CHAPTER 13 Music in the First-Class Lounge

Things are desperate, but not serious.

Viennese proverb

LADY ROTHES RETURNED TO HER stateroom with Gladys, where they were relieved to find that her maid had already been woken by the activity and come up to find them. Less fortunately, a lack of printed notices on the stateroom doors meant that they could not find where their life belts were stored and in the end they walked out into the corridor and flagged down “an awfully nice man” who unsuccessfully helped in the hunt until Noëlle gave up by ringing for the steward, who, when they explained what they were looking for, said, “I did not even know the order for life belts had been given.”¹ After the life jackets had been located underneath their beds, they dressed quickly, tying the cork-filled life belts in place over the top of their fur coats, but left behind most of their jewelry, except for the string of pearls that had been with the countesses of Rothes since the sixteenth century, which Noëlle decided to wear. Some nervous urge jolted Gladys into picking up a photograph of her sweetheart, whose name unfortunately is missing from her surviving letters. It was the only personal memento she considered taking from the cabin until she thought, “How silly, we shall soon be back here.” She put the photograph back and “calmly and quietly went to the top boat-deck; you see by this the perfect confidence the people had in that great boat, no one could believe there was danger.”² Exiting their corridor, they met the Purser, who told them of several passengers who had contacted his office to request the return of their jewels. The same twinge of foreboding that had prompted Gladys to consider carrying a photograph with her from their stateroom apparently briefly unsettled the Countess, who turned back to shake the Purser’s hand as they said goodbye, although she did not want to bother him by also requesting the rest of her jewels back from his safe. She thought she had heard him call her “Little lady,” although in the crush of the C-Deck atrium it is equally possible that she had misheard the more proper “milady” or “my lady.”³

As the Captain’s commands roused the ship, Andrews moved through her corridors, where to his relief he saw stewards and stewardesses opening the unoccupied first-class cabins to gather spare life jackets and blankets—even if they remained dangerously oblivious of the severity of the situation, the victualing staff were all aware of how cold it would be for passengers put into the lifeboats. Andrews was keen for the crew to set an example and told stewardess Annie Robinson, working on the empty A-Deck staterooms, “Put your lifebelt on and walk about and let the passengers see you.” Robinson’s response, “It looks rather mean,” earned her the order, “No, put it on.” Then a pause, followed by Andrews turning back to say quietly to her, “Well, if you value your life put your belt on.”⁴ It was the first time he articulated to anyone bar the Captain and officers that the ship was in a mortal condition.

Andrews was struggling against his own panic as he moved from the A-Deck corridors to their B-Deck counterparts, where another stewardess, his admirer Mary Sloan, “read in his face all I wanted to know.”⁵ He encountered his own cabin steward, forty-six-year-old Harry Etches, also performing errands of usefulness on B-Deck, and, once they were certain they had woken up the more determined sleepers and had hurried stragglers to the Lounge or the boats, Andrews asked Etches to help him do the same on C-Deck. A few days earlier, Andrews had agreed with Eleanor Cassebeer when she remarked over lunch that the Titanic did not have the typical information notices attached to the back of the cabin doors, the same point that frustrated Lady Rothes’s search for her life jacket. The frames were there, but in the rush to prepare for the maiden voyage the notices had been left behind in Southampton. Their absence now worried Andrews and he stressed to Etches that the passengers needed to be told that their life belts were either under their beds or on top of their wardrobes.⁶

The Olympic and Titanic’s identical Lounges were described by a trade journal as “the finest room ever built on a ship.”

The Titanic’s Lounge achieved apotheosis in extremis. It finally, if briefly, fulfilled its intended purpose to serve as a hub for first-class passengers. With the funnels still screaming like industrialized banshees, the lifeboats in the process of being uncovered, and the temperature outside below freezing, the Lounge was reopened on the Purser’s orders. It filled with light, with people, and then with music as the ship’s orchestra turned up to perform a concert. Ragtime and waltzes were played as the electric fire and the chandelier sparked back to life. Coffee, cocoa, and brandies were served to passengers, some of whom were still in their dinner wear. Others had changed into the kind of warm clothes they might wear for stalking, hiking, or hunting. Some carried their life jackets; others wore them over furs or overcoats. Publishing heir Henry Harper arrived in the Lounge in flamboyant bad form, clutching his Pekingese Sun Yat-sen and still weak from a bout of tonsillitis that had bothered him since his holiday in Egypt. To him, the scene in the Lounge “was rather like a stupid picnic where you don’t know anybody and wonder how soon you can get away from such a boresome place.”⁷ The author Helen Churchill Candee had a different impression of the scene. With the same benefit of hindsight as Harper but greater intelligence, she thought the unscheduled soiree on A-Deck had resembled “a fancy dress ball in Dante’s Hell.”⁸

The Thayers hovered around this exquisite Inferno as a party of six. Marian, dressed and accompanied by her redoubtably loyal lady’s maid, Margaret Fleming, had sent her husband to offer their companionship to Martha Stephenson and Elizabeth Eustis, their neighbors from Haverford and conversation partners on the stairwell a few hours earlier. He found the sisters nearly dressed “as if for breakfast,” with sensible boots and woolen suits. From their wardrobe, they had also brought out fur coats, into the pockets of which, for safety’s sake, they had placed their letters of credit and some rolls of money. Jack Thayer had exchanged his pajamas for a “warm greenish tweed suit and vest with another mohair vest underneath [his] coat.” They were all wearing life jackets, “which were really large thick cork vests.” In Jack’s case, it went on between his mohair sweater and the heavy coat his mother had gone back to their suite to fetch and insisted he wear. They arrived in the Lounge, “which was now crowded with people,” including Milton Long, Jack’s erstwhile companion from after-dinner coffee. Still alone and a little overwhelmed, Long asked if he could join the Thayers, which they agreed to, with Jack arranging introductions amid “a great deal of noise. The band was playing lively tunes.”⁹

The group regretted their decision to quit the Lounge for the deck, where they discovered “the noise was terrific. The deep vibrating roar of the exhaust steam blowing off through the safety valves was deafening, in addition to which they had started sending up rockets. There was more and more action. After standing there for some minutes talking above the din, trying to determine what we should do next, we finally decided to go back into the crowded hallway where it was warm.”¹⁰ From there, they heard stewards delivering the order “All women to the port side.” Marian, her maid, and the two sisters from Haverford said a quick goodbye at the top of the staircase, beneath the famous clock, before they “went out onto the port side of that deck, supposedly to get into a lifeboat.” The three men went to the starboard side to watch the activity there, where “it seemed we were always waiting for orders and no orders ever came. The men had not yet commenced to lower any of the forward starboard lifeboats, of which there were four.” Jack noticed crew, including stokers, pooling onto the deck, also “waiting for orders.”¹¹ From behind him, the band were still playing in the Lounge as passengers milled about in various moods of piqued curiosity.

The Titanic had twenty lifeboats, all located on the Boat Deck, bar four collapsibles—emergency craft tied to the roof of the Officers’ Quarters, near the base of the ship’s first two funnels. Those collapsible boats were designated by letters running from A to D, while the lifeboats proper were numbered. These were wooden, white, and suspended from davits with the exception of lifeboats 1 and 2, both of which had been swung out at Southampton in case a passenger fell overboard and there needed to be a swift rescue dip to the sea below. The odd numbers, running from 1 to 15, were located on the starboard side of the deck; the even-numbered boats on the port. They were not stacked atop one another, but arranged in horizontal groups of four, with a gap for railings, around which was a low fence marking where the first-class section of the deck gave way to the second.^I Since they were to be swung out to sit alongside the deck for loading, there was some confusion as to whether or not they would be filled from the Boat Deck or the Promenade below, from where passengers might be helped in more easily. Captain Smith apparently considered this idea at first, a hangover from his days commanding the Olympic with her unshuttered Promenade. Officers and sailors sent to prepare the Promenade as a loading point for the lifeboats apparently had to report back to the Bridge with the reminder that half the Titanic’s Promenade was enclosed with glass, which would have to be opened or popped out of its frame entirely.¹²

The lifeboats were not lowered in numerical order, and the first to leave was the starboard side’s 7, uncovered around the same time as her forward neighbors 3 and 5. These were the lifeboats watched by Thayer, Jack, and Milton Long, before they again retreated to the warmth.¹³ First Officer William Murdoch was assigned to oversee the boats’ loading and lowering, with two juniors to help him. Having accompanied them during the bridge game, William Sloper and Frederic Seward felt honor-bound to escort the Gibson women throughout the subsequent drama. Sloper explained later, “As a man, I was bound to cheer up the ladies and act as calm as I could, but to say that I felt that underneath would be untrue. All this time there was no sign of panic or distress among passengers or crew. Everyone behaved wonderfully calm and cheerful.” What set Dorothy Gibson’s impromptu clique apart from most of the other passengers was that they had overheard the report about the flooding of the Squash Court, news that fueled Dorothy’s nerves, which in their turn made that small group one of the very few keen to leave the Titanic in the hour after the collision. They later overheard passengers discussing the sinking of the Republic as a likely blueprint for what might happen in the worst-case scenario—with the watertight compartments keeping the Titanic afloat long enough for rescue ships to arrive and safely evacuate all the passengers and crew.¹⁴

To Sloper’s suggestion that she and Pauline return to their room to find warmer clothes, Dorothy had bolted down five decks, grabbed a cardigan to wear over her evening gown, and returned to the Grand Staircase with her mother. Although he did not always approve of how visible she made it, Sloper shared Dorothy’s fright:

I felt as certain as anyone could feel that we had come to the end, and that many, if not all, would soon be gone. All of the people who were there in this companionway at this time, passed out quietly onto the deck where the lifeboats were. I remember distinctly that there was no crowding through the doorway—everyone was over polite. The covers had been taken off the lifeboats and they were quickly swung off the davits and lowered to the level of the deck. From this deck, we were, if I remember correctly, somewhere about eighty feet above the water, and to leave a well-lighted ship that at the time seemed to have listed slightly, and step into a small boat that might plunge down into the darkness below, or, if it reached the sea safely, be capsized by the water, was a question which made some people hold back. Miss [Gibson], who was now in a state of high nervous excitement, made for the first boat, and for fear that she might misstep or jump, I kept hold of her arm, and I remember [I] tried to keep her quiet by saying, “Keep a stiff upper lip.” When the officers in charge of the first boat motioned for us to step in she stepped forward with her mother and the gentleman that had been playing cards with us, and I helped them into the boat and followed after them. People sort of hung back at this time.¹⁵

What Sloper did not mention was that Dorothy grabbed his arm as she reached Lifeboat 7 and either gestured or asked for him to follow her. She provided this detail in an interview she gave a few days later in New York, although her insistence that her companion be allowed to accompany them into the boat was not, at this stage of the night, a controversial request.¹⁶ The famous rule of “women and children first” into the boats was inconsistently enforced on the Titanic, tightening or slackening depending on time and location. First Officer Murdoch, for instance, the senior officer on the starboard side, was far less stringent than his immediate inferior, Second Officer Charles Lightoller, placed in charge of the port-side boats and inclined to enforce “women and children first” to such an extent that in certain instances it almost became “women and children only,” with the exception of crew members ordered in to steer and row.

Murdoch in fact asked if anyone else wanted to board Lifeboat 7 before it was lowered with twenty-eight occupants despite having a capacity of sixty-five. He allowed Frederic Seward to climb in with Dorothy, Pauline, and Sloper. Also in the boat were a French aviator, Pierre Maréchal, and the Dutch car salesman traveling under the pseudonym of a German baron; the young Manhattan socialite Margaret Hays got in carrying her Pomeranian, Bébé, and Dickinson Bishop, a businessman from Michigan, was permitted to accompany his pregnant wife. According to Sloper a similar offer was made to J. J. Astor, who had been standing immediately behind the Gibson party “with Mrs. Astor, and he suddenly drew back and pulled his wife with him. Someone spoke to him, but I did not overhear what was said. At any rate they did not follow us into the boat. When twenty-nine people [sic], including three of the crew, were in the boat, and as nobody else seemed ready to follow, the officer on the deck gave word to ‘lower away.’… As we left the deck somebody had thrown in a number of steamer rugs which were wrapped around the women.”¹⁷ Dorothy had need of their warmth; after being slowly lowered down the side of the Titanic, during which Sloper “expected one end of the boat would drop faster than the other and that we should be thrown out in the sea,” Lifeboat 7 settled gently into the Atlantic, still “as smooth as a mill pond.” William Sloper “was glad to take up an oar and help row,” while Dorothy screamed as she felt freezing water slosh around her ankles.¹⁸ To prevent rainwater gathering during the voyage and rotting the wood, a drainage hole was left unplugged at the bottom of the lifeboats. Unfortunately, in this case it had accidentally remained unplugged as number 7 was filled and lowered. Her passengers and crew handed over what articles they could to help stop the leak, including Dorothy, who gamely tore off her own stockings. When he saw that she was shivering, Sloper offered Dorothy his coat and she kissed him on the cheek as she accepted it.¹⁹

On deck, Andrews and Ismay had arrived to help with the loading of the second craft, Lifeboat 5. Both men were torn between their desire to get as many passengers into the boats as possible and their fear of inspiring a panic. The profound trust in the Titanic’s safety which both of them, particularly Andrews, had encouraged over the past five days had been transformed into a liability. Some passengers and crew were joking that they would need their tickets to reboard and “you’ll be back in the morning for breakfast.”²⁰ What William Sloper had noticed in J. J. Astor as he stood behind the Gibsons and then backed away from the offer to join their lifeboat was anxiety about what the trauma of being put to sea in a rowing boat might do to his pregnant wife. He refused to board either Lifeboat 7 or 5 in the belief that “we are safer on board the ship than in that little boat.”²¹ He then retreated to the warmth of the adjacent first-class Gymnasium, where he entertained Madeleine by using his penknife to cut open a life jacket and show her the cork that gave them their buoyancy.²² Faith in the Titanic had mingled with a feeling of bonhomie engendered by the collective coziness offered in the Lounge to suffocate all sense of urgency. The Astors’ friend Margaret Brown later told the New York Times, “The whole thing was so formal that it was difficult for anyone to realize it was a tragedy. Men and women stood in little groups and talked. Some laughed as the boats went over the side. All the time the band was playing.… I can see the men up on deck tucking in the women and smiling. It was a strange night. It all seemed like a play, like a dream that was being executed for entertainment. It did not seem real. Men would say ‘After you’ as they made some woman comfortable and stepped back.”²³

Tommy Andrews offered his arm to the quasi-reformed anti-Semite Eleanor Cassebeer, steadying her when she caught her foot on one of the ropes now snaking across the starboard deck. To her suggestion that he accompany her in the boat, Andrews demurred, “No, women and children first,” a rule he chose to impose upon himself although the tennis star Karl Behr and the New York–based surgeon Dr. Henry Frauenthal were among the men allowed by the officers to cross.²⁴ Andrews was, at least at this stage, still masking his terror, an exercise in self-control at which Ismay with the finest intentions failed. The liner’s third officer, Herbert Pitman, had been ordered to help with the loading of the first three lifeboats and to command one after it had been lowered. As he admired the efficient operation of the Welin davits, which managed to swing the three empty boats over the side of the ship with minimum effort from the seamen, Pitman was surprised and irritated to be approached by Ismay, who told him he needed to fill the boats with as many women and children as quickly as possible. Chairman of the line notwithstanding, the at-sea chain of command clearly relegated Ismay to the role of a passenger, prompting Pitman to snap, “I await the commander’s orders.” Pitman claimed later that he had not recognized Ismay when he rebuked him, although this rings untrue in light of his brisk walk to the Bridge, where he informed Captain Smith of Ismay’s nervousness about getting the boats away, to which Smith replied, “Go ahead; carry on.”²⁵ Ismay also riled another of the officers stationed at the first three lifeboats, Harold Lowe, who, when he saw Ismay trying to encourage the sailors to lower quickly, screamed at him, “If you’ll get the hell out of the way, I’ll be able to do something! You want me to lower away quickly? You’ll have me drown the lot of them!”²⁶ Ismay, so eager to help that he had simply thrown trousers on over his pajamas and then rushed back on deck, beat a tactical retreat, perhaps appreciating that he was doing more harm than good. It was the sight of the pajama legs poking out from the trousers of the usually fastidious Ismay that gave Eleanor Cassebeer her first suspicion that this might not simply be a temporary maneuver to fulfill some pedantic British seafaring guide about proper procedure in the aftermath of collision with an iceberg.²⁷

I. The davits could have accommodated a second vertical row of lifeboats, which was added to the Olympic after the Titanic’s sinking. Prior to the disaster, it was felt too many lifeboats would clutter the Boat Deck.