maneuvers.

The point was moot; there was probably not enough time for the propeller blades to diminish the efficiency of the rudder by coming to a stop and switching a normally propulsive flow of water to chaotic turbulence and drag effects. According to Hitchens, Murdoch rushed in from the starboard wing bridge and gave the order, “Hard astarboard!” Sixth Officer James Moody repeated the order and Hitchens turned the wheel—“but during [this] time,” Hitchens told an American examiner, “she [the ship] was crushing the ice—for we could hear the grinding noise along the ship's bottom.”

Lookout Frederick Fleet told the same examiner that he rang the crow's nest bell and immediately called the bridge by telephone. The conversation was very brief.

“What did you see?” a voice on the other end asked.

“Iceberg right ahead!” said Fleet.

“Thank you,” came the reply, and the officer hung up the receiver.

The interval between Fleet's ringing the bell and hanging up the phone could have occupied only five to eight seconds. Within this time frame—in which the countdown to impact probably began with Murdoch sighting the iceberg at least three seconds ahead of the crow's nest lookouts—Fleet thought the ship had started turning to port, and he watched the iceberg strike ahead of him, along the starboard bow. All of this occurred while he was still on the phone.

Fleet would later reiterate for Second Officer Charles Lightoller that “practically at the same time” he struck the bell, he noticed the ship's head moving under the helm. If Fleet's impression was correct, the Titanic began turning away from the danger even before Hitchens could turn the rudder, which suggests that the bow was striking the iceberg just as the crow's nest lookouts sighted it. Fleet believed that the first blow to the ship came from a submerged portion of the iceberg, because the Titanic not only turned toward the port side but also seemed to be lifted slightly in that direction by the ice.

At the moment Fleet rang the bell, quartermaster Alfred Olliver was standing between the second and third smokestacks, making adjustments to the compass tower's lights. Olliver immediately put down his tools and ran forward along the deck. He arrived on the bridge seconds after seeing the iceberg grinding along the starboard side, its pointed tip rising toward the boat deck. It seemed to him that the Titanic had begun to heave away from the ice while Murdoch shouted orders to the helm, but Olliver would testify later that he could not discern whether the engines and the rudder really changed the Titanic's direction or whether “it was hitting the iceberg that stopped the way of the ship.”

From the moment the iceberg was sighted, there was very little that could be done to save the ship. Conceivably, there was no time even to begin steering, and the Titanic struck at precisely the angle at which it was aimed when the countdown to zero began.

Quartermaster Olliver stood by in silent disbelief as First Officer Murdoch assured Captain Smith that all of the watertight doors were closed. Olliver also witnessed the skipper ordering the engines forward at half speed, for several minutes, during which the ship probably advanced about half a mile.

• • •

Able Seaman Joseph Scarrott had felt the entire forecastle shiver, almost simultaneously with the confusion of three bells warning of danger straight ahead, and amid enough vibration and pummeling of the hull to wake anyone in the berths below. Scarrott ran down several decks to tell a friend that something had just gone frighteningly amiss. A groggy voice told him to go away and not to come back unless it turned out to be something important.

By the time Scarrott climbed to the top of the forecastle, the Titanic was steaming smoothly forward again. There was freshly broken ice lying on the forecastle roof, and whole truckload amounts of ice were strewn along the starboard side of the well deck. When Scarrott looked over the rail, he saw an iceberg that he believed must have been the one the bow had just struck, passing not very far behind the bridge, but this could not possibly have been the case.

At a velocity of nearly forty feet per second, the iceberg that created the actual lesions and punctures in the hull had passed from the point of the bow, beyond the bridge and almost to the second smokestack, in all of ten seconds. Twelve seconds after that, it passed Quartermaster Rowe on the after-bridge, then disappeared astern. The able seaman's trip two or three decks down to the crews' berths, his waking of a friend, the quick rebuke, and his return to the top deck took considerably longer than the ten-second interval in which the iceberg would have remained plainly visible from the forecastle.

Scarrott recalled for the examiners that several “minutes” might have been involved; and actual minutes must indeed have been involved in his mission of warning the sleeping crew on the lower decks. By the time he returned to the top, it seemed to him as though the ship was still trying to make an evasive, circling maneuver around the iceberg. Then the Titanic stopped, very near to its final resting place.

What Scarrott most likely saw was a second iceberg; because very soon after impact, the Titanic was steaming forward at half speed, through an ice field no less densely populated than the eastern fringe of bergs that Neshan Krekorian had observed nearly forty-five minutes earlier. The sighting of a second iceberg (if this was indeed what Scarrott saw) was certainly a powerful enough signal to the bridge that the Titanic must now be surrounded by hull-piercing bergs and that this would diminish even the hope of sighting another ship and steaming toward it, should the damage turn out to be life-threatening.

By this time, Swedish passenger August Wennerstrom and several of his traveling companions were finding the jolt that bounced them awake in the bow section more amusing than dangerous. They ran all the way back to the third-class smoking room, located just under the after-bridge, where Quartermaster Rowe remained at his post awaiting instructions from the bridge. Wennerstrom and his friends had hoped to find something to drink, to celebrate the exciting “talk of an iceberg,” the stopping of the ship, and what was sure to be an extra day or two of better than average accommodations and all the free food one could eat.

Finding the smoking room's beer service closed down for the night, and with little else to do except wait and see if the Titanic's engines were going to start up again, they lit cigarettes and played the piano. Even witnessing a group of Italian immigrants entering the room with life jackets and uttering prayers to Maria failed to darken their spirits. The Swedes sang louder and started dancing in a circle around the distressed Italians.

Far in front of the party in the smoking room, just a few steps to the rear of the spiral stairs on G deck, twenty-one-year-old Daniel Buckley had jumped out of his lower bunk the moment he felt the crash. Even as Quartermaster Olliver saw the helm reverse and the iceberg pass astern, water began running over Buckley's shoes. Colder than the steel deck plates, foot-cramping cold, the water was trying to rise against bed frames and cabin walls.

“You'd better get up,” Buckley told his three cabinmates. “There's something wrong.”

They had all been awakened by the collision, but they had all come aboard with total confidence in the world's largest new steamer, regarded by the press and by Edwardian culture to be the virtually unsinkable pinnacle of technology's achievements. Buckley's bunkmates merely laughed at him.

“Get back into bed,” one of them taunted. “You are not in Ireland anymore.”

Buckley put on some warm clothing and ran up, in his wet shoes, from G deck to the forwardmost of the ship's two well decks. He arrived not very far from the place where Joseph Scarrott had stood alone atop the forecastle, watching the Titanic come slowly to a stop after skirting what appeared to be a second iceberg. There were more people arriving on deck now, more and more of them. Few seemed to be taking the several tons of ice on the well deck very seriously. The icefall had occurred on what was normally an outdoor recreation area for the steerage passengers, and many of Buckley's fellow travelers were launching themselves into impromptu games of ice hockey and not-so-playful ice-ball fights.

Buckley's mind was working on an altogether different assessment of danger, and it occurred to him that life jackets might soon be needed on the playground, so he decided to head down again to G deck, where he knew he could count on coming back with at least four life jackets from his cabin. At the bottom of the stairs he encountered an unexpected barrier. The water had swallowed the stairs at least four steps deep and was lapping toward his feet as he watched. The four life jackets—along with everything Buckley owned that was not presently in his pockets—were already disappearing into the Atlantic.

In the next compartment forward, lamp trimmer Samuel Hemming discovered equally disturbing signatures of disaster. Although he was not quite ready to believe in signs that were plainly readable, he knew better than most people exactly what was occurring. More than four hours earlier, as he was leaving the bridge for some much-needed sleep, First Officer Murdoch had told him, “When you go forward, get the fore scuttle hatch closed.” Hemming looked ahead, toward the hatch between the anchor chains. “There should be no glow coming from that,” Murdoch explained, “as we are in the vicinity of ice, and I want everything dark before the bridge.”

Hemming had closed the hatch himself before retiring to his bunk, but a burst of air pressure from below had blown it open again, at essentially the same moment the crash woke him. By the time he ran to an open porthole and looked outside, the iceberg had disappeared aft, leaving behind only the loud hissing of escaping air. Hemming traced the source of the hiss to the bottom of the forecastle head, in the storeroom compartment nearest the point of the bow, immediately in front of the double-hulled sides of the locker where the anchor chains were stored. In this region of the ship, every hull section was doubly layered, from the very bottom all the way up the sides—yet underfoot, water was flooding into the tank space above the keel. Air was shooting out of the tank compartment as though through a high-pressure exhaust line. Lamp trimmer Hemming was now witness to the foremost damage caused by the collision.

By 11:50, ten minutes after impact, a carpenter came down to join Hemming. The lamp trimmer explained his findings: water seemed to be moving up from below, but he believed the ship to have survived in reasonably okay condition, because the anchor-chain locker and the front storage room appeared to be dry.

“No, it's far from okay,” the carpenter replied. “She is taking water fast in cargo holds [number] 1 and 2 and all the way past the racquet court.” He explained that the flooding was occurring as far back as boiler room number 6.

“What does this mean?” Hemming asked.

A boatswain climbed down behind the carpenter and explained exactly what it meant: “You'd better turn out [scramble out of here]. Anyone in this part of the ship has a half hour to live—the rest, not very much longer.” The boatswain added that this assessment came from Thomas Andrews, the ship's designer. “But don't tell anyone,” the boatswain commanded, adding that the designer and the skipper did not want panic to spread, creating the sort of rush on lifeboats that could easily kill everyone. “And so,” the boatswain advised, “let's keep it to ourselves.”