The Night Lives On: The Untold Stories & Secrets Behind the Sinking of the Unsinkable Ship-Titanic

207 Pages·1998·1.39 MB·English

by  Walter J. Lord

The Night Lives On
Walter Lord
For
J. Frank Supplee IV
CONTENTS
I. Unsinkable Subject
II. What’s in a Name?
III. Legendary from the Start
IV. Had Ships Gotten Too Big for Captain Smith?
V. “Our Coterie”
VI. “Everything Was Against Us”
VII. The Gash
VIII. “I Was Very Soft the Day I Signed That”
IX. What Happened to the Goodwins?
X. Shots in the Dark
XI. The Sound of Music
XII. “She’s Gone”
XIII. “The Electric Spark”
XIV. “A Certain Amount of Slackness”
XV. Second-guessing
XVI. Why Was Craganour Disqualified?
XVII. Unlocking the Ocean’s Secret
Gleanings from the Testimony
Acknowledgments and Selected Sources
Index
CHAPTER I
Unsinkable Subject
JUST 20 MINUTES SHORT of midnight, April 14, 1912, the great new White Star
Liner Titanic, making her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, had a
rendezvous with ice in the calm, dark waters of the North Atlantic. She brushed
the berg so gently that many on board didn’t notice it, but so lethally that she
was instantly doomed.
By midnight Captain Edward J. Smith knew the worst, and ordered the
lifeboats filled and lowered. There were distressingly few of these, enough for
only a third of the ship’s company. The rule was, of course, “Women and
children first.” At 12:15 A.M. the Titanic sent her first distress call. At 12:45 she
began firing rockets, for there was a light on the horizon, tantalizingly near. The
light remained motionless.
On the Titanic, the ship’s bellboys—lads of 14 or 15—brought up loaves of
bread for the lifeboats, now dropping one after another into the sea. Far below,
the engineers kept the lights burning; topside, the band played cheerful music on
the Boat Deck. The ship was noticeably down at the bow.
At 1:10, as Boat 1 pulled away, the water lapped the portholes just under
the ship’s name. Thirty minutes later, as Collapsible C rowed off, the name had
vanished into the sea, and the forward well deck was awash. The lights still
burned, and the band still played.
By 2:05 the last boat had been launched, leaving 1,600 people stranded on
the sloping decks. Richard N. Williams II, a 19-year-old First Class passenger,
wandered into the main companionway on A Deck and idly watched the water
creeping up the grand staircase. On the paneled wall nearby hung a handsomely
framed chart, pins still in place, marking the Titanic’s daily progress across the
Atlantic. The lights still burned, now with a reddish glow. The band probably
played on, but no one is sure.
At 2:17 the Titanic slowly, almost majestically, stood on end. The lights
blinked once and went out forever. Then came a thundering roar, as everything
movable within the ship broke loose and plunged downward. The great hull
itself sagged as though finally defeated. At 2:20 she settled back slightly and
slipped beneath the sea. Over 1,500 people were lost in this, the greatest
maritime disaster in history.
Understandably, the sinking of the Titanic was a sensation at the time. The
morning after the rescue ship Carpathia reached New York with her pitiful load
of 705 survivors, The New York Times devoted its first 12 pages to the story. But
a single letter in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress gives a
more vivid picture of the universal shock and grief than any number of
newspaper pages. The letter is from a young naval officer, Alexander Macomb,
to his mother. It is dated April 16, 1912, and describes what happened as he
emerged from a pleasant evening at the theater….
The terrible news about the Titanic reached New York about 11
o’clock last night, and the scene on Broadway was awful. Crowds of people
were coming out of the theaters, cafes were going full tilt, when the
newsboys began to cry, “Extra! Extra! Titanic sunk with 1800 aboard!”
You can’t imagine the effect of those words on the crowd. Nobody could
realize what had happened, and when they did begin to understand, the
excitement was almost enough to cause a panic in the theaters. Women
began to faint and weep, and scores of people in evening clothes jumped
into cabs and taxis and rushed to the offices of the White Star Line, where
they remained all night waiting for news.
Understandable then, but there have been massive changes in the world
since 1912. We don’t even cross the ocean the same way now, and two great
wars have numbed us to casualty lists. Compared to the implications of a nuclear
confrontation, the figures of “souls lost” in a shipwreck—any shipwreck—seem
almost quaint. Given the world today, one might suppose that people would no
longer be gripped by the Titanic. Not so. She has never been more with us than
now.
The discovery of her hulk in September 1985 created a wave of excitement
that seemed in sharp contrast to the silent gray ghost resting so peacefully on the
ocean floor. My own connection with the Titanic is peripheral at best—and with
the expedition that found her, it is nil—yet no less than 32 requests for
interviews poured in from radio, television, and the press over the next ten days.
There seems no limit to the public’s fascination. In America every survivor
now rates an obituary in The New York Times. Typical was the case of 90-year-
old Ethel Beane, who died in Rochester, New York, in 1983. She had lived a
blameless but utterly uneventful life. She hadn’t even told her Titanic
experiences for 71 years. But she was nevertheless newsworthy—simply by
being a survivor.
No story is too farfetched, as long as it bears the magic label “Titanic.” In
London The Times recently reported that a Los Angeles businessman planned to
build three replicas of the Titanic for $1.5 billion. Each would accommodate 600
passengers at $1,000 a day. Preposterous? Nevertheless, The Times featured the
story on the front page. The editor knew that the Titanic is always news.
Over the years the ship has become an enduring favorite on stage and
screen. She has been the locale for five major motion pictures and played an
important part in many others. In 1976 she was the subject of an opera jointly
produced by the Berlin Opera and the UCLA Fine Arts Productions. In 1983 she
was “raised” from the Thames in an extravaganza at the London International
Festival of Theatre.
Meanwhile on television she played a crucial role in Upstairs, Downstairs,
the memorable series about the Bellamy family. Going down with the ship,
“Lady Marjorie Bellamy” joined “Edward” and “Edith” of Noel Coward’s
Cavalcade as probably the most famous of all the fictional victims of the
disaster.
Gradually the Titanic has ceased to be merely a shipwreck; she has become
a symbol. In Hitler’s Germany, Joseph Goebbels used her to portray English
decadence and cowardice. In postwar Germany, the message was different, but
the Titanic was still a symbol. This time the producers were drawing a parallel
between the disaster and the decision to deploy Pershing missiles on German
soil. Both were seen as examples of technology out of control. A single
miscalculation—a momentary lapse in judgment—could bring appalling
destruction.
Not surprisingly, the Titanic has also become a great favorite with political
cartoonists. She is completely nonpartisan: since 1976 she has been used to
depict the troubles of Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. In British cartoons
both the ship and the iceberg have represented Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher. The lost liner, poised for her final plunge, even graced the cover of
Punch in April 1975 as “England’s Glory.”
This continuing fascination has seen a boom in the price of Titanic
memorabilia. Contemporary books and pamphlets costing less than a dollar in
the 1950’s now routinely go for $45-$50. Recently a 1912 printed list of the
Titanic’s passengers—with handwritten notations on where they lived and what
happened to them—was sold at auction for $5,000, although no one seemed to
know who drew up the list or why.
With the supply of original items running low, a lively industry has sprung
up turning out new artifacts. Novelty stores do a brisk business selling “Titanic”
belt buckles, key chains, and T-shirts. A prominent New York charity has been
using replicas of the ship’s stationery as a direct-mail eye-catcher. There are
even “Titanic” bumper stickers, put out by the Titanic Historical Society, which
does a far greater service by reprinting rare publications that are of immense
value to the serious student.
What is the hold of this long-lost liner? Why are people still so fascinated
by her? First of all, the Titanic must surely be the greatest news story of modern
times: the biggest ship in the world, proclaimed unsinkable, hits an iceberg on
her maiden voyage and goes down, taking with her many of the best-known
celebrities of the day.
Add to that glamour all those “if only’s”—if only she had paid more
attention to the warnings she received…if only the last warning had even
reached the bridge…if only the wireless operator hadn’t cut off one final attempt
to reach her…if only she had sighted the ice a few seconds sooner, or a few
seconds later…if only there had been enough lifeboats…if only the watertight
bulkheads had gone one deck higher…if only that ship on the horizon had
come…if only, if only.
The story has something for everyone. For nautical enthusiasts, it is the
ultimate shipwreck. For moralists, there are all those sermons on overconfidence
and self-sacrifice. For mystics, the omens are irresistible, from Morgan
Robertson’s prophetic novel Futility of 1898 to presidential aide Archie Butt’s
strangely foreboding letter assuring his sister-in-law, “If the old ship goes down,
you’ll find my affairs in shipshape condition.”
The Titanic is also a trivia lover’s dream. What was the name of John Jacob
Astor’s dog? (Kitty) Who led the band? (Wallace Hartley) Which smokestack
was the dummy? (The fourth)
Above all, the Titanic entrances the social historian. She is such an
exquisite microcosm of the Edwardian world, illuminating so perfectly the class
distinctions that prevailed at the time. These distinctions remained sacred even
as the ship was going down. One prominent passenger later complained that
more First Class men might have been saved, if only steerage passengers hadn’t
taken up so much room in what he called “the First Class boats.” It never
occurred to him that the lifeboats, wherever located, might have been for
everyone.
There were all too few boats anyhow, leading to a clash between two basic
Edwardian rules of conduct. Should normal Class Precedence prevail, or the rule