ONLY 745 OF THE 2,340 SOULS ABOARD DOOMED LINER SAVED BY THE LIFEBOATS—LITTLE SHOCK FELT WHEN THE ICEBERG WAS STRUCK BY THE TITANIC
Freighted with its argosy of woe, disaster and death, bringing glad reunion to some, but misery unutterable to many, the Carpathia, with the survivors of the lost Titanic aboard, came back to a grief-stricken city and nation four days after the disaster. It was received by awe-stricken thousands whose conversation was conducted in whispers.
The story it brought home was one to crush the heart with its pathos, but at the same time to thrill it with pride in the manly and womanly fortitude displayed in the face of the most awful peril and inevitable death.
As the Titanic went down, according to the story of those who were among the last to leave the wounded hulk, the ship’s band was playing.
As brought to port by the Carpathia, the death list was placed at 1,601. The Titanic had aboard 2,340 persons, of whom 745 were picked up. Six of the latter succumbed to the exposure they had undergone before the Carpathia reached port. Not only was the Titanic tearing through the April night to its doom with every ounce of steam crowded on, but it was under orders from the general officers of the line to make all the speed of which she was capable. This was the statement made by J. H. Moody, a quartermaster of the vessel and helmsman on the night of the disaster. He said the ship was making twenty-one knots an hour, and the officers were striving to live up to the orders to smash the record.
“It was close to midnight,” said Moody, “and I was on the bridge with the second officer, who was in command. Suddenly he shouted, ‘Port your helm!’ I did so, but it was too late. We struck the submerged portion of the berg.”
As nearly as most of the passengers could remember, the Titanic, sliding through the water at no more speed than had been consistently maintained during all of the trip, slid gracefully a few feet out of the water with just the slightest tremble. It rolled slightly; then it pitched. The shock, scarcely noticeable to those on board, drew a few loungers over to the railings. Officers and petty officers were hurrying about. There was no destruction within the ship, at least not in the sight of the passengers.
There was no panic. Everything that could be seen tended to alleviate what little fear had crept into the minds of the passengers who were more apprehensive than the regular travelers who cross the ocean at this season of the year and who were more used to experiencing those small quivers.
Not one person aboard the Titanic, unless possibly it was the men of the crew, who were working far below, knew the extent of the injuries it had sustained. Many of the passengers had taken time to dress, so sure were they that there was no danger. They came on deck, looked the situation over and were unable to see the slightest sign that the Titanic had been torn open beneath the water line.
When the passengers’ fear had been partly calmed and most of them had returned to their staterooms or to the card games in which they were engaged before the quiver was felt, there came surging through the first cabin quarters a report that seemed to have drifted in from nowhere that the ship was sinking. How this word crept in from outside no one seems now to know. Immediately the crew began to man the boats.
Then came the shudder of the riven hulk of the once magnificent steamship as it receded from the shelving ice upon which it had driven, and its bow settled deeply into the water.
“We’re lost! We’re lost!” was the cry that rose from hundreds of throats. “The ship is sinking. We must drown like rats!”
Women in evening gowns, with jewels about their necks, knelt on deck, amid the vast, fear-stricken throng, crowded about the lifeboats and prayed for help. Others, clad in their night clothing, begged the officers to let them enter the boats.
“Everybody to the boats!” was the startling cry that was repeated from end to end of the Titanic.
“Women and children first!” was the hoarse order that went along the line of lifeboats.
Without food, without clothing and with only the clothes in which they stood when the shock came, the women were tossed over the rails of the lifeboats, the davits were swung out, a few men were picked to man the oars, an officer to command the boat and the order to “lower away” was shouted. The little craft, laden with living freight, were launched.
Men whose names and reputation were prominent in two hemispheres were shouldered out of the way by roughly dressed Slavs and Hungarians. Husbands were separated from their wives in the battle to reach the boats. Tearful leave-takings as the lifeboats, one after another, were filled with sobbing women and lowered upon the ice-covered surface of the ocean were heartbreaking.
There was no time to pick or choose. The first woman to step into a lifeboat held her place even though she was a maid or the wife of a Hungarian peasant. Many women clung to their husbands and refused to be separated. In some cases they dragged their husbands to the boats and in the confusion the men found places in the boats.
Before there was any indication of panic, Henry B. Harris, a theatrical manager of New York, stepped into a boat at the side of his wife before it was lowered.
“Women first!” shouted one of the ship’s officers. Mr. Harris glanced up and saw that the remark was addressed to him.
“All right,” he replied, coolly.
“Goodbye, my dear,” he said, as he kissed his wife, pressed her a moment to his breast and then climbed back to the Titanic’s deck.
One by one the little fleet drew away from the towering sides of the giant steamship, whose decks were already reeling as it sank lower in the water.
“The Titanic is doomed!” was the verdict that passed from lip to lip.
“We will sink before help can come!”
Water poured into every compartment of the 800-foot hull, where great plates had been torn apart and huge rivets were sheared off as though they were so much cheese.
Pumps were started in the engine-room, but the water poured into the great hull in such torrents through scores of rents that all knew the fight to save the steamship was hopeless.
Overhead the wireless buzzed the news to the other steamships. The little fleet of lifeboats withdrew to a safe distance and the 1,595 left on board with no boats waited for the merciful death plunge, which ended all.
A few spars, a box or two, a few small pieces of other wreckage, were the only portions of the Titanic corpse that lived on the water surface to be beheld by the persons on board the Carpathia when it rushed to the rescue. It was just breaking day as the rescue work was completed.
So exhausted were the survivors that scarcely any of them were able to tell their story of what actually had happened until late in the afternoon of Monday. It seemed impossible to obtain a complete story of the tragedy.
Survivors in a lifeboat. Photograph taken from the Carpathia.
Certainly few of the Titanic passengers were hurt on board that great vessel. Few of the persons who came in among the survivors on the Carpathia bore any marks of injury. Their sufferings were caused chiefly by exposure, shock and grief. The latter was terrible. Many of the women had walked into a boat after kissing their husbands goodbye.
The women in the lifeboats saw their loved ones plunge to death. The survivors’ boats were bobbing along in the waves all within a radius of half a mile of the great Titanic, when, with a roar and burst of spray, it settled and passed out of sight for the last time.
Then began one of the most torturous experiences for the helpless women in the drifting lifeboats that human beings ever were compelled to endure.
It was black night. Fortunately several of the men who were saved and some of the few petty officers who had aided in manning the lifeboats had a few matches in their pockets. Their torches were improvised from letters and scraps of papers that were found in their pockets. There was nothing to be seen.
The torches, the only hope of those who thought they were doomed to death, were being carefully guarded and many times those who held them were implored to light them in the faint hope that rescue was closer at hand than even the most sanguine could have believed.
But the strong prevailed and it was not until the first rocket was seen to shoot heavenward from the Carpathia that the first of the torches was lighted and its filmy blaze shot up as high as was possible when one of the men, held on the shoulders of five others, stood up and waved the flaming papers until they burned down to his fingertips.
The desolate groups huddled together in the tossing and rolling tiny craft could not tell whether their torch had been seen by the ship that was firing the rockets. They waited fifteen minutes and the operation was repeated.
Then the huge bulk of the Carpathia took form in the gray of the breaking morning and it swept swiftly down into the center of a widely separated fleet of lifeboats with their human freight, then more dead than alive. They had been for approximately six hours in the open with the waves sending spray and at intervals whole barrelsful of water in upon them. They were drenched and the severe cold was freezing their clothing to their bodies. Only a few of them were able to walk when it finally came their turn to be taken on board the Carpathia.
The Carpathia’s sailors went after those lying unconscious in the bottom of the lifeboats, lifted them up to other sailors standing on the Carpathia’s ladders. Everything that could be done for the survivors was done on the Carpathia.
Several of them had been cut and bruised in their attempts to get into the lifeboats and by falling from exhaustion during the awful ordeal they were compelled to pass through while waiting for the Carpathia to come to their relief. These were given surgical care. The others were placed in bed and few if any of them were able during the rest of the voyage to go on deck.
A passenger on the Carpathia made the following statement:
“I was awakened at about half past twelve at night by a commotion on the decks which seemed unusual, but there was no excitement. As the boat was moving I paid little attention to it, and went to sleep again. About three o’clock I again awakened. I noticed that the boat had stopped. I went to the deck. The Carpathia had changed its course.
Lifeboats were sighted and began to arrive—and soon, one by one, they drew up to our side. There were sixteen in all, and the transferring of the passengers was most pitiable. The adults were assisted in climbing the rope ladder by ropes adjusted to their waists. Little children and babies were hoisted to the deck in bags.
Survivors of the Titanic sit on board the Carpathia.
“Some of the boats were crowded, a few were not half full. This I could not understand. Some people were in full evening dress. Others were in their nightclothes and were wrapped in blankets. These, with immigrants in all sorts of shapes, were hurried into the saloon indiscriminately for a hot breakfast. They had been in the open boats four and five hours in the most biting air I ever experienced.
“There were husbands without wives, wives without husbands, parents without children and children without parents. But there was no demonstration. No sobs—scarcely a word spoken. They seemed to be stunned. Immediately after breakfast, divine service was held in the saloon.
“One woman died in the lifeboat; three others died soon after reaching our deck. Their bodies were buried in the sea at five o’clock that afternoon. None of the rescued had any clothing except what they had on, and a relief committee was formed and our passengers contributed enough for their immediate needs.
“When its lifeboats pushed away from the Titanic, the steamer was brilliantly lighted, the band was playing and the captain was standing on the bridge giving directions. The bow was well submerged and the keel rose high above the water. The next moment everything disappeared. The survivors were so close to the sinking steamer that they feared the lifeboats would be drawn into the vortex.
“On our way back to New York we steamed along the edge of a field of ice which seemed limitless. As far as the eye could see to the north there was no blue water. At one time I counted thirteen icebergs.”
