There is sorrow on the sea…
Jeremiah 49:23
ALTHOUGH CAPTAIN SMITH HAD ORDERED them to row in the direction of the Californian, Lifeboat 8 had long since given up trying to row to that “awful light that never got nearer.”1 The cargo ship, her name as yet unknown to them, was too far from them, and Lady Rothes wanted to go back to retrieve some of the survivors screaming nearby. She appreciated that “the cold of the water was so awful that very few could bear it alive for more than a few minutes,” but her suggestion that they row back to help was supported only by Thomas Jones, the sailor in charge of the boat, Gladys Cherry, and an American lady whose name she did not quite catch.2 According to Gladys, they were the only four who “wanted to go back and get more people into our boat, but the other women and the two stewards would have killed us rather than go back.” Eventually, the majority had its way, to the visible distress of the commanding sailor, who made a point of telling them, “Ladies, if any of us are saved, remember I wanted to go back. I would rather drown with them than leave them.”3 When they reached New York, he was so pained by guilt at the memory of the way “the fearful screams and shrieks” had dwindled into a thunderously loud silence that he wrote to Noëlle and Gladys asking them to provide written testimony that he had wanted to do the decent thing by rowing back, which they did. Gladys tried to comfort Jones by pointing out, “If you remember, there was only an American lady, my cousin, self, and you who wanted to return. I could not hear the discussion very clearly, as I was at the tiller, but everyone forward and the three men refused.… You did all you could, and being my own countryman I wanted to tell you this.”4 She understood his anguish, however, referring to their failure to answer the cries for help as “the dreadful regret I shall always have.”5
Those in the lifeboats felt more than craven self-preservation. The “heartrending, never-to-be-forgotten sounds” which “seemed to go through you like a knife” inspired fear, futility, and remorse.6 For some, including those in Lifeboat 10, which had been launched with John Thayer’s help, the screams were quite literally unbearable; they tried to sing, “saying it would help us keep our bearings, but we all knew it was only a kindly ruse to try and drown out that awful moaning cry, and we were unable to utter a sound. God grant that I never hear such a sound again. No words, just an awful despairing moan, and all of them seemed to moan in the same key, regardless of what their voices may have been.”7 A “thin light-gray smoky vapour” briefly marked the spot where the Titanic had vanished; it reminded one passenger of the river Charon. After a minute or so, it faded away.8 Survival time in water of twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit is, at the very most, thirty minutes, with consciousness lost at around fifteen and most deaths following within the next five. Initial symptoms from being submerged into such waters include panic, shock, and confusion, such as the kind mentioned by Jack Thayer when he resurfaced after his leap. In those with preexisting heart conditions, like Ida Straus, it can cause instantaneous cardiac arrest. Breath is commonly driven from the body by shock at contact with water so cold, forcing an involuntary breath to be taken which can significantly increase the chances of drowning. For those who survive this, disorientation is the immediate sequel, typically lasting for about thirty seconds, and roughly correlating with Jack Thayer’s stupefied amazement when he failed to swim away from the hull. His limbs had begun to numb to the point of uselessness when he reached the collapsible, which is why he required the help of the stoker to pull him up. For those caught in the sea for longer, severe pain would have clouded rational thought before hypothermia set in as the prelude to unconsciousness and then death.9 By about 2:30, the site had fallen quiet. “Afterwards,” Dorothy Gibson remembered, “for the next two hours, the passengers in our boat just sat in the darkness and tried to keep warm. No one said a word. There was nothing to say and nothing we could do.”10 Gladys Cherry wrote to her mother of how it had become “the stillest night possible, not a ripple on the water and the stars wonderful; that icy air and the stars I never want to see or feel again.”11
During the hours that fell between the Titanic’s sinking and their rescue, some of her survivors faced character tests that they failed to pass. The Countess of Rothes was not one of them. While one of her lifeboat’s occupants, Mrs. Ella White, deployed both frequency and volume to express her conviction that it was poor form for the sailors to smoke at such a distressing time, Lady Rothes turned to Able Seaman Jones and asked if there was anything she could do to help “as I know a little about small Boats from a small racing yacht [Lord] Rothes had in Devonshire.”12 Almost exactly the same age as Lady Rothes, Jones came from a family of Welsh fishermen and miners. He had been put in charge of the boat by Captain Smith, but he warmed to the Countess in his own gruff way. Seaman Jones and his colleagues in Lifeboat 8 later nicknamed Noëlle “the plucky little Countess.” He entrusted her with the tiller, since “she had a lot to say, so I put her in charge of steering the boat.”13
Of the five hours that followed, during which “one began to feel rather hopeless,” the Countess’s lifeboat fell almost as silent as Dorothy’s, full of what the Countess called “the ghostliness of our feelings.”14 Here too, “no one talked much,” except sailors who occasionally shouted to lifeboats nearby in futile pursuit of more information about any possible rescue.15 The motto of the Rothes earldom has been, since the thirteenth century, “Grip Fast,” inspired by the legend of an ancestor escorting Margaret of Wessex (later St. Margaret, Queen of Scots) on horseback through a storm, urging her to ride pillion and hold on to his belt. The Countess displayed a comparable sense of tenacity in that, having no idea if they were going to be rescued, she nonetheless strove to hide the fact that she was now “really frightened. The fearful cold made it all much worse, tho’ after a few hours one felt very sleepy. The water was so black & very calm.”16 No one else in Lifeboat 8 noticed that Lady Rothes was feeling haunted and exhausted; instead they remembered how she had steered and then volunteered to row, which she did for five hours. She and Gladys took turns steering and comforting the often sobbing María-Josefa de Peñasco, and Noëlle helped calm things down when Mrs. White again complained about people smoking, at which point one of the sailors had snapped, “If you don’t stop talking through that hole in your face, there will be one less in the boat.”17 For the rest of her life when asked about the sinking of the Titanic, Noëlle made a point of complimenting the “magnificent” crew, and she never mentioned their contretemps with Mrs. White, who was also keen to point out that the ankle she had sprained when boarding at Cherbourg was still a source of pain.18
Dawn cast light on the grotesque beauty of the ice field the Titanic had been steaming into. Lifeboats rowed past cathedrals of ice, the sight of which broke the spirits of many survivors, as did the wind that began to lacerate the lifeboats. Lady Rothes told a historian years later how “at dawn the weather turned… [and] one felt an awful loneliness & exhaustion.” Her maid Cissy, having behaved “wonderfully” all evening, was also trying to hide signs of distress—in her case, severe seasickness noticed only by Gladys.19 The Countess was still rowing at about 7:30 when the sailor next to her whispered, “Can you see any light? Look on the next wave we top, but don’t say anything in case I am wrong.”20 She tried to look surreptitiously at the horizon, where, eventually, she saw a plume rising from a single smokestack with the red-and-black livery of the Cunard Line. The 13,500-ton Carpathia had been crossing from New York to Fiume, via Gibraltar, when she received the Titanic’s distress call. Noëlle confirmed that she could see a ship ahead, which reassured the sailor that he could safely announce the news to the rest of their boat.21 Helping to row towards safety, the Countess suggested they pray and sing hymns until they reached the Carpathia. Lifeboat 8 began renditions of “Pull for the Shore” and “Lead, Kindly Light”:
Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom
Lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I’m far from home
Lead thou me on!
Similar reactions to the appearance of the Carpathia were expressed in the other boats. In Colonel Gracie’s, a crew member asked, “Don’t you think we ought to pray?” A quick survey established that the boat carried Catholics, Methodists, and Presbyterians, making the Lord’s Prayer the most obvious choice for ad hoc ecumenicalism.22 Later, some of the Catholics on the lifeboat joined in their own quiet offering of the Hail Mary to supplement the Lord’s Prayer, as it does in the recitation of the Rosary.23
In number 8, there was a final drama when they crested a wave that nearly dashed them against the Carpathia’s side, but Seaman Jones managed to get the lifeboat under control as a Cunard sailor jumped down to help those who, like Noëlle, struggled to grip onto the rope ladder leading up to the Carpathia.24 She let go of her oar and found her hands were too stiff to bend, which meant that she was one of those who was put into a kind of swing made from wood and canvas bags that was then winched up the black-painted hull of the ship. Earlier they had been used only for babies in the lifeboats, but more were cobbled together as it became clear that there were dozens of adults so damaged by exposure they would be unable to climb.25 Gladys wrote to her mother that Lady Rothes had fainted the moment her feet touched the Carpathia’s deck.26