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Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters

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Title: Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters

Editor: Logan Marshall


        
Release date: January 1, 1997 [eBook #781]
                Most recently updated: November 5, 2009

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Charles Keller, Mike Lough, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SINKING OF THE TITANIC AND GREAT SEA DISASTERS ***




Produced by Charles Keller and Mike Lough





SINKING OF THE TITANIC

AND GREAT SEA DISASTERS

By Various

Edited by Logan Marshall



Pre-Frontispiece Caption: THE TITANIC

The largest and finest steamship in the world; on her maiden voyage,
loaded with a human freight of over 2,300 souls, she collided with a
huge iceberg 600 miles southeast of Halifax, at 11.40 P.M. Sunday April
14, 1912, and sank two and a half hours later, carrying over 1,600 of
her passengers and crew with her.



Frontispiece Caption: CAPTAIN E. J. SMITH

Of the ill-fated giant of the sea; a brave and seasoned commander who
was carried to his death with his last and greatest ship.



Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters

A Detailed and Accurate Account of the Most Awful Marine Disaster in
History, Constructed from the Real Facts as Obtained from Those on Board
Who Survived..........

ONLY AUTHORITATIVE BOOK

INCLUDING Records of Previous Great Disasters of the Sea, Descriptions
of the Developments of Safety and Life-saving Appliances, a Plain
Statement of the Causes of Such Catastrophes and How to Avoid Them, the
Marvelous Development of Shipbuilding, etc.

With a Message of Spiritual Consolation by REV. HENRY VAN DYKE, D.D.

EDITED BY LOGAN MARSHALL

Author of "Life of Theodore Roosevelt," etc.

ILLUSTRATED With Numerous Authentic Photographs and Drawings



Dedication

To the 1635 souls who were lost with the ill-fated Titanic, and
especially to those heroic men, who, instead of trying to save
themselves, stood aside that women and children might have their chance;
of each of them let it be written, as it was written of a Greater
One--"He Died that Others might Live"


"I stood in unimaginable trance And agony that cannot be
remembered."--COLERIDGE


Dr. Van Dyke's Spiritual Consolation to the Survivors of the Titanic


The Titanic, greatest of ships, has gone to her ocean grave. What has
she left behind her? Think clearly.

She has left debts. Vast sums of money have been lost. Some of them are
covered by insurance which will be paid. The rest is gone. All wealth is
insecure.

She has left lessons. The risk of running the northern course when it
is menaced by icebergs is revealed. The cruelty of sending a ship to
sea without enough life-boats and life-rafts to hold her company is
exhibited and underlined in black.

She has left sorrows. Hundreds of human hearts and homes are in mourning
for the loss of dear companions and friends. The universal sympathy
which is written in every face and heard in every voice proves that man
is more than the beasts that perish. It is an evidence of the divine in
humanity. Why should we care? There is no reason in the world, unless
there is something in us that is different from lime and carbon and
phosphorus, something that makes us mortals able to suffer together--

          "For we have all of us an human heart."

But there is more than this harvest of debts, and lessons, and sorrows,
in the tragedy of the sinking of the Titanic. There is a great ideal.
It is clearly outlined and set before the mind and heart of the modern
world, to approve and follow, or to despise and reject.

It is, "Women and children first!"

Whatever happened on that dreadful April night among the arctic ice,
certainly that was the order given by the brave and steadfast captain;
certainly that was the law obeyed by the men on the doomed ship. But
why? There is no statute or enactment of any nation to enforce such an
order. There is no trace of such a rule to be found in the history of
ancient civilizations. There is no authority for it among the heathen
races to-day. On a Chinese ship, if we may believe the report of an
official representative, the rule would have been "Men First, children
next, and women last."

There is certainly no argument against this barbaric rule on physical or
material grounds. On the average, a man is stronger than a woman, he is
worth more than a woman, he has a longer prospect of life than a woman.
There is no reason in all the range of physical and economic science,
no reason in all the philosophy of the Superman, why he should give his
place in the life-boat to a woman.

Where, then, does this rule which prevailed in the sinking Titanic come
from? It comes from God, through the faith of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is the ideal of self-sacrifice. It is the rule that "the strong
ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak." It is the divine
revelation which is summed up in the words: "Greater love hath no man
than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

It needs a tragic catastrophe like the wreck of the Titanic to bring out
the absolute contradiction between this ideal and all the counsels of
materialism and selfish expediency.

I do not say that the germ of this ideal may not be found in other
religions. I do not say that they are against it. I do not ask any man
to accept my theology (which grows shorter and simpler as I grow older),
unless his heart leads him to it. But this I say: The ideal that the
strength of the strong is given them to protect and save the weak,
the ideal which animates the rule of "Women and children first," is in
essential harmony with the spirit of Christ.

If what He said about our Father in Heaven is true, this ideal is
supremely reasonable. Otherwise it is hard to find arguments for it. The
tragedy of facts sets the question clearly before us. Think about it. Is
this ideal to survive and prevail in our civilization or not?

Without it, no doubt, we may have riches and power and dominion. But
what a world to live in!

Only through the belief that the strong are bound to protect and save
the weak because God wills it so, can we hope to keep self-sacrifice,
and love, and heroism, and all the things that make us glad to live and
not afraid to die.

HENRY VAN DYKE.

PRINCETON, N. J., April 18, 1912.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER I FIRST NEWS OF THE GREATEST MARINE DISASTER IN HISTORY

"The Titanic in collision, but everybody safe"--Another triumph set
down to wireless telegraphy--The world goes to sleep peacefully--The sad
awakening

CHAPTER II THE MOST SUMPTUOUS PALACE AFLOAT

Dimensions of the Titanic--Capacity--Provisions for the comfort
and entertainment of passengers--Mechanical equipment--The army of
attendants required

CHAPTER III THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC

Preparations for the voyage--Scenes of gayety--The boat sails--Incidents
of the voyage--A collision narrowly averted--The boat on fire--Warned of
icebergs

CHAPTER IV SOME OF THE NOTABLE PASSENGERS

Sketches of prominent men and women on board, including Major Archibald
Butt, John Jacob Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Straus, J. Bruce
Ismay, Geo. D. Widener, Colonel Washington Roebling, 2d, Charles M.
Hays, W. T. Stead and others

CHAPTER V THE TITANIC STRIKES AN ICEBERG!

Tardy attention to warning responsible for accident--The danger not
realized at first--An interrupted card game--Passengers joke among
themselves--The real truth dawns--Panic on board--Wireless calls for
help.

CHAPTER VI "WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST"

Cool-headed officers and crew bring order out of chaos--Filling the
life-boats--Heartrending scenes as families are parted--Four life-boats
lost--Incidents of bravery--"The boats are all filled!"

CHAPTER VII LEFT TO THEIR FATE

Coolness and heroism of those left to perish--Suicide of
Murdock--Captain Smith's end--The ship's band plays a noble hymn as the
vessel goes down.

CHAPTER VIII THE CALL FOR HELP HEARD

The value of the wireless--Other ships alter their course--Rescuers on
the way.

CHAPTER IX IN THE DRIFTING LIFE-BOATS

Sorrow and suffering--The survivors see the Titanic go down with their
loved ones on board--A night of agonizing suspense--Women help to
row--Help arrives--Picking up the life-boats.

CHAPTER X ON BOARD THE CARPATHIA

Aid for the suffering and hysterical--Burying the dead--Vote of
thanks to Captain Rostron of the Carpathia--Identifying those
saved--Communicating with land--The passage to New York.

CHAPTER XI PREPARATIONS ON LAND TO RECEIVE THE SUFFERERS

Police arrangements--Donations of money and supplies--Hospital and
ambulances made ready--Private houses thrown open--Waiting for the
Carpathia to arrive--The ship sighted!

CHAPTER XII THE TRAGIC HOME-COMING

The Carpathia reaches New York--An intense and dramatic
moment--Hysterical reunions and crushing disappointments at the
dock--Caring for the sufferers--Final realization that all hope for
others is futile--List of survivors--Roll of the dead.

CHAPTER XIII THE STORY OF CHARLES F. HURD

How the Titanic sank--Water strewn with dead bodies--Victims met death
with hymn on their lips.

CHAPTER XIV THRILLING ACCOUNT BY L. BEASLEY

Collision only a slight jar--Passengers could not believe the vessel
doomed--Narrow escape of life-boats--Picked up by the Carpathia.

CHAPTER XV JACK THAYER'S OWN STORY OF THE WRECK

Seventeen-year-old son of Pennsylvania Railroad official tells
moving story of his rescue--Told mother to be brave--Separated from
parents--Jumped when vessel sank--Drifted on overturned boat--Picked up
by Carpathia.

CHAPTER XVI INCIDENTS RELATED BY JAMES McGOUGH

Women forced into the life-boats--Why some men were saved before
women--Asked to man life-boats.

CHAPTER XVII WIRELESS OPERATOR PRAISES HEROIC WORK

Story of Harold Bride, the surviving wireless operator of the Titanic,
who was washed overboard and rescued by life-boat--Band played ragtime
and "Autumn".

CHAPTER XVIII STORY OF THE STEWARD

Passengers and crew dying when taken aboard Carpathia--One woman saved
a dog--English colonel swam for hours when boat with mother aboard
capsized.

CHAPTER XIX HOW THE WORLD RECEIVED THE NEWS

Nations prostrate with grief--Messages from kings and
cardinals--Disaster stirs world to necessity of stricter regulations.

CHAPTER XX BRAVERY OF THE OFFICERS AND CREW

Illustrious career of Captain E. J. Smith--Brave to the
last--Maintenance of order and discipline--Acts of heroism--Engineers
died at posts--Noble-hearted band.

CHAPTER XXI SEARCHING FOR THE DEAD

Sending out the Mackay-Bennett and Minia--Bremen passengers see
bodies--Identifying bodies--Confusion in names--Recoveries.

CHAPTER XXII CRITICISM OF ISMAY

Criminal and cowardly conduct charged--Proper caution not exercised when
presence of icebergs was known--Should have stayed on board to help
in work of rescue--Selfish and unsympathetic actions on board the
Carpathia--Ismay's defense--William E. Carter's statement.

CHAPTER XXIII THE FINANCIAL LOSS

Titanic not fully insured--Valuable cargo and mail--No chance for
salvage--Life insurance loss--Loss to the Carpathia.

CHAPTER XXIV OPINIONS OF EXPERTS

Captain E. K. Roden, Lewis Nixon, General Greely and Robert H. Kirk
point out lessons taught by Titanic disaster and needed changes in
construction.

CHAPTER XXV OTHER GREAT MARINE DISASTERS.

Deadly danger of icebergs--Dozens of ships perish in collision--Other
disasters.

CHAPTER XXVI DEVELOPMENT OF SHIPBUILDING

Evolution of water travel--Increases in size of vessels--Is there any
limit?--Achievements in speed--Titanic not the last word.

CHAPTER XXVII SAFETY AND LIFE-SAVING DEVICES

Wireless telegraphy--Water-tight bulkheads--Submarine
signals--Life-boats and rafts--Nixon's pontoon--Life-preservers and
buoys--Rockets.

CHAPTER XXVIII TIME FOR REFLECTION AND REFORM

Speed and luxury overemphasized--Space needed for life-boats devoted to
swimming pools and squash-courts--Mania for speed records compels use of
dangerous routes and prevents proper caution in foggy weather--Life
more valuable than luxury--Safety more important than speed--An aroused
public opinion necessary--International conference recommended--Adequate
life-saving equipment should be compulsory--Speed regulations in bad
weather--Co-operation in arranging schedules to keep vessels within
reach of each other--Legal regulations.

CHAPTER XXIX THE SENATORIAL INVESTIGATION

Prompt action of the Government--Senate committee probes disaster and
brings out details--Testimony of Ismay, officers, crew passengers and
other witnesses.




FACTS ABOUT THE WRECK OF THE TITANIC

NUMBER of persons aboard, 2340. Number of life-boats and rafts, 20.
Capacity of each life-boat, 50 passengers and crew of 8. Utmost capacity
of life-boats and rafts, about 1100. Number of life-boats wrecked in
launching, 4. Capacity of life-boats safely launched, 928. Total number
of persons taken in life-boats, 711. Number who died in life-boats, 6.
Total number saved, 705. Total number of Titanic's company lost, 1635.

The cause of the disaster was a collision with an iceberg in latitude
41.46 north, longitude 50.14 west. The Titanic had had repeated warnings
of the presence of ice in that part of the course. Two official warnings
had been received defining the position of the ice fields. It had been
calculated on the Titanic that she would reach the ice fields about 11
o'clock Sunday night. The collision occurred at 11.40. At that time the
ship was driving at a speed of 21 to 23 knots, or about 26 miles, an
hour.

There had been no details of seamen assigned to each boat.

Some of the boats left the ship without seamen enough to man the oars.

Some of the boats were not more than half full of passengers.

The boats had no provisions, some of them had no water stored, some were
without sail equipment or compasses.

In some boats, which carried sails wrapped and bound, there was not a
person with a knife to cut the ropes. In some boats the plugs in the
bottom had been pulled out and the women passengers were compelled to
thrust their hands into the holes to keep the boats from filling and
sinking.

The captain, E. J. Smith, admiral of the White Star fleet, went down
with his ship.



CHAPTER I. FIRST NEWS OF THE GREATEST MARINE DISASTER IN HISTORY

"THE TITANIC IN COLLISION, BUT EVERYBODY SAFE"--ANOTHER TRIUMPH SET
DOWN TO WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY--THE WORLD GOES TO SLEEP PEACEFULLY--THE SAD
AWAKENING.

LIKE a bolt out of a clear sky came the wireless message on Monday,
April 15, 1912, that on Sunday night the great Titanic, on her maiden
voyage across the Atlantic, had struck a gigantic iceberg, but that
all the passengers were saved. The ship had signaled her distress and
another victory was set down to wireless. Twenty-one hundred lives
saved!

Additional news was soon received that the ship had collided with a
mountain of ice in the North Atlantic, off Cape Race, Newfoundland, at
10.25 Sunday evening, April 14th. At 4.15 Monday morning the Canadian
Government Marine Agency received a wireless message that the Titanic
was sinking and that the steamers towing her were trying to get her into
shoal water near Cape Race, for the purpose of beaching her.

Wireless despatches up to noon Monday showed that the passengers of the
Titanic were being transferred aboard the steamer Carpathia, a Cunarder,
which left New York, April 13th, for Naples. Twenty boat-loads of the
Titanic's passengers were said to have been transferred to the Carpathia
then, and allowing forty to sixty persons as the capacity of each
life-boat, some 800 or 1200 persons had already been transferred from
the damaged liner to the Carpathia. They were reported as being taken to
Halifax, whence they would be sent by train to New York.

Another liner, the Parisian, of the Allan Company, which sailed from
Glasgow for Halifax on April 6th, was said to be close at hand and
assisting in the work of rescue. The Baltic, Virginian and Olympic were
also near the scene, according to the information received by wireless.

While badly damaged, the giant vessel was reported as still afloat, but
whether she could reach port or shoal water was uncertain. The White
Star officials declared that the Titanic was in no immediate danger of
sinking, because of her numerous water-tight compartments.

"While we are still lacking definite information," Mr. Franklin,
vice-president of the White Star Line, said later in the afternoon, "we
believe the Titanic's passengers will reach Halifax, Wednesday evening.
We have received no further word from Captain Haddock, of the Olympic,
or from any of the ships in the vicinity, but are confident that there
will be no loss of life."

With the understanding that the survivors would be taken to Halifax the
line arranged to have thirty Pullman cars, two diners and many passenger
coaches leave Boston Monday night for Halifax to get the passengers
after they were landed. Mr. Franklin made a guess that the Titanic's
passengers would get into Halifax on Wednesday. The Department of
Commerce and Labor notified the White Star Line that customs and
immigration inspectors would be sent from Montreal to Halifax in
order that there would be as little delay as possible in getting the
passengers on trains.

Monday night the world slept in peace and assurance. A wireless message
had finally been received, reading:

"All Titanic's passengers safe."

It was not until nearly a week later that the fact was discovered that
this message had been wrongly received in the confusion of messages
flashing through the air, and that in reality the message should have
read:

"Are all Titanic's passengers safe?"

With the dawning of Tuesday morning came the awful news of the true fate
of the Titanic.



CHAPTER II. THE MOST SUMPTUOUS PALACE AFLOAT

DIMENSIONS OF THE TITANIC--CAPACITY--PROVISIONS FOR THE COMFORT AND
ENTERTAINMENT OF PASSENGERS--MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT THE ARMY OF ATTENDANTS
REQUIRED.

THE statistical record of the great ship has news value at this time.

Early in 1908 officials of the White Star Company announced that they
would eclipse all previous records in shipbuilding with a vessel of
staggering dimensions. The Titanic resulted.

The keel of the ill-fated ship was laid in the summer of 1909 at the
Harland & Wolff yards, Belfast. Lord Pirrie, considered one of the
best authorities on shipbuilding in the world, was the designer. The
leviathan was launched on May 31, 1911, and was completed in February,
1912, at a cost of $10,000,000.


SISTER SHIP OF OLYMPIC

The Titanic, largest liner in commission, was a sister ship of the
Olympic. The registered tonnage of each vessel is estimated as 45,000,
but officers of the White Star Line say that the Titanic measured 45,328
tons. The Titanic was commanded by Captain E. J. Smith, the White Star
admiral, who had previously been on the Olympic.

She was 882 1/2 long, or about four city blocks, and was 5000 tons
bigger than a battleship twice as large as the dreadnought Delaware.

Like her sister ship, the Olympic, the Titanic was a four-funneled
vessel, and had eleven decks. The distance from the keel to the top of
the funnels was 175 feet. She had an average speed of twenty-one knots.

The Titanic could accommodate 2500 passengers. The steamship was divided
into numerous compartments, separated by fifteen bulkheads. She was
equipped with a gymnasium, swimming pool, hospital with operating room,
and a grill and palm garden.


CARRIED CREW OF 860

The registered tonnage was 45,000, and the displacement tonnage 66,000.
She was capable of carrying 2500 passengers and the crew numbered 860.

The largest plates employed in the hull were 36 feet long, weighing 43
1/2 tons each, and the largest steel beam used was 92 feet long, the
weight of this double beam being 4 tons. The rudder, which was operated
electrically, weighed 100 tons, the anchors 15 1/2 tons each, the center
(turbine) propeller 22 tons, and each of the two "wing" propellers 38
tons each. The after "boss-arms," from which were sus-pended the three
propeller shafts, tipped the scales at 73 1/2 tons, and the forward
"boss-arms" at 45 tons. Each link in the anchor-chains weighed 175
pounds. There were more than 2000 side-lights and windows to light the
public rooms and passenger cabins.

Nothing was left to chance in the construction of the Titanic. Three
million rivets (weighing 1200 tons) held the solid plates of steel
together. To insure stability in binding the heavy plates in the double
bottom, half a million rivets, weighing about 270 tons, were used.

All the plating of the hulls was riveted by hydraulic power, driving
seven-ton riveting machines, suspended from traveling cranes. The double
bottom extended the full length of the vessel, varying from 5 feet 3
inches to 6 feet 3 inches in depth, and lent added strength to the hull.


MOST LUXURIOUS STEAMSHIP

Not only was the Titanic the largest steamship afloat but it was the
most luxurious. Elaborately furnished cabins opened onto her eleven
decks, and some of these decks were reserved as private promenades that
were engaged with the best suites. One of these suites was sold for
$4350 for the boat's maiden and only voyage. Suites similar, but which
were without the private promenade decks, sold for $2300.

The Titanic differed in some respects from her sister ship. The Olympic
has a lower promenade deck, but in the Titanic's case the staterooms
were brought out flush with the outside of the superstructure, and the
rooms themselves made much larger. The sitting rooms of some of the
suites on this deck were 15 x 15 feet.

The restaurant was much larger than that of the Olympic and it had a
novelty in the shape of a private promenade deck on the starboard side,
to be used exclusively by its patrons. Adjoining it was a reception
room, where hosts and hostesses could meet their guests.

Two private promenades were connected with the two most luxurious suites
on the ship. The suites were situated about amidships, one on either
side of the vessel, and each was about fifty feet long. One of the
suites comprised a sitting room, two bedrooms and a bath.

These private promenades were expensive luxuries. The cost figured out
something like forty dollars a front foot for a six days' voyage. They,
with the suites to which they are attached, were the most expensive
transatlantic accommodations yet offered.


THE ENGINE ROOM

The engine room was divided into two sections, one given to the
reciprocating engines and the other to the turbines. There were two
sets of the reciprocating kind, one working each of the wing propellers
through a four-cylinder triple expansion, direct acting inverted engine.
Each set could generate 15,000 indicated horse-power at seventy-five
revolutions a minute. The Parsons type turbine takes steam from the
reciprocating engines, and by developing a horse-power of 16,000 at 165
revolutions a minute works the third of the ship's propellers, the one
directly under the rudder. Of the four funnels of the vessel three
were connected with the engine room, and the fourth or after funnel for
ventilating the ship including the gallery.

Practically all of the space on the Titanic below the upper deck
was occupied by steam-generating plant, coal bunkers and propelling
machinery. Eight of the fifteen water-tight compartments contained the
mechanical part of the vessel. There were, for instance, twenty-four
double end and five single end boilers, each 16 feet 9 inches in
diameter, the larger 20 feet long and the smaller 11 feet 9 inches long.
The larger boilers had six fires under each of them and the smaller
three furnaces. Coal was stored in bunker space along the side of the
ship between the lower and middle decks, and was first shipped from
there into bunkers running all the way across the vessel in the lowest
part. From there the stokers handed it into the furnaces.

One of the most interesting features of the vessel was the refrigerating
plant, which comprised a huge ice-making and refrigerating machine and
a number of provision rooms on the after part of the lower and orlop
decks. There were separate cold rooms for beef, mutton, poultry, game,
fish, vegetables, fruit, butter, bacon, cheese, flowers, mineral water,
wine, spirits and champagne, all maintained at different temperatures
most suitable to each. Perishable freight had a compartment of its own,
also chilled by the plant.

COMFORT AND STABILITY

Two main ideas were carried out in the Titanic. One was comfort and the
other stability. The vessel was planned to be an ocean ferry. She was
to have only a speed of twenty-one knots, far below that of some other
modern vessels, but she was planned to make that speed, blow high or
blow low, so that if she left one side of the ocean at a given time she
could be relied on to reach the other side at almost a certain minute of
a certain hour.

One who has looked into modern methods for safeguarding

{illust. caption = LIFE-BOAT AND DAVITS ON THE TITANIC

This diagram shows very clearly the arrangement of the life-boats and
the manner in which they were launched.}


a vessel of the Titanic type can hardly imagine an accident that could
cause her to founder. No collision such as has been the fate of any ship
in recent years, it has been thought up to this time, could send her
down, nor could running against an iceberg do it unless such an accident
were coupled with the remotely possible blowing out of a boiler. She
would sink at once, probably, if she were to run over a submerged rock
or derelict in such manner that both her keel plates and her double
bottom were torn away for more than half her length; but such a
catastrophe was so remotely possible that it did not even enter the
field of conjecture.

The reason for all this is found in the modern arrangement of
water-tight steel compartments into which all ships now are divided
and of which the Titanic had fifteen so disposed that half of them,
including the largest, could be flooded without impairing the safety
of the vessel. Probably it was the working of these bulkheads and the
water-tight doors between them as they are supposed to work that saved
the Titanic from foundering when she struck the iceberg.

These bulkheads were of heavy sheet steel and started at the very bottom
of the ship and extended right up to the top side. The openings in the
bulkheads were just about the size of the ordinary doorway, but the
doors did not swing as in a house, but fitted into water-tight grooves
above the opening. They could be released instantly in several ways,
and once closed formed a barrier to the water as solid as the bulkhead
itself.

In the Titanic, as in other great modern ships, these doors were held
in place above the openings by friction clutches. On the bridge was
a switch which connected with an electric magnet at the side of the
bulkhead opening. The turning of this switch caused the magnet to draw
down a heavy weight, which instantly released the friction clutch, and
allowed the door to fall or slide down over the opening in a second.
If, however, through accident the bridge switch was rendered useless the
doors would close automatically in a few seconds. This was arranged by
means of large metal floats at the side of the doorways, which rested
just above the level of the double bottom, and as the water entered
the compartments these floats would rise to it and directly release the
clutch holding the door open. These clutches could also be released by
hand.

It was said of the Titanic that liner compartments could be flooded
as far back or as far forward as the engine room and she would float,
though she might take on a heavy list, or settle considerably at one
end. To provide against just such an accident as she is said to have
encountered she had set back a good distance from the bows an extra
heavy cross partition known as the collision bulkhead, which would
prevent water getting in amidships, even though a good part of her bow
should be torn away. What a ship can stand and still float was shown a
few years ago when the Suevic of the White Star Line went on the rocks
on the British coast. The wreckers could not move the forward part of
her, so they separated her into two sections by the use of dynamite, and
after putting in a temporary bulkhead floated off the after half of
the ship, put it in dry dock and built a new forward part for her. More
recently the battleship Maine, or what was left of her, was floated out
to sea, and kept on top of the water by her water-tight compartments
only.



CHAPTER III. THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC

PREPARATIONS FOR THE VOYAGE--SCENES OF GAYETY--THE BOAT SAILS--INCIDENTS
OF THE VOYAGE---A COLLISION NARROWLY AVERTED--THE BOAT ON FIRE--WARNED
OF ICEBERGS.

EVER was ill-starred voyage more auspiciously begun than when the
Titanic, newly crowned empress of the seas, steamed majestically out of
the port of Southampton at noon on Wednesday, April 10th, bound for New
York.

Elaborate preparations had been made for the maiden voyage. Crowds
of eager watchers gathered to witness the departure, all the more
interested because of the notable people who were to travel aboard her.
Friends and relatives of many of the passengers were at the dock to bid
Godspeed to their departing loved ones. The passengers themselves were
unusually gay and happy.

Majestic and beautiful the ship rested on the water, marvel of
shipbuilding, worthy of any sea. As this new queen of the ocean moved
slowly from her dock, no one questioned her construction: she was fitted
with an elaborate system of


{illust. caption = STEAMER "TITANIC" COMPARED WITH THE LARGEST
STRUCTURES IN THE WORLD 1. Bunker Hill Monument. Boston, 221 feet high.
2. Public

{illust. caption = J. BRUCE ISMAY

Managing director of the International Mercantile Marine, and managing
director of the White....}

{illust. caption = CHARLES M. HAYS

President of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railways, numbered among the heroic
men....}


water-tight compartments, calculated to make her unsinkable; she had
been pronounced the safest as well as the most sumptuous Atlantic liner
afloat.

There was silence just before the boat pulled out--the silence that
usually precedes the leave-taking. The heavy whistles sounded and the
splendid Titanic, her flags flying and her band playing, churned the
water and plowed heavily away.

Then the Titanic, with the people on board waving handkerchiefs and
shouting good-byes that could be heard only as a buzzing murmur on
shore, rode away on the ocean, proudly, majestically, her head up and,
so it seemed, her shoulders thrown back. If ever a vessel seemed to
throb with proud life, if ever a monster of the sea seemed to "feel its
oats" and strain at the leash, if ever a ship seemed to have breeding
and blue blood that would keep it going until its heart broke, that ship
was the Titanic.

And so it was only her due that as the Titanic steamed out of the harbor
bound on her maiden voyage a thousand "God-speeds" were wafted after
her, while every other vessel that she passed, the greatest of them
dwarfed by her colossal proportions, paid homage to the new queen
regnant with the blasts of their whistles and the shrieking of steam
sirens.


THE SHIP'S CAPTAIN


In command of the Titanic was Captain E. J. Smith, a veteran of the
seas, and admiral of the White Star Line fleet. The next six officers,
in the order of their rank, were Murdock, Lightollder,{sic} Pitman,
Boxhall, Lowe and Moody. Dan Phillips was chief wireless operator, with
Harold Bride as assistant.

From the forward bridge, fully ninety feet above the sea, peered out the
benign face of the ship's master, cool of aspect, deliberate of action,
impressive in that quality of confidence that is bred only of long
experience in command.

From far below the bridge sounded the strains of the ship's orchestra,
playing blithely a favorite air from "The Chocolate Soldier." All went
as merry as a wedding bell. Indeed, among that gay ship's company were
two score or more at least for whom the wedding bells had sounded in
truth not many days before. Some were on their honeymoon tours, others
were returning to their motherland after having passed the weeks of the
honeymoon, like Colonel John Jacob Astor and his young bride, amid the
diversions of Egypt or other Old World countries.

What daring flight of imagination would have ventured the prediction
that within the span of six days that stately ship, humbled, shattered
and torn asunder, would lie two thousand fathoms deep at the bottom of
the Atlantic, that the benign face that peered from the bridge would
be set in the rigor of death and that the happy bevy of voyaging brides
would be sorrowing widows?


ALMOST IN A COLLISION

The big vessel had, however, a touch of evil fortune before she cleared
the harbor of Southampton. As she passed down stream her immense
bulk--she displaced 66,000 tons--drew the waters after her with an
irresistible suction that tore the American liner New York from her
moorings; seven steel hawsers were snapped like twine. The New York
floated toward the White Star ship, and would have rammed the new ship
had not the tugs Vulcan and Neptune stopped her and towed her back to
the quay.

When the mammoth ship touched at Cherbourg and later at Queenstown
she was again the object of a port ovation, the smaller craft doing
obeisance while thousands gazed in wonder at her stupendous proportions.
After taking aboard some additional passengers at each port, the Titanic
headed her towering bow toward the open sea and the race for a record on
her maiden voyage was begun.


NEW BURST OF SPEED EACH DAY

The Titanic made 484 miles as her first day's run, her powerful new
engines turning over at the rate of seventy revolutions. On the second
day out the speed was hit up to seventy-three revolutions and the run
for the day was bulletined as 519 miles. Still further increasing the
speed, the rate of revolution of the engines was raised to seventy-five
and the day's run was 549 miles, the best yet scheduled.

But the ship had not yet been speeded to her capacity she was capable of
turning over about seventy-eight revolutions. Had the weather conditions
been propitious, it was intended to press the great racer to the full
limit of her speed on Monday. But for the Titanic Monday never came.
FIRE IN THE COAL BUNKERS

Unknown to the passengers, the Titanic was on fire from the day she
sailed from Southampton. Her officers and crew knew it, for they had
fought the fire for days.

This story, told for the first time by the survivors of the crew, was
only one of the many thrilling tales of the fateful first voyage.

"The Titanic sailed from Southampton on Wednesday, April 10th, at noon,"
said J. Dilley, fireman on the Titanic.

"I was assigned to the Titanic from the Oceanic, where I had served as
a fireman. From the day we sailed the Titanic was on fire, and my sole
duty, together with eleven other men, had been to fight that fire. We
had made no headway against it."


PASSENGERS IN IGNORANCE

"Of course," he went on, "the passengers knew nothing of the fire. Do
you think we'd have let them know about it? No, sir.

"The fire started in bunker No. 6. There were hundreds of tons of coal
stored there. The coal on top of the bunker was wet, as all the coal
should have been, but down at the bottom of the bunker the coal had been
permitted to get dry.

"The dry coal at the bottom of the pile took fire, and smoldered for
days. The wet coal on top kept the flames from coming through, but down
in the bottom of the bunkers the flames were raging.

"Two men from each watch of stokers were tolled off, to fight that fire.
The stokers worked four hours at a time, so twelve of us were fighting
flames from the day we put out of Southampton until we hit the iceberg.

"No, we didn't get that fire out, and among the stokers there was
talk that we'd have to empty the big coal bunkers after we'd put our
passengers off in New York, and then call on the fire-boats there to
help us put out the fire.

"The stokers were alarmed over it, but the officers told us to keep our
mouths shut--they didn't want to alarm the passengers."


USUAL DIVERSION

Until Sunday, April 14th, then, the voyage had apparently been a
delightful but uneventful one. The passengers had passed the time in the
usual diversions of ocean travelers, amusing themselves in the luxurious
saloons, promenading on the boat deck, lolling at their ease in steamer
chairs and making pools on the daily runs of the steamship. The smoking
rooms and card rooms had been as well patronized as usual, and a party
of several notorious professional gamblers had begun reaping their usual
easy harvest.

As early as Sunday afternoon the officers of the Titanic must have known
that they were approaching dangerous ice fields of the kind that are
a perennial menace to the safety of steamships following the regular
transatlantic lanes off the Great Banks of Newfoundland.

AN UNHEEDED WARNING

On Sunday afternoon the Titanic's wireless operator forwarded to the
Hydrographic office in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and elsewhere
the following dispatch:

"April 14.--The German steamship Amerika (Hamburg-American Line)
reports by radio-telegraph passing two large icebergs in latitude 41.27,
longitude 50.08.--Titanic, Br. S. S."

Despite this warning, the Titanic forged ahead Sunday night at her usual
speed--from twenty-one to twenty-five knots.



CHAPTER IV. SOME OF THE NOTABLE PASSENGERS

SKETCHES OF PROMINENT MEN AND WOMEN ON BOARD, INCLUDING MAJOR ARCHIBALD
BUTT, JOHN JACOB ASTOR, BENJAMIN GUGGENHEIM, ISIDOR STRAWS, J. BRUCE
ISMAY, GEORGE D. WIDENER, COLONEL WASHINGTON ROEBLING, 2D, CHARLES M.
HAYS, W. T. STEAD AND OTHERS

THE ship's company was of a character befitting the greatest of all
vessels and worthy of the occasion of her maiden voyage. Though the
major part of her passengers were Americans returning from abroad, there
were enrolled upon her cabin lists some of the most distinguished
names of England, as well as of the younger nation. Many of these had
purposely delayed sailing, or had hastened their departure, that they
might be among the first passengers on the great vessel.

There were aboard six men whose fortunes ran into tens of millions,
besides many other persons of international note. Among the men were
leaders in the world of commerce, finance, literature, art and the
learned professions. Many of the women were socially prominent in two
hemispheres.

Wealth and fame, unfortunately, are not proof against fate, and most
of these notable personages perished as pitiably as the more humble
steerage passengers.

The list of notables included Colonel John Jacob Astor, head of the
Astor family, whose fortune is estimated at $150,000,000; Isidor Straus,
merchant and banker ($50,000,000); J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of
the International Mercantile Marine ($40,000,000); Benjamin Guggenheim,
head of the Guggenheim family ($95,000,000): George D. Widener, son of
P. A. B. Widener, traction magnate and financier ($5,000,000); Colonel
Washington Roebling, builder of the great Brooklyn Bridge; Charles
M. Hays, president of the Grand Trunk Railway; W. T. Stead. famous
publicist; Jacques Futrelle, journalist; Henry S. Harper, of the firm
of Harper & Bros.; Henry B. Harris, theatrical manager; Major Archibald
Butt, military aide to President Taft; and Francis D. Millet, one of the
best-known American painters.


MAJOR BUTT

Major Archibald Butt, whose bravery on the sinking vessel will not soon
be forgotten, was military aide to President Taft and was known wherever
the President traveled. His recent European mission was apparently to
call on the Pope in behalf of President Taft; for on March 21st he was
received at the Vatican, and presented to the Pope a letter from
Mr. Taft thanking the Pontiff for the creation of three new American
Cardinals.

Major Butt had a reputation as a horseman, and it is said he was able
to keep up with President Roosevelt, be the ride ever so far or fast.
He was promoted to the rank of major in 1911. He sailed for the
Mediterranean on March 2d with his friend Francis D. Millet, the artist,
who also perished on the Titanic.


COLONEL ASTOR

John Jacob Astor was returning from a trip to Egypt with his
nineteen-year-old bride, formerly Miss Madeline Force, to whom he was
married in Providence, September 9, 1911. He was head of the family
whose name he bore and one of the world's wealthiest men. He was not,
however, one of the world's "idle rich," for his life of forty-seven
years was a well-filled one. He had managed the family estates since
1891; built the Astor Hotel, New York; was colonel on the staff of
Governor Levi P. Morton, and in May, 1898, was commissioned colonel
of the United States volunteers. After assisting Major-General
Breckinridge, inspector-general of the United States army, he was
assigned to duty on the staff of Major-General Shafter and served in
Cuba during the operations ending in the surrender of Santiago. He was
also the inventor of a bicycle brake, a pneumatic road-improver, and an
improved turbine engine.


BENJAMIN GUGGENHEIM

Next to Colonel Astor in financial importance was Benjamin Guggenheim,
whose father founded the famous house of M. Guggenheim and Sons. When
the various Guggen-heim interests were consolidated into the American
Smelting and Refining Company he retired from active business, although
he later became interested in the Power and Mining Machinery Company of
Milwaukee. In 1894 he married Miss Floretta Seligman, daughter of James
Seligman, the New York banker.

ISIDOR STRAUS

Isidor Straus, whose wife elected to perish with him in the ship, was a
brother of Nathan and Oscar Straus, a partner with Nathan Straus in R.
H. Macy & Co. and L. Straus & Sons, a member of the firm of Abraham &
Straus in Brooklyn, and has been well known in politics and charitable
work. He was a member of the Fifty-third Congress from 1893 to 1895,
and as a friend of William L. Wilson was in constant consultation in the
matter of the former Wilson tariff bill.

Mr. Straus was conspicuous for his works of charity and was an ardent
supporter of every enterprise to improve the condition of the Hebrew
immigrants. He was president of the Educational Alliance, vice-president
of the J. Hood Wright Memorial Hospital, a member of the Chamber of
Commerce, on one of the visiting committees of Harvard University, and
was besides a trustee of many financial and philanthropic institutions.

Mr. Straus never enjoyed a college education. He was, however, one of
the best informed men of the day, his information having been derived
from extensive reading. His library, said to be one of the finest and
most extensive in New York, was his pride and his place of special
recreation.


{illust. caption = ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ICEBERG THAT SUNK THE
TITANIC

Lady Duff Gordon, a prominent English woman who was aboard the...}


{illust. caption = HEART-BREAKING FAREWELLS

Both men and women were loaded into the first boats, but soon the cry of
"Women first" was raised. Then came the real note of tragedy.
Husbands and wives clung to each other in farewell; some refused to be
separated.}


GEORGE D. WIDENER

The best known of Philadelphia passengers aboard the Titanic were Mr.
and Mrs. George D. Widener. Mr. Widener was a son of Peter A. B. Widener
and, like his father, was recognized as one of the foremost financiers
of Philadelphia as well as a leader in society there. Mr. Widener
married Miss Eleanor Elkins, a daughter of the late William L. Elkins.
They made their home with his father at the latter's fine place
at Eastbourne, ten miles from Philadelphia. Mr. Widener was keenly
interested in horses and was a constant exhibitor at horse shows. In
business he was recognized as his father's chief adviser in managing the
latter's extensive traction interests. P. A. B. Widener is a director of
the International Mercantile Marine.

Mrs. Widener is said to be the possessor of one of the finest
collections of jewels in the world, the gift of her husband. One string
of pearls in this collection was reported to be worth $250,000.

The Wideners went abroad two months previous to the disaster, Mr.
Widener desiring to inspect some of his business interests on the other
side. At the opening of the London Museum by King George on March 21st
last it was announced that Mrs. Widener had presented to the museum
thirty silver plates once the property of Nell Gwyn. Mr. Widener is
survived by a daughter, Eleanor, and a son, George D. Widener, Jr. Harry
Elkins Widener was with his parents and went down on the ship.

COLONEL ROEBLING

Colonel Washington Augustus Roebling was president of the John A.
Roebling Sons' Company, manufacturers of iron and steel wire rope. He
served in the Union Army from 1861 to 1865, resigning to assist his
father in the construction of the Cincinnati and Covington suspension
bridge. At the death of his father in 1869 he took entire charge of the
construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, and it is to his genius that the
success of that great work may be said to be due.

WILLIAM T. STEAD

One of the most notable of the foreign passengers was William T. Stead.
Few names are more widely known to the world of contemporary literature
and journalism than that of the brilliant editor of the Review of
Reviews. Matthew Arnold called him "the inventor of the new journalism
in England." He was on his way to America to take part in the Men and
Religion Forward Movement and was to have delivered an address in Union
Square on the Thursday after the disaster, with William Jennings Bryan
as his chief associate.

Mr. Stead was an earnest advocate of peace and had written many books.
His commentary "If Christ Came to Chicago" raised a storm twenty years
ago. When he was in this country in 1907 he addressed a session of
Methodist clergymen, and at one juncture of the meeting remarked that
unless the Methodists did something about the peace movement besides
shouting "amen" nobody "would care a damn about their amens!"

OTHER ENGLISHMEN ABOARD

Other distinguished Englishmen on the Titanic were Norman C. Craig,
M.P., Thomas Andrews, a representative of the firm of Harland & Wolff,
of Belfast, the ship's builders, and J. Bruce Ismay, managing director
of the White Star Line.

J. BRUCE ISMAY

Mr. Ismay is president and one of the founders of the International
Mercantile Marine. He has made it a custom to be a passenger on the
maiden voyage of every new ship built by the White Star Line. It was Mr.
Ismay who, with J. P. Morgan, consolidated the British steamship lines
under the International Mercantile Marine's control; and it is largely
due to his imagination that such gigantic ships as the Titanic and
Olympic were made possible

JACQUES FUTRELLE

Jacques Futrelle was an author of short stories, some of which have
appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, and of many novels of the same
general type as "The Thinking Machine," with which he first gained a
wide popularity. Newspaper work, chiefly in Richmond, Va., engaged his
attention from 1890 to 1909, in which year he entered the theatrical
business as a manager. In 1904 he returned to his journalistic career.

HENRY B. HARRIS

Henry B. Harris, the theater manager, had been manager of May Irwin,
Peter Dailey, Lily Langtry, Amelia Bingham, and launched Robert Edeson
as star. He became the manager of the Hudson Theater in 1903 and the
Hackett Theater in 1906. Among his best known productions are "The Lion
and the Mouse," "The Traveling Salesman" and "The Third Degree." He was
president of the Henry B. Harris Company controlling the Harris Theater.

Young Harris had a liking for the theatrical business from a boy. Twelve
years ago Mr. Harris married Miss Rene Wallach of Washington. He was
said to have a fortune of between $1,000,000 and $3,000,000. He owned
outright the Hudson and the Harris theaters and had an interest in two
other show houses in New York. He owned three theaters in Chicago, one
in Syracuse and one in Philadelphia.


HENRY S. HARPER

Henry Sleeper Harper, who was among the survivors, is a grandson of John
Wesley Harper, one of the founders of the Harper publishing business. H.
Sleeper Harper was himself an incorporator of Harper & Brothers when the
firm became a corporation in 1896. He had a desk in the offices of the
publishers, but his hand of late years in the management of the business
has been very slight. He has been active in the work of keeping the
Adirondack forests free from aggression. He was in the habit of spending
about half of his time in foreign travel. His friends in New York
recalled that he had a narrow escape about ten years ago when a ship in
which he was traveling ran into an iceberg on the Grand Banks.

FRANCIS DAVID MILLET

Millet was one of the best-known American painters and many of his
canvasses are found in the leading galleries of the world. He served as
a drummer boy with the Sixtieth Massachusetts volunteers in the Civil
War, and from early manhood took a prominent part in public affairs. He
was director of the decorations for the Chicago Exposition and was, at
the time of the disaster, secretary of the American Academy in Rome. He
was a wide traveler and the author of many books, besides translations
of Tolstoi.

CHARLES M. HAYS

Another person of prominence was Charles Melville Hays, president of the
Grand Trunk and the Grand Trunk Pacific railways. He was described by
Sir Wilfrid Laurier at a dinner of the Canadian Club of New York, at the
Hotel Astor last year, as "beyond question the greatest railroad genius
in Canada, as an executive genius ranking second only to the late Edward
H. Harriman." He was returning aboard the Titanic with his wife and
son-in-law and daughter; Mr. and Mrs. Thornton Davidson, of Montreal.



CHAPTER V. THE TITANIC STRIKES AN ICEBERG!

TARDY ATTENTION TO WARNING RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENT--THE DANGER NOT
REALIZED AT FIRST--AN INTERRUPTED CARD GAME--PASSENGERS JOKE AMONG
THEMSELVES--THE REAL TRUTH DAWNS--PANIC ON BOARD--WIRELESS CALLS FOR
HELP

SUNDAY night the magnificent ocean liner was plunging through a
comparatively placid sea, on the surface of which there was much mushy
ice and here and there a number of comparatively harmless-looking floes.
The night was clear and stars visible. First Officer William T. Murdock
was in charge of the bridge The first intimation of the presence of the
iceberg that he received was from the lookout in the crow's nest.

Three warnings were transmitted from the crow's nest of the Titanic
to the officer on the doomed steamship's bridge 15 minutes before she
struck, according to Thomas Whiteley, a first saloon steward.

Whiteley, who was whipped overboard from the ship by a rope while
helping to lower a life-boat, finally reported on the Carpathia aboard
one of the boats that contained, he said, both the crow's nest lookouts.
He heard a conversation between them, he asserted, in which they
discussed the warnings given to the Titanic's bridge of the presence of
the iceberg.

Whiteley did not know the names of either of the lookout men and
believed that they returned to England with the majority of the
surviving members of the crew.


{illust. caption = A GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION OF THE FORCE WITH WHICH A
VESSEL STRIKES AN ICEBERG}



"I heard one of them say that at 11.15 o'clock, 15 minutes before the
Titanic struck, he had reported to First Officer Murdock, on the bridge,
that he fancied he saw an iceberg!" said Whiteley. "Twice after that,
the lookout said, he warned Murdock that a berg was ahead. They were
very indignant that no attention was paid to their warnings."

TARDY ATTENTION TO WARNING RESPONSIBLE FOR ACCIDENT

Murdock's tardy answering of a telephone call from the crow's nest is
assigned by Whiteley as the cause of the disaster.

When Murdock answered the call he received the information that the
iceberg was due ahead. This information was imparted just a few seconds
before the crash, and had the officer promptly answered the ring of the
bell it is probable that the accident could have been avoided, or at
least, been reduced by the lowered speed.

The lookout saw a towering "blue berg" looming up in the sea path of the
Titanic, and called the bridge on the ship's telephone. When, after the
passing of those two or three fateful minutes an officer on the bridge
lifted the telephone receiver from its hook to answer the lookout,
it was too late. The speeding liner, cleaving a calm sea under a
star-studded sky, had reached the floating mountain of ice, which the
theoretically "unsinkable" ship struck a crashing, if glancing, blow
with her starboard bow.

MURDOCK PAID WITH LIFE

Had Murdock, according to the account of the tragedy given by two of the
Titanic's seamen, known how imperative was that call from the lookout
man, the men at the wheel of the liner might have swerved the great ship
sufficiently to avoid the berg altogether. At the worst the vessel would
probably have struck the mass of ice with her stern.

Murdock, if the tale of the Titanic sailor be true, expiated his
negligence by shooting himself within sight of all alleged victims
huddled in life-boats or struggling in the icy seas.

When at last the danger was realized, the great ship was so close upon
the berg that it was practically impossible to avoid collision with it


VAIN TRIAL TO CLEAR BERG

The first officer did what other startled and alert commanders would
have done under similar circumstances, that is


{illust. caption = THE LOCATION OF THE DISASTER}


he made an effort by going full speed ahead on the starboard propeller
and reversing his port propeller, simultaneously throwing his helm
over, to make a rapid turn and clear the berg. The maneuver was not
successful. He succeeded in saving his bows from crashing into the
ice-cliff, but nearly the entire length of the underbody of the great
ship on the starboard side was ripped. The speed of the Titanic,
estimated to be at least twenty-one knots, was so terrific that the
knife-like edge of the iceberg's spur protruding under the sea cut
through her like a can-opener.

The Titanic was in 41.46 north latitude and 50.14 west longitude when
she was struck, very near the spot on the wide Atlantic where the
Carmania encountered a field of ice, studded with great bergs, on her
voyage to New York which ended on April 14th. It was really an ice pack,
due to an unusually severe winter in the north Atlantic. No less than
twenty-five bergs, some of great height, were counted.

The shock was almost imperceptible. The first officer did not apparently
realize that the great ship had received her death wound, and none of
the passengers had the slightest suspicion that anything more than a
usual minor sea accident had happened. Hundreds who had gone to their
berths and were asleep were unawakened by the vibration.


BRIDGE GAME NOT DISTURBED

To illustrate the placidity with which practically all the men regarded
the accident it is related that Pierre Marechal, son of the vice-admiral
of the French navy, Lucien Smith, Paul Chevre, a French sculptor, and A.
F. Ormont, a cotton broker, were in the Cafe Parisien playing bridge.

The four calmly got up from the table and after walking on deck and
looking over the rail returned to their game. One of them had left his
cigar on the card table, and while the three others were gazing out on
the sea he remarked that he couldn't afford to lose his smoke, returned
for his cigar and came out again.

They remained only for a few moments on deck, and then resumed their
game under the impression that the ship had stopped for reasons best
known to the captain and not involving any danger to her. Later, in
describing the scene that took place, M. Marechal, who was among the
survivors, said: "When three-quarters of a mile away we stopped, the
spectacle before our eyes was in its way magnificent. In a very calm
sea, beneath a sky moonless but sown with millions of stars, the
enormous Titanic lay on the water, illuminated from the water line to
the boat deck. The bow was slowly sinking into the black water."

The tendency of the whole ship's company except the men in the engine
department, who were made aware of the danger by the inrushing water,
was to make light of and in some instances even to ridicule the thought
of danger to so substantial a fabric.


THE CAPTAIN ON DECK

When Captain Smith came from the chart room onto the bridge, his first
words were, "Close the emergency doors."

"They're already closed, sir," Mr. Murdock replied.

"Send to the carpenter and tell him to sound the ship," was the next
order. The message was sent to the carpenter, but the carpenter never
came up to report. He was probably the first man on the ship to lose his
life.

The captain then looked at the communicator, which shows in what
direction the ship is listing. He saw that she carried five degrees list
to starboard.

The ship was then rapidly settling forward. All the steam sirens were
blowing. By the captain's orders, given in the next few minutes, the
engines were put to work at pumping out the ship, distress signals
were sent by the Marconi, and rockets were sent up from the bridge by
Quartermaster Rowe. All hands were ordered on deck.


PASSENGERS NOT ALARMED

The blasting shriek of the sirens had not alarmed the great company of
the Titanic, because such steam calls are an incident of travel in seas
where fogs roll. Many had gone to bed, but the hour, 11.40 P. M., was
not too late for the friendly contact of saloons and smoking rooms. It
was Sunday night and the ship's concert had ended, but there were many
hundreds up and moving among the gay lights, and many on deck with their
eyes strained toward the mysterious west, where home lay. And in one
jarring, breath-sweeping moment all of these, asleep or awake, were at
the mercy of chance. Few among the more than 2000 aboard could have had
a thought of danger. The man who had stood up in the smoking room to say
that the Titanic was vulnerable or that in a few minutes two-thirds of
her people would be face to face with death, would have been considered
a fool or a lunatic. No ship ever sailed the seas that gave her
passengers more confidence, more cool security.

Within a few minutes stewards and other members of the crew were sent
round to arouse the people. Some utterly refused to get up. The stewards
had almost to force the doors of the staterooms to make the somnolent
appreciate their peril, and many of them, it is believed, were drowned
like rats in a trap.


ASTOR AND WIFE STROLLED ON DECK

Colonel and Mrs. Astor were in their room and saw the ice vision flash
by. They had not appreciably felt the gentle shock and supposed that
nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They were both dressed
and came on deck leisurely. William T. Stead, the London journalist,
wandered on deck for a few minutes, stopping to talk to Frank Millet.
"What do they say is the trouble?" he asked. "Icebergs," was the brief
reply. "Well," said Stead, "I guess it is nothing serious. I'm going
back to my cabin to read."

From end to end on the mighty boat officers were rushing about without
much noise or confusion, but giving orders sharply. Captain Smith told
the third officer to rush downstairs and see whether the water was
coming in very fast. "And," he added, "take some armed guards along to
see that the stokers and engineers stay at their posts."

In two minutes the officer returned. "It looks pretty bad, sir," he
said. "The water is rushing in and filling the bottom. The locks of the
water-tight compartments have been sprung by the shock."

"Give the command for all passengers to be on deck with life-belts on."

Through the length and breadth of the boat, upstairs and downstairs,
on all decks, the cry rang out: "All passengers on deck with
life-preservers."


A SUDDEN TREMOR OF FEAR

For the first time, there was a feeling of panic. Husbands sought for
wives and children. Families gathered together. Many who were asleep
hastily caught up their clothing and rushed on deck. A moment before the
men had been joking about the life-belts, according to the story told by
Mrs. Vera Dick, of Calgary, Canada. "Try this one," one man said to her,
"they are the very latest thing this season. Everybody's wearing them
now."

Another man suggested to a woman friend, who had a fox terrier in her
arms, that she should put a life-saver on the dog. "It won't fit," the
woman replied, laughing. "Make him carry it in his mouth," said the
friend.


CONFUSION AMONG THE IMMIGRANTS

Below, on the steerage deck, there was intense confusion. About the time
the officers on the first deck gave the order that all men should stand
to one side and all women should go below to deck B, taking the children
with them, a similar order was given to the steerage passengers. The
women were ordered to the front, the men to the rear. Half a dozen
healthy, husky immigrants pushed their way forward and tried to crowd
into the first boat.

"Stand back," shouted the officers who were manning the boat. "The women
come first."

Shouting curses in various foreign languages, the immigrant men
continued their pushing and tugging to climb into the boats. Shots
rang out. One big fellow fell over the railing into the water. Another
dropped to the deck, moaning. His jaw had been shot away. This was the
story told by the bystanders afterwards on the pier. One husky Italian
told the writer on the pier that the way in which the men were shot down
was horrible. His sympathy was with the men who were shot.

"They were only trying to save their lives," he said.


WIRELESS OPERATOR DIED AT HIS POST

On board the Titanic, the wireless operator, with a life-belt about
his waist, was hitting the instrument that was sending out C. Q. D.,
messages, "Struck on iceberg, C. Q. D."

"Shall I tell captain to turn back and help?" flashed a reply from the
Carpathia.

"Yes, old man," the Titanic wireless operator responded. "Guess we're
sinking."

An hour later, when the second wireless man came into the boxlike room
to tell his companion what the situation was, he found a negro stoker
creeping up behind the operator and saw him raise a knife over his head.
He said afterwards--he was among those rescued--that he realized at
once that the negro intended to kill the operator in order to take his
life-belt from him. The second operator pulled out his revolver and shot
the negro dead.

"What was the trouble?" asked the operator.

"That negro was going to kill you and steal your life-belt," the second
man replied.

"Thanks, old man," said the operator. The second man went on deck to get
some more information. He was just in time to jump overboard before the
Titanic went down. The wireless operator and the body of the negro who
tried to steal his belt went down together.

On the deck where the first class passengers were quartered, known as
deck A, there was none of the confusion that was taking place on the
lower decks. The Titanic was standing without much rocking. The captain
had given an order and the band was playing.


{illust. caption = WAITING FOR THE NEWS

A Bird's eye view of the great crowds...}

{illust. caption = WIRELESS STATION AT CAPE RACE

Where the first news of the Titanic disaster was received.}



CHAPTER VI. "WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST!"

COOL-HEADED OFFICERS AND CREW BRING ORDER OUT OF CHAOS--FILLING THE
LIFE-BOATS--HEARTRENDING SCENES AS FAMILIES ARE PARTED--FOUR LIFE-BOATS
LOST--INCIDENTS OF BRAVERY--"THE BOATS ARE ALL FILLED!"

ONCE on the deck, many hesitated to enter the swinging life-boats. Tho
glassy sea, the starlit sky, the absence, in the first few moments,
of intense excitement, gave them the feeling that there was only some
slight mishap; that those who got into the boats would have a chilly
half hour below and might, later, be laughed at.

It was such a feeling as this, from all accounts, which caused John
Jacob Astor and his wife to refuse the places offered them in the first
boat, and to retire to the gymnasium. In the same way H. J. Allison, a
Montreal banker, laughed at the warning, and his wife, reassured by
him, took her time dressing. They and their daughter did not reach
the Carpathia. Their son, less than two years old, was carried into a
life-boat by his nurse, and was taken in charge by Major Arthur Peuchen.

THE LIFE-BOATS LOWERED

The admiration felt by the passengers and crew for the matchlessly
appointed vessel was translated, in those first few moments, into a
confidence which for some proved deadly. The pulsing of the engines had
ceased, and the steamship lay just as though she were awaiting the order
to go on again after some trifling matter had been adjusted. But in a
few minutes the canvas covers were lifted from the life-boats and the
crews allotted to each standing by, ready to lower them to the water.

Nearly all the boats that were lowered on the port side of the ship
touched the water without capsizing. Four of the others lowered to
starboard, including one collapsible, were capsized. All, however, who
were in the collapsible boats that practically went to pieces, were
rescued by the other boats.

Presently the order was heard: "All men stand back and all women retire
to the deck below." That was the smoking-room deck, or the B deck. The
men stood away and remained in absolute silence, leaning against the
rail or pacing up and down the deck slowly. Many of them lighted cigars
or cigarettes and began to smoke.


LOADING THE BOATS

The boats were swung out and lowered from the A deck above. The women
were marshaled quietly in lines along the B deck, and when the boats
were lowered down to the level of the latter the women were assisted to
climb into them.

As each of the boats was filled with its quota of passengers the word
was given and it was carefully lowered down to the dark surface of the
water.

Nobody seemed to know how Mr. Ismay got into a boat, but it was assumed
that he wished to make a presentation of the case of the Titanic to his
company. He was among those who apparently realized that the splendid
ship was doomed. All hands in the life-boats, under instructions from
officers and men in charge, were rowed a considerable distance from the
ship herself in order to get far away from the possible suction that
would follow her foundering.


COOLEST MEN ON BOARD

Captain Smith and Major Archibald Butt, military aide to the President
of the United States, were among the coolest men on board. A number of
steerage passengers were yelling and screaming and fighting to get to
the boats. Officers drew guns and told them that if they moved towards
the boats they would be shot dead. Major Butt had a gun in his hand and
covered the men who tried to get to the boats.

The following story of his bravery was told by Mrs. Henry B. Harris,
wife of the theatrical manager:

"The world should rise in praise of Major Butt. That man's conduct will
remain in my memory forever. The American army is honored by him and
the way he taught some of the other men how to behave when women and
children were suffering that awful mental fear of death. Major Butt was
near me and I noticed everything that he did.

"When the order to man the boats came, the captain whispered something
to Major Butt. The two of them had become friends. The major immediately
became as one in supreme command. You would have thought he was at a
White House reception. A dozen or more women became hysterical all at
once, as something connected with a life-boat went wrong. Major Butt
stepped over to them and said:

"'Really, you must not act like that; we are all going to see you
through this thing.' He helped the sailors rearrange the rope or chain
that had gone wrong and lifted some of the women in with a touch of
gallantry. Not only was there a complete lack of any fear in his manner,
but there was the action of an aristocrat.

"When the time came he was a man to be feared. In one of the earlier
boats fifty women, it seemed, were about to be lowered, when a man,
suddenly panic-stricken, ran to the stern of it. Major Butt shot one arm
out, caught him by the back of the neck and jerked him backward like a
pillow. His head cracked against a rail and he was stunned.

"'Sorry,' said Major Butt, 'women will be attended to first or I'll
break every damned bone in your body.'


FORCED MEN USURPING PLACES TO VACATE

"The boats were lowered one by one, and as I stood by, my husband said
to me, 'Thank God, for Archie Butt.' Perhaps Major Butt heard it, for he
turned his face towards us for a second and smiled. Just at that moment,
a young man was arguing to get into a life-boat, and Major Butt had a
hold of the lad by the arm, like a big brother, and was telling him to
keep his head and be a man.

"Major Butt helped those poor frightened steerage people so wonderfully,
so tenderly and yet with such cool and manly firmness that he prevented
the loss of many lives from panic. He was a soldier to the last. He was
one of God's greatest noblemen, and I think I can say he was an example
of bravery even to men on the ship."


LAST WORDS OF MAJOR BUTT

Miss Marie Young, who was a music instructor to President Roosevelt's
children and had known Major Butt during the Roosevelt occupancy of the
White House, told this story of his heroism.

"Archie himself put me into the boat, wrapped blankets about me and
tucked me in as carefully as if we were starting on a motor ride. He,
himself, entered the boat with me, performing the little courtesies as
calmly and with as smiling a face as if death were far away, instead of
being but a few moments removed from him.

"When he had carefully wrapped me up he stepped upon the gunwale of the
boat, and lifting his hat, smiled down at me. 'Good-bye, Miss Young,'
he said. 'Good luck to you, and don't forget to remember me to the folks
back home.' Then he stepped back and waved his hand to me as the boat
was lowered. I think I was the last woman he had a chance to help, for
the boat went down shortly after we cleared the suction zone."

COLONEL ASTOR ANOTHER HERO

Colonel Astor was another of the heroes of the awful night. Effort was
made to persuade him to take a place in one of the life-boats, but he
emphatically refused to do so until every woman and child on board
had been provided for, not excepting the women members of the ship's
company.

One of the passengers describing the consummate courage of Colonel Astor
said:

"He led Mrs. Astor to the side of the ship and helped her to the
life-boat to which she had been assigned. I saw that she was prostrated
and said she would remain and take her chances with him, but Colonel
Astor quietly insisted and tried to reassure her in a few words. As she
took her place in the boat her eyes were fixed upon him. Colonel Astor
smiled, touched his cap, and when the boat moved safely away from the
ship's side he turned back to his place among the men."

Mrs. Ida S. Hippach and her daughter Jean, survivors of the Titanic,
said they were saved by Colonel John Jacob Astor, who forced the crew of
the last life-boat to wait for them.

"We saw Colonel Astor place Mrs. Astor in a boat and assure her that he
would follow later," said Mrs. Hippach.

"He turned to us with a smile and said, 'Ladies, you are next.' The
officer in charge of the boat protested that the craft was full, and the
seamen started to lower it.

"Colonel Astor exclaimed, 'Hold that boat,' in the voice of a man
accustomed to be obeyed, and they did as he ordered. The boat had been
lowered past the upper deck and the colonel took us to the deck below
and put us in the boat, one after the other, through a port-hole."


{illust. caption = LOADING THE LIFE-BOATS

Here occurred the heart-rending separation of husbands and wives, as the
women were given precedence in the boats.}


HEART-BREAKING SCENES

There were some terrible scenes. Fathers were parting from their
children and giving them an encouraging pat on the shoulders; men
were kissing their wives and telling them that they would be with them
shortly. One man said there was absolutely no danger, that the boat was
the finest ever built, with water-tight compartments, and that it could
not sink. That seemed to be the general impression.

A few of the men, however, were panic-stricken even when the first of
the fifty-six foot life-boats was being filled. Fully ten men threw
themselves into the boats already crowded with women and children. These
men were dragged back and hurled sprawling across the deck. Six of them,
screamed with fear, struggled to their feet and made a second attempt to
rush to the boats.

About ten shots sounded in quick succession. The six cowardly men were
stopped in their tracks, staggered and collapsed one after another. At
least two of them vainly attempted to creep toward the boats again. The
others lay quite still. This scene of bloodshed served its purpose.
In that particular section of the deck there was no further attempt to
violate the rule of "women and children first."

"I helped fill the boats with women," said Thomas Whiteley, who was a
waiter on the Titanic. "Collapsible boat No. 2 on the starboard jammed.
The second officer was hacking at the ropes with a knife and I was being
dragged around the deck by that rope when I looked up and saw the boat,
with all aboard, turn turtle. In some way I got overboard myself and
clung to an oak dresser. I wasn't more than sixty feet from the Titanic
when she went down. Her big stern rose up in the air and she went down
bow first. I saw all the machinery drop out of her."


HENRY B. HARRIS

Henry B. Harris, of New York, a theatrical manager, was one of the men
who showed superb courage in the crisis. When the life-boats were first
being filled, and before there was any panic, Mr. Harris went to the
side of his wife before the boat was lowered away.

"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. "Good-bye, 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.


THREE EXPLOSIONS

Up to this time there had been no panic; but about one hour before
the ship plunged to the bottom there were three separate explosions of
bulkheads as the vessel filled. These were at intervals of about fifteen
minutes. From that time there was a different scene. The rush for the
remaining boats became a stampede.

The stokers rushed up from below and tried to beat a path through the
steerage men and women and through the sailors and officers, to get into
the boats. They had their iron bars and shovels, and they struck down
all who stood in their way.

The first to come up from the depths of the ship was an engineer. From
what he is reported to have said it is probable that the steam fittings
were broken and many were scalded to death when the Titanic lifted. He
said he had to dash through a narrow place beside a broken pipe and his
back was frightfully scalded.

Right at his heels came the stokers. The officers had pistols, but they
could not use them at first for fear of killing the women and children.
The sailors fought with their fists and many of them took the stoke bars
and shovels from the stokers and used them to beat back the others.

Many of the coal-passers and stokers who had been driven back from
the boats went to the rail, and whenever a boat was filled and lowered
several of them jumped overboard and swam toward it trying to climb
aboard. Several of the survivors said that men who swam to the sides of
their boats were pulled in or climbed in.

Dozens of the cabin passengers were witnesses of some of the frightful
scenes on the steerage deck. The steerage survivors said that ten women
from the upper decks were the only cool passengers in the life-boat, and
they tried to quiet the steerage women, who were nearly all crazed with
fear and grief.


OTHER HEROES

Among the chivalrous young heroes of the Titanic disaster were
Washington A. Roebling, 2d, and Howard Case, London representative of
the Vacuum Oil Company. Both were urged repeatedly to take places in
life-boats, but scorned the opportunity, while working against time to
save the women aboard the ill-fated ship. They went to their death, it
is said by survivors, with smiles on their faces.

Both of these young men aided in the saving of Mrs. William T. Graham,
wife of the president of the American Can Company, and Mrs. Graham's
nineteen-year-old daughter, Margaret.

Afterwards relating some of her experiences Mrs. Graham said:

"There was a rap at the door. It was a passenger whom we had met shortly
after the ship left Liverpool, and his name was Roebling--Washington A.
Roebling, 2d. He was a gentleman and a brave man. He warned us of
the danger and told us that it would be best to be prepared for an
emergency. We heeded his warning, and I looked out of my window and saw
a great big iceberg facing us. Immediately I knew what had happened and
we lost no time after that to get out into the saloon.

"In one of the gangways I met an officer of the ship.

"'What is the matter?' I asked him.

"'We've only burst two pipes,' he said. 'Everything is all right, don't
worry.'

"'But what makes the ship list so?' I asked.

"'Oh, that's nothing,' he replied, and walked away.

"Mr. Case advised us to get into a boat.

"'And what are you going to do?' we asked him.

"'Oh,' he replied, 'I'll take a chance and stay here.'

"Just at that time they were filling up the third life-boat on the port
side of the ship. I thought at the time that it was the third boat which
had been lowered, but I found out later that they had lowered other
boats on the other side, where the people were more excited because they
were sinking on that side.

"Just then Mr. Roebling came up, too, and told us to hurry and get into
the third boat. Mr. Roebling and Mr. Case bustled our party of three
into that boat in less time than it takes to tell it. They were both
working hard to help the women and children. The boat was fairly crowded
when we three were pushed into it, and a few men jumped in at the last
moment, but Mr. Roebling and Mr. Case stood at the rail and made no
attempt to get into the boat.

"They shouted good-bye to us. What do you think Mr. Case did then? He
just calmly lighted a cigarette and waved us good-bye with his hand.
Mr. Roebling stood there, too--I can see him now. I am sure that he knew
that the ship would go to the bottom. But both just stood there."


IN THE FACE OF DEATH

Scenes on the sinking vessel grew more tragic as the remaining
passengers faced the awful certainty that death must be the portion of
the majority, death in the darkness of a wintry sea studded with its ice
monuments like the marble shafts in some vast cemetery.

In that hour, when cherished illusions of possible safety had all
but vanished, manhood and womanhood aboard the Titanic rose to their
sublimest heights. It was in that crisis of the direst extremity that
many brave women deliberately rejected life and chose rather to remain
and die with the men whom they loved.


DEATH FAILS TO PART MR. AND MRS. STRAUS

"I will not leave my husband," said Mrs. Isidor Straus. "We are old; we
can best die together," and she turned from those who would have forced
her into one of the boats and clung to the man who had been the partner
of her joys and sorrows. Thus they stood hand in hand and heart to
heart, comforting each other until the sea claimed them, united in death
as they had been through a long life.

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friends."

Miss Elizabeth Evans fulfilled this final test of affection laid down
by the Divine Master. The girl was the niece of the wife of Magistrate
Cornell, of New York. She was placed in the same boat with many other
women. As it was about to be lowered away it was found that the craft
contained one more than its full quota of passengers.

The grim question arose as to which of them should surrender her place
and her chance of safety. Beside Miss Evans sat Mrs. J. J. Brown, of
Denver, the mother of several children. Miss Evans was the first to
volunteer to yield to another.


GIRL STEPS BACK TO DOOM

"Your need is greater than mine," said she to Mrs. Brown. "You have
children who need you, and I have none."

So saying she arose from the boat and stepped back upon the deck. The
girl found no later refuge and was one of those who went down with the
ship. She was twenty-five years old and was beloved by all who knew her.

Mrs. Brown thereafter showed the spirit which had made her also
volunteer to leave the boat. There were only three men in the boat
and but one of them rowed. Mrs. Brown, who was raised on the water,
immediately picked up one of the heavy sweeps and began to pull.

In the boat which carried Mrs. Cornell and Mrs. Appleton there were
places for seventeen more than were carried. This too was undermanned
and the two women at once took their places at the oars.

The Countess of Rothes was pulling at the oars of her boat, likewise
undermanned because the crew preferred to stay behind.

Miss Bentham, of Rochester, showed splendid courage. She happened to be
in a life-boat which was very much crowded--so much so that one sailor
had to sit with his feet dangling in the icy cold water, and as time
went on the sufferings of the man from the cold were apparent. Miss
Bentham arose from her place and had the man turn around while she took
her place with her feet in the water.

Scarcely any of the life-boats were properly manned. Two, filled with
women and children, capsized immediately, while the collapsible boats
were only temporarily useful. They soon filled with water. In one boat
eighteen or twenty persons sat in water above their knees for six hours.



{illust. caption =

In the darkness and confusion, punctuated by screams, sobs and curses,
the boats were lowered after being filled with women, children and a
few men. The sketch, drawn from description of eye-witnesses, shows the
lofty side of the stricken vessel and the laden boats descending.

THE LIFE-BOATS BEING LOWERED}


{illust. caption = Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

{illust. caption = Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y. LIFE-BOATS,
AS SEEN FROM THE CARPATHIA

Photographs taken from the rescue ship as she reached the first boats
carrying the Titanic's sufferers.}



heard it, but have forgotten it. But I saw an order for five pounds
which this man gave to each of the crew of his boat after they got
aboard the Carpathia. It was on a piece of ordinary paper addressed to
the Coutts Bank of England.

"We called that boat the 'money boat.' It was lowered from the
starboard side and was one of the first off. Our orders were to load the
life-boats beginning forward on the port side, working aft and then back
on the starboard. This man paid the firemen to lower a starboard boat
before the officers had given the order."

Whiteley's own experience was a hard one. When the uncoiling rope, which
entangled his feet, threw him into the sea, it furrowed the flesh of
his leg, but he did not feel the pain until he was safe aboard the
Carpathia.

"I floated on my life-preserver for several hours," he said, "then I
came across a big oak dresser with two men clinging to it. I hung on to
this till daybreak and the two men dropped off. When the sun came up I
saw the collapsible raft in the distance, just black with men. They were
all standing up, and I swam to it--almost a mile, it seemed to me--and
they would not let me aboard. Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, was
one of them.

"'It's thirty-one lives against yours,, he said, 'you can't come
aboard. There's not room.'"

"I pleaded with him in vain, and then I confess I prayed that somebody
might die, so I could take his place. It was only human. And then some
one did die, and they let me aboard.

"By and by, we saw seven life-boats lashed together, and we were taken
into them."


MEN SHOT DOWN

The officers had to assert their authority by force, and three
foreigners from the steerage who tried to force their way in among the
women and children were shot down without mercy.

Robert Daniel, a Philadelphia passenger, told of terrible scenes at
this period of the disaster. He said men fought and bit and struck one
another like madmen, and exhibited wounds upon his face to prove the
assertion. Mr. Daniel said that he was picked up naked from the ice-cold
water and almost perished from exposure before he was rescued. He and
others told how the Titanic's bow was completely torn away by the impact
with the berg.

K. Whiteman, of Palmyra, N. J., the Titanic's barber, was lowering boats
on deck after the collision, and declared the officers on the bridge,
one of them First Officer Murdock, promptly worked the electrical
apparatus for closing the water-tight compartments. He believed the
machinery was in some way so damaged by the crash that the front
compartments failed to close tightly, although the rear ones were
secure.

Whiteman's manner of escape was unique. He was blown off the deck by the
second of the two explosions of the boilers, and was in the water more
than two hours before he was picked up by a raft.

"The explosions," Whiteman said; "were caused by the rushing in of the
icy water on the boilers. A bundle of deck chairs, roped together, was
blown off the deck with me, and I struck my back, injuring my spine, but
it served as a temporary raft.

"The crew and passengers had faith in the bulkhead system to save the
ship and we were lowering a collapsible boat, all confident the ship
would get through, when she took a terrific dip forward and the water
swept over the deck and into the engine rooms.

"The bow went clean down, and I caught the pile of chairs as I was
washed up against the rim. Then came the explosions which blew me
fifteen feet.

"After the water had filled the forward compartments, the ones at the
stern could not save her, although they did delay the ship's going down.
If it wasn't for the compartments hardly anyone could have got away."


A SAD MESSAGE

One of the Titanic's stewards, Johnson by name, carried this message to
the sorrowing widow of Benjamin Guggenheim:

"When Mr. Guggenheim realized that there was grave danger," said the
room steward, "he advised his secretary, who also died, to dress fully
and he himself did the same. Mr. Guggenheim, who was cool and collected
as he was pulling on his outer garments, said to the steward:--


PREPARED TO DIE BRAVELY

"'I think there is grave doubt that the men will get off safely. I am
willing to remain and play the man's game, if there are not enough boats
for more than the women and children. I won't die here like a beast.
I'll meet my end as man.'

"There was a pause and then Mr. Guggenheim continued:

"'Tell my wife, Johnson, if it should happen that my secretary and I
both go down and you are saved, tell her I played the game out straight
and to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben
Guggenheim was a coward.

"'Tell her that my last thoughts will be of her and of our girls, but
that my duty now is to these unfortunate women and children on this
ship. Tell her I will meet whatever fate is in store for me, knowing she
will approve of what I do.'"

In telling the story the room steward said the last he saw of Mr.
Guggenheim was when he stood fully dressed upon the upper deck talking
calmly with Colonel Astor and Major Butt.

Before the last of the boats got away, according to some of the
passengers' narratives, there were more than fifty shots fired upon the
decks by officers or others in the effort to maintain the discipline
that until then had been well preserved.


THE SINKING VESSEL

Richard Norris Williams, Jr., one of the survivors of the Titanic, saw
his father killed by being crushed by one of the tremendous funnels of
the sinking vessel.

"We stood on deck watching the life-boats of the Titanic being filled
and lowered into the water," said Mr. Williams. "The water was nearly
up to our waists and the ship was about at her last. Suddenly one of the
great funnels fell. I sprang aside, endeavoring to pull father with me.
A moment later the funnel was swept overboard and the body of father
went with it.

"I sprang overboard and swam through the ice to a life-raft, and
was pulled aboard. There were five men and one woman on the raft.
Occasionally we were swept off into the sea, but always managed to crawl
back.

"A sailor lighted a cigarette and flung the match carelessly among the
women. Several screamed, fearing they would be set on fire. The sailor
replied: 'We are going to hell anyway and we might as well be cremated
now as then.'"

A huge cake of ice was the means of aiding Emile Portaleppi, of Italy,
in his hairbreadth escape from death when the Titanic went down.
Portaleppi, a second class passenger, was awakened by the explosion of
one of the bulkheads of the ship. He hurried to the deck, strapped a
life-preserver around him and leaped into the sea. With the aid of the
preserver and by holding to a cake of ice he managed to keep afloat
until one of the life-boats picked him up. There were thirty-five other
people in the boat, he said, when he was hauled aboard.

THE COWARD

Somewhere in the shadow of the appalling Titanic disaster slinks--still
living by the inexplicable grace of God--a cur in human shape, to-day
the most despicable human being in all the world.

In that grim midnight hour, already great in history, he found himself
hemmed in by the band of heroes whose watchword and countersign rang out
across the deep--"Women and children first!"

What did he do? He scuttled to the stateroom deck, put on a woman's
skirt, a woman's hat and a woman's veil, and picking his crafty way back
among the brave and chivalric men who guarded the rail of the doomed
ship, he filched a seat in one of the life-boats and saved his skin.

His name is on that list of branded rescued men who were neither picked
up from the sea when the ship went down nor were in the boats under
orders to help get them safe away. His identity is not yet known, though
it will be in good time. So foul an act as that will out like murder.

The eyes of strong men who have read this crowded record of golden
deeds, who have read and re-read that deathless roll of honor of the
dead, are still wet with tears of pity and of pride. This man still
lives. Surely he was born and saved to set for men a new standard by
which to measure infamy and shame.

It is well that there was sufficient heroism on board the Titanic to
neutralize the horrors of the cowardice. When the first order was given
for the men to stand back, there were a dozen or more who pushed forward
and said that men would be needed to row the life-boats and that they
would volunteer for the work.

The officers tried to pick out the ones that volunteered merely for
service and to eliminate those who volunteered merely to save their own
lives. This elimination process however, was not wholly successful.


THE DOOMED MEN

As the ship began to settle to starboard, heeling at an angle of nearly
forty-five degrees, those who had believed it was all right to stick by
the ship began to have doubts, and a few jumped into the sea. They were
followed immediately by others, and in a few minutes there were scores
swimming around. Nearly all of them wore life-preservers. One man, who
had a Pomeranian dog, leaped overboard with it and striking a piece of
wreckage was badly stunned. He recovered after a few minutes and swam
toward one of the life-boats and was taken aboard.

Said one survivor, speaking of the men who remained on the ship. "There
they stood--Major Butt, Colonel Astor waving a farewell to his wife,
Mr. Thayer, Mr. Case, Mr. Clarence Moore, Mr. Widener, all
multimillionaires, and hundreds of other men, bravely smiling at us all.
Never have I seen such chivalry and fortitude. Such courage in the face
of fate horrible to contemplate filled us even then with wonder and
admiration."

Why were men saved? ask: others who seek to make the occasional male
survivor a hissing scorn; and yet the testimony makes it clear that for
a long time during that ordeal the more frightful position seemed to
many to be in the frail boats in the vast relentless sea, and that some
men had to be tumbled into the boats under orders from the officers.
Others express the deepest indignation that 210 sailors were rescued,
the testimony shows that most of these sailors were in the welter of ice
and water into which they had been thrown from the ship's deck when she
sank; they were human beings and so were picked up and saved.


"WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST"

The one alleviating circumstance in the otherwise immitigable tragedy
is the fact that so many of the men stood aside really with out the
necessity for the order, "Women and children first," and insisted that
the weaker sex should first have places in the boats.

There were men whose word of command swayed boards of directors,
governed institutions, disposed of millions. They were accustomed merely
to pronounce a wish to have it gratified. Thousands "posted at their
bidding"; the complexion of the market altered hue when they nodded;
they bought what they wanted, and for one of the humblest fishing smacks
or a dory they could have given the price that was paid to build and
launch the ship that has become the most imposing mausoleum that ever
housed the bones of men since the Pyramids rose from the desert sands.

But these men stood aside--one can see them!--and gave place not merely
to the delicate and the refined, but to the scared Czech woman from the
steerage, with her baby at her breast; the Croatian with a toddler by
her side, coming through the very gate of Death and out of the mouth of
Hell to the imagined Eden of America.

To many of those who went it was harder to go than to stay there on the
vessel gaping with its mortal wounds and ready to go down. It meant that
tossing on the waters they must wait in suspense, hour after hour even
after the lights of the ship were engulfed in appalling darkness, hoping
against hope for the miracle of a rescue dearer to them than their own
lives.

It was the tradition of Anglo-Saxon heroism that was fulfilled in the
frozen seas during the black hours of Sunday night. The heroism was that
of the women who went, as well as of the men who remained!



CHAPTER VII. LEFT TO THEIR FATE

COOLNESS AND HEROISM OF THOSE LEFT TO PERISH--SUICIDE OF
MURDOCK--CAPTAIN SMITH'S END--THE SHIP'S BAND PLAYS A NOBLE HYMN AS THE
VESSEL GOES DOWN

THE general feeling aboard the ship after the boats had left her
sides was that she would not survive her wound, but the passengers who
remained aboard displayed the utmost heroism.

William T. Stead, the famous English journalist, was so litt{l}e alarmed
that he calmly discussed with one of the passengers the probable height
of the iceberg after the Titanic had shot into it.

Confidence in the ability of the Titanic to remain afloat doubtlessly
led many of the passengers to death. The theory that the great ship was
unsinkable remained with hundreds who had entrusted themselves to the
gigantic hulk, long after the officers knew that the vessel could not
survive.

The captain and officers behaved with superb gallantry, and there was
perfect order and discipline among those who were aboard, even after all
hope had been abandoned for the salvation of the ship.

Many women went down, steerage women who were unable to get to the upper
decks where the boats were launched, maids who were overlooked in the
confusion, cabin passengers who refused to desert their husbands or who
reached the decks after the last of the life-boats was gone and the ship
was settling for her final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Narratives of survivors do not bear out the supposition that the final
hours upon the vessel's decks were passed in darkness. They say the
electric lighting plant held out until the last, and that even as they
watched the ship sink, from their places in the floating life-boats, her
lights were gleaming in long rows as she plunged under by the head. Just
before she sank, some of the refugees say, the ship broke in two abaft
the engine room after the bulkhead explosions had occurred.

COLONEL ASTOR'S DEATH


To Colonel Astor's death Philip Mock bears this testimony.

"Many men were hanging on to rafts in the sea. William T. Stead and
Colonel Astor were among them. Their feet and hands froze and they had
to let go. Both were drowned."

The last man among the survivors to speak to Colonel Astor was K.
Whiteman, the ship's barber.

"I shaved Colonel Astor Sunday afternoon," said Whiteman. "He was a
pleasant, affable man, and that awful night when I found myself standing
beside him on the passenger deck, helping to put the women into the
boats, I spoke to him.

"'Where is your life-belt?' I asked him.

"'I didn't think there would be any need of it,' he said.

"'Get one while there is time,' I told him. 'The last boat is gone, and
we are done for.'

"'No,' he said, 'I think there are some life-boats to be launched, and
we may get on one of them.'

"'There are no life-rafts,' I told him, 'and the ship is going to sink.
I am going to jump overboard and take a chance on swimming out and being
picked up by one of the boats. Better come along.'

"'No, thank you,' he said, calmly, 'I think I'll have to stick.'

"I asked him if he would mind shaking hands with me. He said, 'With
pleasure,' gave me a hearty grip, and then I climbed up on the rail and
jumped overboard. I was in the water nearly four hours before one of the
boats picked me up."


CAPTAIN WASHED OVERBOARD

Murdock's last orders were to Quartermaster Moody and a few other petty
officers who had taken their places in the rigid discipline of the ship
and were lowering the boats. Captain Smith came up to him on the bridge
several times and then rushed down again. They spoke to one another only
in monosyllables.

There were stories that Captain Smith, when he saw the ship actually
going down, had committed suicide. There is no basis for such tales. The
captain, according to the testimony of those who were near him almost
until the last, was admirably cool. He carried a revolver in his hand,
ready to use it on anyone who disobeyed orders.

"I want every man to act like a man for manhood's sake," he said, "and
if they don't, a bullet awaits the coward."

With the revolver in his hand--a fact that undoubtedly gave rise to
the suicide theory--the captain moved up and down the deck. He gave the
order for each life-boat to make off and he remained until every boat
was gone. Standing on the bridge he finally called out the order: "Each
man save himself." At that moment all discipline fled. It was the last
call of death. If there had been any hope among those on board before,
the hope now had fled.

The bearded admiral of the White Star Line fleet, with every life-saving
device launched from the decks, was returning to the deck to perform the
sacred office of going down with his ship when a wave dashed over the
side and tore him from the ladder.

The Titanic was sinking rapidly by the head, with the twisting sidelong
motion that was soon to aim her on her course two miles down. Murdock
saw the skipper swept out; but did not move. Captain Smith was but one
of a multitude of lost at that moment. Murdock may have known that the
last desperate thought of the gray mariner was to get upon his bridge
and die in command. That the old man could not have done this may have
had something to do with Murdock's suicidal inspiration. Of that no man
may say or safely guess.

The wave that swept the skipper out bore him almost to the thwart of
a crowded life-boat. Hands reached out, but he wrenched himself away,
turned and swam back toward the ship.

Some say that he said, "Good-bye, I'm going back to the ship."

He disappeared for a moment, then reappeared where a rail was slipping
under water. Cool and courageous to the end, loyal to his duty under the
most difficult circumstances, he showed himself a noble captain, and he
died a noble death.


SAW BOTH OFFICERS PERISH

Quartermaster Moody saw all this, watched the skipper scramble aboard
again onto the submerged decks, and then vanish altogether in a great
billow.

As Moody's eye lost sight of the skipper in this confusion of waters it
again shifted to the bridge, and just in time to see Murdock take his
life. The man's face was turned toward him, Moody said, and he could
not mistake it. There were still many gleaming lights on the ship,
flickering out like little groups of vanishing stars, and with the
clear starshine on the waters there was nothing to cloud or break the
quartermaster's vision.

"I saw Murdock die by his own hand," said Moody, "saw the flash from
his gun, heard the crack that followed the flash and then saw him plunge
over on his face."

Others report hearing several pistol shots on the decks below the
bridge, but amid the groans and shrieks and cries, shouted orders and
all that vast orchestra of sounds that broke upon the air they must have
been faint periods of punctuation

BAND PLAYED ITS OWN DIRGE

The band had broken out in the strains of "Nearer, My God, to Thee,"
some minutes before Murdock lifted the revolver to his head, fired and
toppled over on his face. Moody saw all this in a vision that filled his
brain, while his ears drank in the tragic strain of the beautiful hymn
that the band played as their own dirge, even to the moment when the
waters sucked them down.

Wherever Murdock's eye swept the water in that instant, before he drew
his revolver, it looked upon veritable seas of drowning men and women.
From the decks there came to him the shrieks and groans of the caged and
drowning, for whom all hope of escape was utterly vanished. He evidently
never gave a thought to the possibility of saving himself, his mind
freezing with the horrors he beheld and having room for just one central
idea--swift extinction.

The strains of the hymn and the frantic cries of the dying blended in a
symphony of sorrow.

Led by the green light, under the light of stars, the boats drew away,
and the bow, then the quarter, then the stacks and last the stern of the
marvel ship of a few days before passed beneath the waters. The great
force of the ship's sinking was unaided by any violence of the elements,
and the suction, not so great as had been feared, rocked but mildly the
group of boats now a quarter of a mile distant from it.

Just before the Titanic disappeared from view men and women leaped from
the stern. More than a hundred men, according to Colonel Gracie, jumped
at the last. Gracie was among the number and he and the second officer
were of the very few who were saved.

As the vessel disappeared, the waves drowned the majestic


{illust. caption = DEPTH OF OCEAN WHERE THE TITANIC WENT DOWN

The above etching shows a diagram of the ocean depths between the shore
of Newfoundland (shown at the top to the left, by the heavily shaded
part) to 800 miles out, where the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank.
Over the Great Bank of Newfoundland the greatest depth is about 35
fathoms, or 210 feet. Then there is a sudden drop to 105 fathoms, or
630 feet, and then there is a falling away to 1650 fathoms or 9900 feet,
then 2000 fathoms or 12,000 feet, and about where the Titanic sank 2760
fathoms or 16,560 feet.}


hymn which the musicians played as they went to their watery grave. The
most authentic accounts agree that this hymn was not "Nearer, My God, to
Thee," which it seems had been



{illust. caption = CARPATHIA

The Cunard liner which brought the survivors of the Titanic to New
York.}

{illust. caption = THE HERO WIRELESS OPERATOR OF THE TITANIC

Photograph of Harold...}


played shortly before, but "Autumn," which is found in the Episcopal
hymnal and which fits appropriately the situation on the Titanic in the
last moments of pain and darkness there. One line, "Hold me up in mighty
waters," particularly may have suggested the hymn to some minister
aboard the doomed vessel, who, it has been thought, thereupon asked
the remaining passengers to join in singing the hymn, in a last service
aboard the sinking ship, soon to be ended by death itself.

Following is the hymn:

 God of mercy and compassion!
     Look with pity on my pain:
 Hear a mournful, broken spirit
     Prostrate at Thy feet complain;
 Many are my foes, and mighty;
     Strength to conquer I have none;
 Nothing can uphold my goings
     But Thy blessed Self alone.

 Saviour, look on Thy beloved;
     Triumph over all my foes;
 Turn to heavenly joy my mourning,
     Turn to gladness all my woes;
 Live or die, or work or suffer,
     Let my weary soul abide,
 In all changes whatsoever
     Sure and steadfast by Thy side.
 When temptations fierce assault me,
     When my enemies I find,
 Sin and guilt, and death and Satan,
     All against my soul combined,
 Hold me up in mighty waters,
     Keep my eyes on things above,
 Righteousness, divine Atonement,
     Peace, and everlasting Love.


It was a little lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus, who aroused the Spartans by
his poetry and led them to victory against the foe.

It was the musicians of the band of the Titanic--poor men, paid a few
dollars a week--who played the music to keep up the courage of the souls
aboard the sinking ship.

"The way the band kept playing was a noble thing," says the wireless
operator. "I heard it first while we were working the wireless, when
there was a rag-time tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I
was floating, struggling in the icy water, it was still on deck, playing
'Autumn.' How those brave fellows ever did it I cannot imagine."

Perhaps that music, made in the face of death, would not have satisfied
the exacting critical sense. It may be that the chilled fingers faltered
on the pistons of the cornet or at the valves of the French horn, that
the time was irregular and that by an organ in a church, with a decorous
congregation, the hymns they chose would have been better played and
sung. But surely that music went up to God from the souls of drowning
men, and was not less acceptable than the song of songs no mortal ear
may hear, the harps of the seraphs and the choiring cherubim. Under the
sea the music-makers lie, still in their fingers clutching the broken
and battered means of melody; but over the strident voice of warring
winds and the sound of many waters there rises their chant eternally;
and though the musicians lie hushed and cold at the sea's heart, their
music is heard forevermore.


LAST MOMENTS

That great ship, which started out as proudly, went down to her death
like some grime silent juggernaut, drunk with carnage and anxious to
stop the throbbing of her own heart at the bottom of the sea. Charles H.
Lightoller, second officer of the Titanic, tells the story this way:

"I stuck to the ship until the water came up to my ankles. There had
been no lamentations, no demonstrations either from the men passengers
as they saw the last life-boat go, and there was no wailing or crying,
no outburst from the men who lined the ship's rail as the Titanic
disappeared from sight.

"The men stood quietly as if they were in church. They knew that they
were in the sight of God; that in a moment judgment would be passed
upon them. Finally, the ship took a dive, reeling for a moment, then
plunging. I was sucked to the side of the ship against the grating over
the blower for the exhaust. There was an explosion. It blew me to the
surface again, only to be sucked back again by the water rushing into
the ship

"This time I landed against the grating over the pipes, which furnish a
draught for the funnels, and stuck there. There was another explosion,
and I came to the surface. The ship seemed to be heaving tremendous
sighs as she went down. I found myself not many feet from the ship, but
on the other side of it. The ship had turned around while I was under
the water.

"I came up near a collapsible life-boat and grabbed it. Many men were
in the water near me. They had jumped at the last minute. A funnel fell
within four inches of me and killed one of the swimmers. Thirty clung to
the capsized boat, and a life-boat, with forty survivors in it already,
finally took them off.

"George D. Widener and Harry Elkins Widener were among those who jumped
at the last minute. So did Robert Williams Daniel. The three of them
went down together. Daniel struck out, lashing the water with his arms
until he had made a point far distant from the sinking monster of the
sea. Later he was picked up by one of the passing life-boats.

"The Wideners were not seen again, nor was John B. Thayer, who went down
on the boat. 'Jack' Thayer, who was literally thrown off the Titanic
by an explosion, after he had refused to leave the men to go with his
mother, floated around on a raft for an hour before he was picked up."


AFLOAT WITH JACK THAYER

Graphic accounts of the final plunge of the Titanic were related by two
Englishmen, survivors by the merest chance. One of them struggled for
hours to hold himself afloat on an overturned collapsible life-boat,
to one end of which John B. Thayer, Jr., of Philadelphia, whose father
perished, hung until rescued.

The men gave their names as A. H. Barkworth, justice of the peace of
East Riding, Yorkshire, England, and W. J. Mellers, of Christ Church
Terrace, Chelsea, London. The latter, a young man, had started for this
country with his savings to seek his fortune, and lost all but his life.

Mellers, like Quartermaster Moody, said Captain Smith did not commit
suicide. The captain jumped from the bridge, Mellers declares, and he
heard him say to his officers and crew: "You have done your duty, boys.
Now every man for himself." Mellers and Barkworth, who say their names
have been spelled incorrectly in most of the lists of survivors, both
declare there were three distinct explosions before the Titanic broke in
two, and bow section first, and stern part last, settled with her human
cargo into the sea.

Her four whistles kept up a deafening blast until the explosions,
declare the men. The death cries from the shrill throats of the
blatant steam screechers beside the smokestacks so rent the air that
conversation among the passengers was possible only when one yelled into
the ear of a fellow-unfortunate.

"I did not know the Thayer family well," declared Mr. Barkworth, "but I
had met young Thayer, a clear-cut chap, and his father on the trip. The
lad and I struggled in the water for several hours endeavoring to hold
afloat by grabbing to the sides and end of an overturned life-boat.
Now and again we lost our grip and fell back into the water. I did not
recognize young Thayer in the darkness, as we struggled for our lives,
but I did recall having met him before when we were picked up by a
life-boat. We were saved by the merest chance, because the survivors on
a life-boat that rescued us hesitated in doing so, it seemed, fearing
perhaps that additional burdens would swamp the frail craft.

"I considered my fur overcoat helped to keep me afloat. I had a life
preserver over it, under my arms, but it would not have held me up so
well out of the water but for the coat. The fur of the coat seemed not
to get wet through, and retained a certain amount of air that added to
buoyance. I shall never part with it.

"The testimony of J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star
Line, that he had not heard explosions before the Titanic settled,
indicates that he must have gotten some distance from her in his
life-boat. There were three distinct explosions and the ship broke in
the center. The bow settled headlong first, and the stern last. I was
looking toward her from the raft to which young Thayer and I had clung."


HOW CAPTAIN SMITH DIED

Barkworth jumped, just before the Titanic went down. He said there were
enough life-preservers for all the passengers, but in the confusion many
may not have known where to look for them. Mellers, who had donned a
life-preserver, was hurled into the air, from the bow of the ship by the
force of the explosion, which he believed caused the Titanic to part in
the center.

"I was not far from where Captain Smith stood on the bridge, giving full
orders to his men," said Mellers. "The brave old seaman was crying, but
he had stuck heroically to the last. He did not shoot himself. He
jumped from the bridge when he had done all he could. I heard his final
instructions to his crew, and recall that his last words were: 'You have
done your duty, boys. Now every man for himself.'

"I thought I was doomed to go down with the rest. I stood on the deck,
awaiting my fate, fearing to jump from the ship. Then came a grinding
noise, followed by two others, and I was hurled into the deep. Great
waves engulfed me, but I was not drawn toward the ship, so that I
believe there was little suction. I swam about for more than one hour
before I was picked up by a boat."


A FAITHFUL OFFICER

Charles Herbert Lightoller, previously mentioned, stood by the ship
until the last, working to get the passengers away, and when it appeared
that he had made his last trip he went up high on the officers' quarters
and made the best dive he knew how to make just as the ship plunged down
to the depths. This is an excerpt from his testimony before the Senate
investigating committee:

"What time did you leave the ship?"

"I didn't leave it."

"Did it leave you?"

"Yes, sir."

Children shall hear that episode sung in after years and his own
descendants shall recite it to their bairns. Mr. Lightoller acted as an
officer and gentleman should, and he was not the only one.


A MESSAGE FROM A NOTORIOUS GAMBLER

That Jay Yates, gambler, confidence man and fugitive from justice, known
to the police and in sporting circles as J. H. Rogers, went down with
the Titanic after assisting many women aboard life-boats, became known
when a note, written on a blank page torn from a diary: was delivered to
his sister. Here is a fac-simile of the note:


{illust.}



This note was given by Rogers to a woman he was helping into a
life-boat. The woman, who signed herself "Survivor," inclosed the note
with the following letter.

"You will find note that was handed to me as I was leaving the Titanic.
Am stranger to this man, but think he was a card player. He helped me
aboard a life-boat and I saw him help others. Before we were lowered I
saw him jump into the sea. If picked up I did not recognize him on the
Carpathia. I don't think he was registered on the ship under his right
name."

Rogers' mother, Mrs. Mary A. Yates, an old woman, broke down when she
learned son had perished.

"Thank God I know where he is now," she sobbed. "I have not heard from
him for two years. The last news I had from him he was in London."


FIFTY LADS MET DEATH

Among the many hundreds of heroic souls who went bravely and quietly to
their end were fifty happy-go-lucky youngsters shipped as bell boys
or messengers to serve the first cabin passengers. James Humphreys, a
quartermaster, who commanded life-boat No. 11, told a li{t}tle story
that shows how these fifty lads met death.

Humphreys said the boys were called to their regular posts in the main
cabin entry and taken in charge by their captain, a steward. They were
ordered to remain in the cabin and not get in the way. Throughout the
first hour of confusion and terror these lads sat quietly on their
benches in various parts of the first cabin.

Then, just toward the end when the order was passed around that the ship
was going down and every man was free to save himself, if he kept away
from the life-boats in which the women

{illust. caption = "WHO HATH MEASURED THE WATERS IN THE HOLLOW OF
HIS HAND."--Isaiah XL:xii}


were being taken, the bell boys scattered to all parts of the ship.

Humphreys said he saw numbers of them smoking cigarettes and joking with
the passengers. They seemed to think that their violation of the rule
against smoking while on duty was a sufficient breach of discipline.

Not one of them attempted to enter a life-boat. Not one of them was
saved.


THE HEROES WHO REMAINED

The women who left the ship; the men who remained--there is little to
choose between them for heroism. Many of the women compelled to take to
the boats would have stayed, had it been possible, to share the fate of
their nearest and dearest, without whom their lives are crippled, broken
and disconsolate.

The heroes who remained would have said, with Grenville. "We have only
done our duty, as a man is bound to do." They sought no palms or crowns
of martyrdom. "They also serve who only stand and wait," and their first
action was merely to step aside and give places in the boats to women
and children, some of whom were too young to comprehend or to remember.

There was no debate as to whether the life of a financier, a master
of business, was rated higher in the scale of values than that of an
ignorant peasant mother. A woman was a woman, whether she wore rags
or pearls. A life was given for a life, with no assertion that one was
priceless and the other comparatively valueless.

Many of those who elected to remain might have escaped. "Chivalry" is a
mild appellation for their conduct. Some of the vaunted knights of old
were desperate cowards by comparison. A fight in the open field, or
jousting in the tournament, did not call out the manhood in a man as did
the waiting till the great ship took the final plunge, in the knowledge
that the seas round about were covered with loving and yearning
witnesses whose own salvation was not assured.

When the roll is called hereafter of those who are "purged of pride
because they died, who know the worth of their days," let the names of
the men who went down with the Titanic be found written there in the
sight of God and men.


THE OBVIOUS LESSON

And, whatever view of the accident be taken, whether the moralist shall
use it to point the text of a solemn or denunciatory warning, or whether
the materialist, swinging to the other extreme, scouts any other theory
than that of the "fortuitous concurrence of atoms," there is scarcely a
thinking mortal who has heard of what happened who has not been deeply
stirred, in the sense of a personal bereavement, to a profound humility
and the conviction of his own insignificance in the greater universal
scheme.

Many there are whom the influences of religion do not move, and upon
whose hearts most generous sentiments knock in vain, who still are
overawed and bowed by the magnitude of this catastrophe. No matter what
they believe about it, the effect is the same. The effect is to reduce
a man from the swaggering braggart--the vainglorious lord of what he
sees--the self-made master of fate, of nature, of time, of space, of
everything--to his true microscopic stature in the cosmos. He goes in
tears to put together again the fragments of the few, small, pitiful
things that belonged to him.

          "Though Love may pine, and Reason chafe,
          There came a Voice without reply."


The only comfort, all that can bring surcease of sorrow, is that men
fashioned in the image of their Maker rose to the emergency like heroes,
and went to their grave as bravely as any who have given their lives
at any time in war. The hearts of those who waited on the land, and
agonized, and were impotent to save, have been laid upon the same altars
of sacrifice. The mourning of those who will not be comforted rises from
alien lands together with our own in a common broken intercession. How
little is the 882 feet of the "monster" that we launched compared with
the arc of the rainbow we can see even in our grief spanning the frozen
boreal mist!

          "The best of what we do and are,
          Just God, forgive!"


THE ANCIENT SACRIFICE

And still our work must go on. It is the business of men and women
neither to give way to unavailing grief nor to yield to the crushing
incubus of despair, but to find hope that is at the bottom of
everything, even at the bottom of the sea where that glorious virgin of
the ocean is dying.          "And when she took unto herself a mate
          She must espouse the everlasting sea."


Even so, for any progress of the race, there must be the ancient
sacrifice of man's own stubborn heart, and all his pride. He must
forever "lay in dust life's glory dead." He cannot rise to the height it
was intended he should reach till he has plumbed the depths, till he has
devoured the bread of the bitterest affliction, till he has known the
ache of hopes deferred, of anxious expectation disappointed, of dreams
that are not to be fulfilled this side of the river that waters the
meads of Paradise. There still must be a reason why it is not an unhappy
thing to be taken from "the world we know to one a wonder still," and so
that we go bravely, what does it matter, the mode of our going? It was
not only those who stood back, who let the women and children go to
the boats, that died. There died among us on the shore something of the
fierce greed of bitterness, something of the sharp hatred of passion,
something of the mad lust of revenge and of knife-edge competition.
Though we are not aware of it, perhaps, we are not quite the people that
we were before out of the mystery an awful hand was laid upon us all,
and what we had thought the colossal power of wealth was in a twinkling
shown to be no more than the strength of an infant's little finger, or
the twining tendril of a plant.

          "Lest we forget; lest we forget!"

{"illustration", really "music" Lyrics =

God of mercy and compassion, Look with pity on my pain; Hear a mournful,
broken spirit Prostrate at Thy feet complain; Many are my foes and
mighty; Strength to conquer I have none; Nothing can uphold my goings
But they blessed Self alone. AMEN

{2nd Stanza} Saviour, look on Thy beloved, Triumph over all my foes,
Turn to heavenly joy my mourning, Turn to gladness all my woes; Live
or die, or work or suffer Let my weary soul abide, In all changes
whatsoever, Sure and steadfast by Thy side:

{3rd Stanza} When temptations fierce assault me, When my enemies I find,
Sin and guilt, and death and Satan, All against my soul combined, Hold
me up in mighty waters, Keep my eyes on things above--Rightousness,{sic}
divine atonement Peace and everlasting love,}


{illust. caption = LATITUDE 41.46 NORTH, LONGITUDE 50.14 WEST WHERE
MANHOOD PERISHED NOT}

{illust. caption = LOWERING OF THE LIFE-BOATS FROM THE TITANIC

It is easy to understand why...}

{illust. caption = PASSENGERS LEAVING THE TITANIC IN THE LIFE-BOATS

The agony and despair which possessed the occupants of these boats
as they were carried away from the doomed giant, leaving husbands and
brothers behind, is almost beyond description. It is little wonder that
the strain of these moments, with the physical and mental suffering
which followed during the early morning hours, left many of the women
still hysterical when they reached New York.}



WHERE MANHOOD PERISHED NOT

 Where cross the lines of forty north
     And fifty-fourteen west
 There rolls a wild and greedy sea
     With death upon its crest.
 No stone or wreath from human hands
     Will ever mark the spot
 Where fifteen hundred men went down,
     But Manhood perished not.

 Old Ocean takes but little heed
     Of human tears or woe.
 No shafts adorn the ocean graves,
     Nor weeping willows grow.
 Nor is there need of marble slab
     To keep in mind the spot
 Where noble men went down to death,
     But manhood perished not!

 Those men who looked on death and smiled,
     And trod the crumbling deck,
 Have saved much more than precious lives
     From out that awful wreck.
 Though countless joys and hopes and fears
     Were shattered at a breath,
 'Tis something that the name of Man
     Did not go down to death.

 'Tis not an easy thing to die,
     E'en in the open air,
 Twelve hundred miles from home and friends,
     In a shroud of black despair.
 A wreath to crown the brow of man,
     And hide a former blot
 Will ever blossom o'er the waves
     Where Manhood perished not.

                      HARVEY P. THEW
           {spelling uncertain due to poor printing}



CHAPTER VIII. THE CALL FOR HELP HEARD

THE VALUE OF THE WIRELESS--OTHER SHIPS ALTER THEIR COURSE--RESCUERS ON
THE WAY

"WE have struck an iceberg. Badly damaged. Rush aid."

Seaward and landward, J. G. Phillips, the Titanic's wireless man, had
hurled the appeal for help. By fits and starts--for the wireless was
working unevenly and blurringly--Phillips reached out to the world,
crying the Titanic's peril. A word or two, scattered phrases, now and
then a connected sentence, made up the message that sent a thrill of
apprehension for a thousand miles east, west and south of the doomed
liner.

The early despatches from St. John's, Cape Race, and Montreal, told
graphic tales of the race to reach the Titanic, the wireless appeals
for help, the interruption of the calls, then what appeared to be a
successful conclusion of the race when the Virginian was reported as
having reached the giant liner.


MANY LINES HEAR THE CALL

Other rushing liners besides the Virginian heard the call and became on
the instant something more than cargo carriers and passenger greyhounds.
The big Baltic, 200 miles to the eastward and westbound, turned again
to save life, as she did when her sister of the White Star fleet, the
Republic, was cut down in a fog in January, 1909. The Titanic's mate,
the Olympic, the mightiest of the seagoers save the Titanic herself,
turned in her tracks. All along the northern lane the miracle of the
wireless worked for the distressed and sinking White Star ship. The
Hamburg-American Cincinnati, the Parisian from Glasgow, the North
German Lloyd Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm, the Hamburg-American liners Prinz
Adelbert and Amerika, all heard the C. Q. D. and the rapid, condensed
explanation of what had happened.


VIRGINIAN IN DESPERATE HASTE

But the Virginian was nearest, barely 170 miles away, and was the first
to know of the Titanic's danger. She went about and headed under
forced draught for the spot indicated in one of the last of Phillips'
messages--latitude 41.46 N. and longitude 50.14 W. She is a fast
ship, the Allan liner, and her wireless has told the story of how she
stretched through the night to get up to the Titanic in time. There was
need for all the power of her engines and all the experience and skill
of her captain. The final fluttering Marconigrams that were released
from the Titanic made it certain that the great ship with 2340 souls
aboard was filling and in desperate peril.

Further out at sea was the Cunarder, Carpathia, which left New York
for the Mediterranean on April 13th. Round she went and plunged back
westward to take a hand in saving life. And the third steamship within
short sailing of the Titanic was the Allan liner Parisian away to the
eastward, on her way from Glasgow to Halifax.

While they sped in the night with all the drive that steam could give
them, the Titanic's call reached to Cape Race and the startled operator
there heard at midnight a message which quickly reached New York:

"Have struck an iceberg. We are badly damaged. Titanic latitude 41.46
N., 50.14 W."

Cape Race threw the appeal broadcast wherever his apparatus could carry.

Then for hours, while the world waited for a crumb of news as to the
safety of the great ship's people, not one thing more was known save
that she was drifting, broken and helpless and alone in the midst of a
waste of ice. And it was not until seventeen hours after the Titanic
had sunk that the words came out of the air as to her fate. There was a
confusion and tangle of messages--a jumble of rumors. Good tidings were
trodden upon by evil. And no man knew clearly what was taking place in
that stretch of waters where the giant icebergs were making a mock of
all that the world knew best in ship-building.


TITANIC SENT OUT NO MORE NEWS

It was at 12.17 A. M., while the Virginian was still plunging eastward,
that all communication from the Titanic ceased. The Virginian's
operator, with the Virginian's captain at his elbow, fed the air with
blue flashes in a desperate effort to know what was happening to the
crippled liner, but no message came back. The last word from the Titanic
was that she was sinking. Then the sparking became fainter. The call
was dying to nothing. The Virginian's operator labored over a blur of
signals. It was hopeless. So the Allan ship strove on, fearing that the
worst had happened.

It was this ominous silence that so alarmed the other vessels hurrying
to the Titanic and that caused so much suspense here.



CHAPTER IX. IN THE DRIFTING LIFE-BOATS

SORROW AND SUFFERING--THE SURVIVORS SEE THE TITANIC GO DOWN WITH THEIR
LOVED ONES ON BOARD--A NIGHT OF AGONIZING SUSPENSE--WOMEN HELP TO
ROW--HELP ARRIVES--PICKING UP THE LIFE-BOATS

SIXTEEN boats were in the procession which entered on the terrible hours
of rowing, drifting and suspense. Women wept for lost husbands and sons,
sailors sobbed for the ship which had been their pride. Men choked back
tears and sought to comfort the widowed. Perhaps, they said, other boats
might have put off in another direction. They strove, though none too
sure themselves, to convince the women of the certainty that a rescue
ship would appear.

In the distance the Titanic looked an enormous length, her great bulk
outlined in black against the starry sky, every port-hole and saloon
blazing with light. It was impossible to think anything could be wrong
with such a leviathan, were it not for that ominous tilt downwards in
the bows, where the water was now up to the lowest row of port-holes.
Presently, about 2 A. M., as near as can be determined, those in the
life-boats observed her settling very rapidly with the bows and the
bridge completely under water, and concluded it was now only a question
of minutes before she went. So it proved She slowly tilted straight on
end with the stern vertically upwards, and as she did, the lights in
the cabins and saloons, which until then had not flickered for a moment,
died out, came on again for a single flash, and finally went altogether.
At the same time the machinery roared down through the vessel with a
rattle and a groaning that could be heard for miles, the weirdest sound
surely that could be heard in the middle of the ocean, a thousand miles
away from land. But this was not yet quite the end.


TITANIC STOOD UPRIGHT

To the amazement of the awed watchers in the life-boats, the doomed
vessel remained in that upright position for a time estimated at five
minutes; some in the boat say less, but it was certainly some minutes
that at least 150 feet of the Titanic towered up above the level of the
sea and loomed black against the sky.


SAW LAST OF BIG SHIP

Then with a quiet, slanting dive she disappeared beneath the waters, and
the eyes of the helpless spectators had looked for the last time upon
the gigantic vessel on which they had set out from Southampton. And
there was left to the survivors only the gently heaving sea, the
life-boats filled with men and women in every conceivable condition of
dress and undress, above the perfect sky of brilliant stars with not a
cloud, all tempered with a bitter cold that made each man and woman long
to be one of the crew who toiled away with the oars and kept themselves
warm thereby--a curious, deadening; bitter cold unlike anything they had
felt before.


"ONE LONG MOAN"

And then with all these there fell on the ear the most appalling
noise that human being has ever listened to--the cries of hundreds of
fellow-beings struggling in the icy cold water, crying for help with a
cry that could not be answered.

Third Officer Herbert John Pitman, in charge of one of the boats,
described this cry of agony in his testimony before the Senatorial
Investigating Committee, under the questioning of Senator Smith:

"I heard no cries of distress until after the ship went down," he said.

"How far away were the cries from your life-boat?"

"Several hundred yards, probably, some of them."

"Describe the screams."

"Don't, sir, please! I'd rather not talk about it."

"I'm sorry to press it, but what was it like? Were the screams
spasmodic?"

"It was one long continuous moan."

The witness said the moans and cries continued an hour.

Those in the life-boats longed to return and pick up some of the poor
drowning souls, but they feared this would mean swamping the boats and a
further loss of life.

Some of the men tried to sing to keep the women from hearing the cries,
and rowed hard to get away from the scene of the wreck, but the memory
of those sounds will be one of the things the rescued will find it
difficult to forget.

The waiting sufferers kept a lookout for lights, and several times it
was shouted that steamers' lights were seen, but they turned out to be
either a light from another boat or a star low down on the horizon. It
was hard to keep up hope.


WOMEN TRIED TO COMMIT SUICIDE

"Let me go back--I want to go back to my husband--I'll jump from the
boat if you don't," cried an agonized voice in one life-boat.

"You can do no good by going back--other lives will be lost if you try
to do it. Try to calm yourself for the sake of the living. It may be
that your husband will be picked up somewhere by one of the fishing
boats."

The woman who pleaded to go back, according to Mrs. Vera Dick, of
Calgary, Canada, later tried to throw herself from the life-boat. Mrs.
Dick, describing the scenes in the life-boats, said there were half
a dozen women in that one boat who tried to commit suicide when they
realized that the Titanic had gone down.

"Even in Canada, where we have such clear nights," said Mrs. Dick, "I
have never seen such a clear sky. The stars were very bright and we
could see the Titanic plainly, like a great hotel on the water. Floor
after floor of the lights went out as we watched. It was horrible,
horrible. I can't bear to think about it. From the distance, as we rowed
away, we could hear the band playing 'Nearer, My God to Thee.'

"Among the life-boats themselves, however, there were scenes just as
terrible, perhaps, but to me nothing could outdo the tragic grandeur
with which the Titanic went to its death. To realize it, you would
have to see the Titanic as I saw it the day we set sail--with the
flags flying and the bands playing. Everybody on board was laughing and
talking about the Titanic being the biggest and most luxurious boat on
the ocean and being unsinkable. To think of it then and to think of it
standing out there in the night, wounded to death and gasping for life,
is almost too big for the imagination.


SCANTILY CLAD WOMEN IN LIFE-BOATS

"The women on our boat were in nightgowns and bare feet--some of
them--and the wealthiest women mingled with the poorest immigrants. One
immigrant woman kept shouting: 'My God, my poor father! He put me in
this boat and would not save himself. Oh, why didn't I die, why didn't I
die? Why can't I die now?'

"We had to restrain her, else she would have jumped over-board. It was
simply awful. Some of the men apparently had said they could row just to
get into the boats. We paid no attention to cowardice, however. We were
all busy with our own troubles. My heart simply bled for the women who
were separated from their husbands.

"The night was frightfully cold, although clear. We had to huddle
together to keep warm. Everybody drank sparingly of the water and
ate sparingly of the bread. We did not know when we would be saved.
Everybody tried to remain cool, except the poor creatures who could
think of nothing but their own great loss. Those with the most brains
seemed to control themselves best."


PHILADELPHIA WOMEN HEROINES

How Mrs. George D. Widener, whose husband and son perished after kissing
her good-bye and helping her into one of the boats, rowed when exhausted
seamen were on the verge of collapse, was told by Emily Geiger, maid of
Mrs. Widener, who was saved with her.

The girl said Mrs. Widener bravely toiled throughout the night and
consoled other women who had broken down under the strain.

Mrs. William E. Carter and Mrs. John B. Thayer were in the same
life-boat and worked heroically to keep it free from the icy menace.
Although Mrs. Thayer's husband remained aboard the Titanic and sank with
it, and although she had no knowledge of the safety of her son until
they met, hours later, aboard the Carpathia, Mrs. Thayer bravely labored
at the oars throughout the night.

In telling of her experience Mrs. Carter said:

"When I went over the side with my children and got in the boat there
were no seamen in it. Then came a few men, but there were oars with no
one to use them. The boat had been filled with passengers, and there was
nothing else for me to do but to take an oar.

"We could see now that the time of the ship had come. She was sinking,
and we were warned by cries from the men above to pull away from
the ship quickly. Mrs. Thayer, wife of the vice-president of the
Pennsylvania Railroad, was in my boat, and she, too, took an oar.

"It was cold and we had no time to clothe ourselves with warm overcoats.
The rowing warmed me. We started to pull away from the ship. We could
see the dim outlines of the decks above, but we could not recognize
anybody."


MANY WOMEN ROWING

Mrs. William R. Bucknell's account of the part women played in the
rowing is as follows:

"There were thirty-five persons in the boat in which the captain placed
me. Three of these were ordinary seamen, supposed to manage the boat,
and a steward.

"One of these men seemed to think that we should not start away from
the sinking ship until it could be learned whether the other boats would
accommodate the rest of the women. He seemed to think that; more could
be crowded into ours, if necessary.

"'I would rather go back and go down with the ship than leave under
these circumstances.' he cried.

"The captain shouted to him to obey orders and to pull for a little
light that could just be discerned miles in the distance. I do not know
what this little light was. It may have been a passing fishing vessel,
which, of course could not know our predicament. Anyway, we never
reached it.

"We rowed all night, I took an oar and sat beside the Countess de
Rothes. Her maid had an our and so did mine. The air was freezing cold,
and it was not long before the only man that appeared to know anything
about rowing commenced to complain that his hands were freezing: A woman
back of him handed him a shawl from about her shoulders.

"As we rowed we looked back at the lights of the Titanic. There was
not a sound from her, only the lights began to get lower and lower,
and finally she sank. Then we heard a muffled explosion and a dull roar
caused by the great suction of water.

"There was not a drop of water on our boat. The last minute before our
boat was launched Captain Smith threw aboard a bag of bread. I took
the precaution of taking a good drink of water before we started, so I
suffered no inconvenience from thirst."

Mrs. Lucien Smith, whose young husband perished, was another heroine. It
is related by survivors that she took turns at the oars, and then, when
the boat was in danger of sinking, stood ready to plug a hole with her
finger if the cork stopper became loose.

In another boat Mrs. Cornell and her sister, who had a slight knowledge
of rowing, took turns at the oars, as did other women.

The boat in which Mrs. J. J. Brown, of Denver, Col., was saved contained
only three men in all, and only one rowed. He was a half-frozen seaman
who was tumbled into the boat at the last minute. The woman wrapped him
in blankets and set him at an oar to start his blood. The second man was
too old to be of any use. The third was a coward.

Strange to say, there was room in this boat for ten other people. Ten
brave men would have received the warmest welcome of their lives if they
had been there. The coward, being a quartermaster and the assigned head
of the boat, sat in the stern and steered. He was terrified, and the
women had to fight against his pessimism while they tugged at the oars.

The women sat two at each oar. One held the oar in place, the other did
the pulling. Mrs. Brown coached them and cheered them on. She told them
that the exercise would keep the chill out of their veins, and she spoke
hopefully of the likelihood that some vessel would answer the wireless
calls. Over the frightful danger of the situation the spirit of this
woman soared.


THE PESSIMIST

And the coward sat in his stern seat, terrified, his tongue loosened
with fright. He assured them there was no chance in the world. He had
had fourteen years' experience, and he knew. First, they would have
to row one and a half miles at least to get out of the sphere of the
suction, if they did not want to go down. They would be lost, and nobody
would ever find them.

"Oh, we shall be picked up sooner or later," said some of the braver
ones. No, said the man, there was no bread in the boat, no water; they
would starve--all that big boatload wandering the high seas with nothing
to eat, perhaps for days.

"Don't," cried Mrs. Brown. "Keep that to yourself, if you feel that way.
For the sake of these women and chil-dren, be a man. We have a smooth
sea and a fighting chance. Be a man."

But the coward only knew that there was no compass and no chart aboard.
They sighted what they thought was a fishing smack on the horizon,
showing dimly in the early dawn. The man at the rudder steered toward
it, and the women bent to their oars again. They covered several miles
in this way--but the smack faded into the distance. They could not see
it any longer. And the coward said that everything was over.

They rowed back nine weary miles. Then the coward thought they must stop
rowing, and lie in the trough of the waves until the Carpathia should
appear. The women tried it for a few moments, and felt the cold creeping
into their bodies. Though exhausted from the hard physical labor they
thought work was better than freezing.

"Row again!" commanded Mrs. Brown.

"No, no, don't," said the coward.

"We shall freeze," cried several of the women together. "We must row. We
have rowed all this time. We must keep on or freeze."

When the coward still demurred, they told him plainly and once for all
that if he persisted in wanting them to stop rowing, they were going to
throw him overboard and be done with him for good. Something about the
look in the eye of that Mississippi-bred oarswoman, who seemed such a
force among her fellows, told him that he had better capitulate. And he
did.

COUNTESS ROTHES AN EXPERT OARSWOMAN

Miss Alice Farnam Leader, a New York physician, escaped from the Titanic
on the same boat which carried the Countess Rothes. "The countess is an
expert oarswoman," said Doctor Leader, "and thoroughly at home on the
water. She practically took command of our boat when it was found that
the seaman who had been placed at the oars could not row skilfully.
Several of the women took their place with the countess at the oars and
rowed in turns, while the weak and unskilled stewards sat quietly in one
end of the boat."



MEN COULD NOT ROW

"With nothing on but a nightgown I helped row one of the boats for three
hours," said Mrs. Florence Ware, of Bristol, England.

"In our boat there were a lot of women, a steward and a fireman. None of
the men knew anything about managing a small boat, so some of the women
who were used to boats took charge.

"It was cold and I worked as hard as I could at an oar until we were
picked up. There was nothing to eat or drink on our boat."


DEATHS ON THE LIFE-BOATS

"The temperature must have been below freezing," testified another
survivor, "and neither men nor women in my boat were warmly clothed.
Several of them died. The officer in charge of the life-boat decided it
was better to bury the


{illust. caption = SURVIVORS OF THE GREAT MARINE DISASTER

The first authentic photograph,...}


{illust. caption = Copyright by Campbell Studio. N. Y.

COLONEL AND MRS. JOHN JACOB ASTOR

Mrs. Astor, nee Miss Madeline Force, was rescued. Colonel Astor who
bravely refused to take a place in the life-boats, went down with the
Titanic.}


bodies. Soon they were weighted so they would sink and were put
overboard. We could also see similar burials taking place from other
life-boats that were all around us."


GAMBLERS WERE POLITE

In one boat were two card sharps. With the same cleverness that enabled
them to win money on board they obtained places in the boats with the
women.

In the boat with the gamblers were women in their night-gowns and women
in evening dress. None of the boats were properly equipped with food,
but all had enough bread and water to keep the rescued from starving
until the expected arrival of help.

To the credit of the gamblers who managed to escape, it should be said
that they were polite and showed the women every courtesy. All they
wanted was to be sure of getting in a boat. That once accomplished, they
reverted to their habitual practice of politeness and suavity. They were
even willing; to do a little manual labor, refusing to let women do any
rowing.

The people on that particular boat were a sad group. Fathers had kissed
their daughters good-bye and husbands had parted from their wives. The
card sharps, however philosophized wonderfully about the will of the
Almighty and how strange His ways. They said that one must be prepared
for anything; that good always came from evil, and that every cloud had
a silvery lining{.}

"Who knows?" said one. "It may be that everybody on board will be
saved." Another added: "Our duty is to the living. You women owe it to
your relatives and friends not to allow this thing to wreck your reason
or undermine your health." And they took pains to see that all the women
who were on the life-boat had plenty of covering to keep them from the
icy blasts of the night.


HELP IN SIGHT

The survivors were in the life-boats until about 5.30 A. M. About 3 A.
M. faint lights appeared in the sky and all rejoiced to see what was
supposed to be the coming dawn, but after watching for half an hour
and seeing no change in the intensity of the light, the disappointed
sufferers realized it was the Northern Lights. Presently low down on
the horizon they saw a light which slowly resolved itself into a double
light, and they watched eagerly to see if the two lights would separate
and so prove to be only two of the boats, or whether these lights would
remain together, in which case they should expect them to be the lights
of a rescuing steamer.

To the inexpressible joy of all, they moved as one! Immediately the
boats were swung around and headed for the lights. Someone shouted:
"Now, boys, sing!" and everyone not too weak broke into song with "Row
for the shore, boys." Tears came to the eyes of all as they realized
that safety was at hand. The song was sung, but it was a very poor
imitation of the real thing, for quavering voices make poor songs. A
cheer was given next, and that was better--you can keep in tune for a
cheer.

THE "LUCKY THIRTEEN"

"Our rescuer showed up rapidly, and as she swung round we saw her cabins
all alight, and knew she must be a large steamer. She was now motionless
and we had to row to her. Just then day broke, a beautiful quiet dawn
with faint pink clouds just above the horizon, and a new moon whose
crescent just touched the horizon. 'Turn your money over, boys,' said
our cheery steersman, 'that is, if you have any with you,' he added.

"We laughed at him for his superstition at such a time, but he countered
very neatly by adding: 'Well, I shall never say again that 13 is an
unlucky number; boat 13 has been the best friend we ever had.' Certainly
the 13 superstition is killed forever in the minds of those who escaped
from the Titanic in boat 13.

"As we neared the Carpathia we saw in the dawning light what we thought
was a full-rigged schooner standing up near her, and presently behind
her another, all sails set, and we said: 'They are fisher boats from the
Newfoundland bank and have seen the steamer lying to and are standing by
to help.' But in another five minutes the light shone pink on them
and we saw they were icebergs towering many feet in the air, huge,
glistening masses, deadly white, still, and peaked in a way that had
easily suggested a schooner. We glanced round the horizon and there were
others wherever the eye could reach. The steamer we had to reach was
surrounded by them and we had to make a detour to reach her, for between
her and us lay another huge berg."

A WONDERFUL DAWN

Speaking of the moment when the Carpathia was sighted. Mrs. J. J. Brown,
who had cowed the driveling quartermaster, said:

"Then, knowing that we were safe at last, I looked about me. The most
wonderful dawn I have ever seen came upon us. I have just returned from
Egypt. I have been all over the world, but I have never seen anything
like this. First the gray and then the flood of light. Then the sun came
up in a ball of red fire. For the first time we saw where we were. Near
us was open water, but on every side was ice. Ice ten feet high was
everywhere, and to the right and left and back and front were icebergs.
Some of them were mountain high. This sea of ice was forty miles wide,
they told me. We did not wait for the Carpathia to come to us, we rowed
to it. We were lifted up in a sort of nice little sling that was lowered
to us. After that it was all over. The passengers of the Carpathia
were so afraid that we would not have room enough that they gave us
practically the whole ship to ourselves."

It had been learned that some of the passengers, in fact all of the
women passengers of the Titanic who were rescued, refer to "Lady
Margaret," as they called Mrs. Brown as the strength of them all.


TRANSFERRING THE RESCUED

Officers of the Carpathia report that when they reached the scene of
the Titanic's wreck there were fifty bodies or more floating in the
sea. Only one mishap attended the transfer of the rescued from the
life-boats. One large collapsible life-boat, in which thirteen persons
were seated, turned turtle just as they were about to save it, and all
in it were lost.



THE DOG HERO

Not the least among the heroes of the Titanic disaster was Rigel, a big
black Newfoundland dog, belonging to the first officer, who went down
with the ship. But for Rigel the fourth boat picked up might have been
run down by the Carpathia. For three hours he swam in the icy water
where the Titanic went down, evidently looking for his master, and was
instrumental in guiding the boatload of survivors to the gangway of the
Carpathia.

Jonas Briggs, a seaman abroad the Carpathia, now has Rigel and told
the story of the dog's heroism. The Carpathia was moving slowly about,
looking for boats, rafts or anything which might be afloat. Exhausted
with their efforts, weak from lack of food and exposure to the cutting
wind and terror-stricken, the men and women in the fourth boat had
drifted under the Carpathia's starboard bow. They were dangerously close
to the steamship, but too weak to shout a warning loud enough to reach
the bridge.

The boat might not have been seen were it not for the sharp barking of
Rigel, who was swimming ahead of the craft, and valiantly announcing his
position. The barks attracted the attention of Captain Rostron; and he
went to the starboard end of the bridge to see where they came from and
saw the boat. He immediately ordered the engines stopped, and the boat
came alongside the starboard gangway.

Care was taken to get Rigel aboard, but he appeared little affected
by his long trip through the ice-cold water. He stood by the rail and
barked until Captain Rostron called Briggs and had him take the dog
below.


A THRILLING ACCOUNT OF RESCUE

Mr. Wallace Bradford, of San Francisco, a passenger aboard the
Carpathia, gave the following thrilling account of the rescue of the
Titanic's passengers.

"Since half-past four this morning I have experienced one of those
never-to-be-forgotten circumstances that weighs heavy on my soul and
which shows most awfully what poor things we mortals are. Long before
this reaches you the news will be flashed that the Titanic has gone down
and that our steamer, the Carpathia, caught the wireless message when
seventy-five miles away, and so far we have picked up twenty boats
estimated to contain about 750 people.

"None of us can tell just how many, as they have been hustled to various
staterooms and to the dining saloons to be warmed up. I was awakened by
unusual noises and imagined that I smelled smoke. I jumped up and looked
out of my port-hole, and saw a huge iceberg looming up like a rock off
shore. It was not white, and I was positive that it was a rock, and the
thought flashed through my mind, how in the world can we be near a rock
when we are four days out from New York in a southerly direction and in
mid-ocean.

"When I got out on deck the first man I encountered told me that the
Titanic had gone down and we were rescuing the passengers. The first two
boats from the doomed vessel were in sight making toward us. Neither of
them was crowded. This was accounted for later by the fact that it was
impossible to get many to leave the steamer, as they would not believe
that she was going down. It was a glorious, clear morning and a quiet
sea. Off to the starboard was a white area of ice plain, from whose even
surface rose mammoth forts, castles and pyramids of solid ice almost as
real as though they had been placed there by the hand of man.

"Our steamer was hove to about two and a half miles from the edge of
this huge iceberg. The Titanic struck about 11.20 P. M. and did not go
down until two o'clock. Many of the passengers were in evening dress
when they came aboard our ship, and most of these were in a most
bedraggled condition. Near me as I write is a girl about eighteen years
old in a fancy dress costume of bright colors, while in another seat
near by is a women in a white dress trimmed with lace and covered with
jaunty blue flowers.

"As the boats came alongside after the first two all of them contained
a very large proportion of women. In fact, one of the boats had women
at the oars, one in particular containing, as near as I could estimate,
about forty-five women and only about six men. In this boat two women
were handling one of the oars. All of the engineers went down with the
steamer. Four bodies have been brought aboard. One is that of a fireman,
who is said to have been shot by one of the officers because he refused
to obey orders. Soon after I got on deck I could, with the aid of my
glasses, count seven boats headed our way, and they continued to come up
to half past eight o'clock. Some were in sight for a long time and
moved very slowly, showing plainly that the oars were being handled by
amateurs or by women.

"No baggage of any kind was brought by the survivors. In fact, the only
piece of baggage that reached the Carpathia from the Titanic is a small
closed trunk about twenty-four inches square, evidently the property of
an Irish female immigrant. While some seemed fully dressed, many of
the men having their overcoats and the women sealskin and other coats,
others came just as they had jumped from their berths, clothed in their
pajamas and bath robes."


THE SORROW OF THE LIVING

Of the survivors in general it may be said that they escaped death and
they gained life. Life is probably sweet to them as it is to everyone,
but what physical and mental torture has been the price of life to those
who were brought back to land on the Carpathia--the hours in life-boats,
amid the crashing of ice, the days of anguish that have succeeded, the
horrors of body and mind still experienced and never to be entirely
absent until death affords them its relief.

The thought of the nation to-day is for the living. They need our
sympathy, our consolation more than do the dead, and, perhaps, in the
majority of the cases they need our protecting care as well.



CHAPTER X. ON BOARD THE CARPATHIA

AID FOR THE SUFFERING AND HYSTERICAL--BURYING THE DEAD--VOTE OF
THANKS TO CAPTAIN ROSTRON OF THE CARPATHIA--IDENTIFYING THOSE
SAVED--COMMUNICATING WITH LAND--THE PASSAGE TO NEW YORK.

IF the scenes in the life-boats were tear-bringing, hardly less so
was the arrival of the boats at the Carpathia with their bands of
terror-stricken, grief-ridden survivors, many of them too exhausted to
know that safety was at hand. Watchers on the Carpathia were moved to
tears.

"The first life-boat reached the Carpathia about half-past five o'clock
in the morning," recorded one of the passengers on the Carpathia. "And
the last of the sixteen boats was unloaded before nine o'clock. Some of
the life-boats were only half filled, the first one having but two men
and eleven women, when it had accommodations for at least forty. There
were few men in the boats. The women were the gamest lot I have ever
seen. Some of the men and women were in evening clothes, and others
among those saved had nothing on but night clothes and raincoats."

After the Carpathia had made certain that there were no more passengers
of the Titanic to be picked up, she threaded her way out of the ice
fields for fifty miles. It was dangerous work, but it was managed
without trouble.


AID FOR THE SUFFERING AND HYSTERICAL

The shrieks and cries of the women and men picked up in life-boats by
the Carpathia were horrible. The women were clothed only in night robes
and wrappers. The men were in their night garments. One was lifted on
board entirely nude. All the passengers who could bear nourishment were
taken into the dining rooms and cabins by Captain Rostron and given food
and stimulants. Passengers of the Carpathia gave up their berths and
staterooms to the survivors.

As soon as they were landed on the Carpathia many of the women became
hysterical, but on the whole they behaved splendidly. Men and women
appeared to be stunned all day Monday, the full force of the disaster
not reaching them until Tuesday night. After being wrapped up in
blankets and filled with brandy and hot coffee, the first thoughts were
for their husbands and those at home. Most of them imagined that their
husbands had been picked up by other vessels, and they began flooding
the wireless rooms with messages. It was almost certain that those who
were not on board the Carpathia had gone down to death.

One of the most seriously injured was a woman who had lost both her
children. Her limbs had been severely torn; but she was very patient.

WOMEN SEEKING NEWS

In the first cabin library women of wealth and refinement mingled their
grief and asked eagerly for news of the possible arrival of a belated
boat, or a message from other steamers telling of the safety of their
husbands. Mrs. Henry B. Harris, wife of a New York theatrical manager,
checked her tears long enough to beg that some message of hope be sent
to her father-in-law. Mrs. G. Thorne, Miss Marie Young, Mrs Emil Taussig
and her daughter, Ruth, Mrs. Martin Rothschild, Mrs. William Augustus
Spencer, Mrs. J. Stewart White and Mrs. Walter M. Clark were a few
of those who lay back, exhausted, on the leather cushions and told in
shuddering sentences of their experiences.

Mrs. John Jacob Astor and the Countess of Rothes had been taken to
staterooms soon after their arrival on shipboard.

Before noon, at the captain's request, the first cabin passengers of the
Titanic gathered in the saloon and the passengers of other classes in
corresponding places on the rescue ship. Then the collecting of names
was begun by the purser and the stewards. A second table was served in
both cabins for the new guests, and the Carpathia's second cabin, being
better filled than its first, the second class arrivals had to be sent
to the steerage.


TEARS THEIR ONLY RELIEF

Mrs. Jacques Futrelle, wife of the novelist, herself a writer of note,
sat dry eyed in the saloon, telling her friends that she had given up
hope for her husband. She joined with the rest in inquiries as to the
chances of rescue by another ship, and no one told her what soon came
to be the fixed opinion of the men--that all those saved were on the
Carpathia.

"I feel better," Mrs. Futrelle said hours afterward, "for I can cry
now."

Among the men conversation centered on the accident and the
responsibility for it. Many expressed the belief that the Titanic, in
common with other vessels, had had warning of the ice packs, but that in
the effort to establish a record on the maiden run sufficient heed had
not been paid to the warnings.

"God knows I'm not proud to be here," said a rich New York man. "I got
on a boat when they were about to lower it and when, from delays below,
there was no woman to take the vacant place. I don't think any man who
was saved is deserving of censure, but I realize that, in contrast with
those who went down, we may be viewed unfavorably." He showed a picture
of his baby boy as he spoke.


PITIFUL SCENES OF GRIEF

As the day passed the fore part of the ship assumed some degree of order
and comfort, but the crowded second sabin and rear decks gave forth the
incessant sound of lamentation. A bride of two months sat on the floor
and moaned her widowhood. An Italian mother shrieked the name of her
lost son.

A girl of seven wept over the loss of her Teddy bear and two dolls,
while her mother, with streaming eyes, dared not tell the child that her
father was lost too, and that the money for which their home in England
had been sold had gone down with him. Other children clung to the necks
of the fathers who, because carrying them, had been permitted to take
the boats.

In the hospital and the public rooms lay, in blankets, several others
who had been benumbed by the water. Mrs. Rosa Abbott, who was in the
water for hours, was restored during the day. K. Whiteman, the Titanic's
barber, who declared he was blown off the ship by the second of the two
explosions after the crash, was treated for bruises. A passenger, who
was thoroughly ducked before being picked up, caused much amusement on
this ship, soon after the doctors were through with him, by demanding a
bath.


SURVIVORS AID THE DESTITUTE

Storekeeper Prentice, the last man off the Titanic to reach this ship,
was also soon over the effects of his long swim in the icy waters into
which he leaped from the poop deck.

The physicians of the Carpathia were praised, as was Chief Steward
Hughes, for work done in making the arrivals comfortable and averting
serious illness.

Monday night on the Carpathia was one of rest. The wailing and sobbing
of the day were hushed as widows and orphans slept. Tuesday, save for
the crowded condition of the ship, matters took somewhat their normal
appearance.

The second cabin dining room had been turned into a hospital to care
for the injured, and the first, second and third class dining rooms were
used for sleeping rooms at night for women, while the smoking rooms were
set aside for men. All available space was used, some sleeping in chairs
and some on the floor, while a few found rest in the bathrooms.

Every cabin had been filled, and women and children were sleeping on the
floors in the dining saloon, library and smoking rooms. The passengers
of the Carpathia had divided their clothes with the shipwrecked ones
until they had at least kept warm. It is true that many women had to
appear on deck in kimonos and some in underclothes with a coat thrown
over them, but their lives had been spared and they had not thought of
dress. Some children in the second cabin were entirely without clothes,
but the women had joined together, and with needles and thread they
could pick up from passenger to passenger, had made warm clothes out of
the blankets belonging to the Carpathia.


WOMEN BEFRIENDED ONE ANOTHER

The women aboard the Carpathia did what they could by word and act to
relieve the sufferings of the rescued. Most of the survivors were in
great need of clothing, and this the women of the Carpathia supplied to
them as long as their surplus stock held out.

J. A. Shuttleworth, of Louisville, Ky., befriended Mrs. Lucien Smith,
whose husband went down with the Titanic. Mrs. Smith was formerly Miss
Eloise Hughes, daughter of Representative and Mrs. James A. Hughes, of
Huntington, W. Va., and was on her wedding trip. Mr. Shuttleworth asked
her if there wasn't something he could do for her. She said that all the
money she had was lost on the Titanic, so Mr. Shuttleworth gave her $500


DEATHS ON THE CARPATHIA

Two of the rescued from the Titanic died from shock and exposure before
they reached the Carpathia, and another died a few minutes after being
taken on board. The dead were W. H. Hoyte, first cabin; Abraham Hormer,
third class, and S. C. Sirbert, steward, and they were buried at sea the
morning of April 15th, latitude 41.14 north, longitude 51.24 west. P.
Lyon, able seaman, died and was buried at sea the following morning.

An assistant steward lost his mind upon seeing one of the Titanic's
rescued firemen expire after being lifted to the deck of the Carpathia.

An Episcopal bishop and a Catholic priest from Montreal read services of
their respective churches over the dead.

The bodies were sewed up in sacks, heavily weighted at the feet, and
taken to an opening in the side of the ship on the lower deck not far
above the water line. A long plank tilted at one end served as the
incline down which the weighted sacks slid into the sea.

"After we got the Titanic's passengers on board our ship," said one of
the Carpathia's officers, "it was a question as to where we should take
them. Some said the Olympic would come out and meet us and take them on
to New York, but others said they would die if they had to be lowered
again into small boats to be taken up by another, so we finally turned
toward New York, delaying the Carpathia's passengers eight days in
reaching Gibraltar."


SURVIVORS WATCH NEW BOATS

There were several children on board, who had lost their parents--one
baby of eleven months with a nurse who, coming on board the Carpathia
with the first boat, watched with eagerness and sorrow for each incoming
boat, but to no avail. The parents had gone down.

There was a woman in the second cabin who lost seven children out of
ten, and there were many other losses quite as horrible.


MR. ISMY "PITIABLE SIGHT"

Among the rescued ones who came on board the Carpathia was the president
of the White Star Line.

"Mr. Ismay reached the Carpathia in about the tenth life-boat," said an
officer. "I didn't know who he was, but afterward heard the others of
the crew discussing his desire to get something to eat the minute he put
his foot on deck. The steward who waited on him, McGuire, from London,
says Mr. Ismay came dashing into the dining room, and throwing himself
in a chair, said: 'Hurry, for God's sake, and get me something to eat;
I'm starved. I don't care what it costs or what it is; bring it to me.'

"McGuire brought Mr. Ismay a load of stuff and when he had finished
it, he handed McGuire a two dollar bill. 'Your money is no good on this
ship,' McGuire told him. 'Take it.'


{illust. caption = DIAGRAM OF THE TITANIC'S ARRANGEMENT AND EQUIPMENT

The Titanic was far and away the largest and finest vessel ever built,
excepting only her sister-ship, the Olympic. Her dimensions were:
Length, 882 1/2 feet; Beam, 92 feet, Depth (from keel to tops of
funnels), 175 feet Tonnage, 45,000. Her huge hull, divided into thirty
watertight compartments, contained nine steel decks, and provided
accommodation for 2,500 passengers, besides a crew of 890.}

{illust. caption = UPPER DECK OF THE TITANIC, LOOKING FORWARD}


insisted Mr. Ismay, shoving the bill in McGuire's hand. I am well able
to afford it. I will see to it that the boys of the Carpathia are well
rewarded for this night's work.' This promise started McGuire making
inquiries as to the identity of the man he had waited on. Then we
learned that he was Mr. Ismay. I did not see Mr. Ismay after the first
few hours. He must have kept to his cabin."

A passenger on the Carpathia said there was no wonder that none of the
wireless telegrams addressed to Mr. Ismay were answered until the one
that he sent yesterday afternoon to his line, the White Star.

"Mr. Ismay was beside himself," said this woman passenger, "and on
most of the voyage after we had picked him up he was being quieted with
opiates on orders of the ship's doctor.


FIVE DOGS AND ONE PIG SAVED

"Five women saved their pet dogs, carrying them in their arms. Another
woman saved a little pig, which she said was her mascot. Though her
husband is an Englishman and she lives in England she is an American and
was on her way to visit her folks here. How she cared for the pig aboard
ship I do not know, but she carried it up the side of the ship in a big
bag. I did not mind the dogs so much, but it seemed to me to be too much
when a pig was saved and human beings went to death.

"It was not until noon on Monday that we cleared the last of the ice,
and Monday night a dense fog came up and continued until the following
morning, then a strong wind, a heavy sea, a thunderstorm and a dense fog
Tuesday night, caused some uneasiness among the more unnerved, the fog
continuing all of Tuesday.

"A number of whales were sighted as the Carpathia was clearing the last
of the ice, one large one being close by, and all were spouting like
geysers."


VOTE OF THANKS TO CARPATHIA

"On Tuesday afternoon a meeting of the uninjured survivors was called in
the main saloon for the purpose of devising means of assisting the more
unfortunate, many of whom had lost relatives and all their personal
belongings, and thanking Divine Providence for their deliverance.
The meeting was called to order and Mr. Samuel Goldenberg was elected
chairman. Resolutions were then passed thanking the officers, surgeons,
passengers and crew of the Carpathia for their splendid services in
aiding the rescued and like resolutions for the admirable work done by
the officers, surgeons and crew of the Titanic.

"A committee was then appointed to raise funds on board the Carpathia to
relieve the immediate wants of the destitute and assist them in reaching
their destinations and also to present a loving cup to the officers of
the Carpathia and also a loving cup to the surviving officers of the
Titanic.

"Mr. T. G. Frauenthal, of New York, was made chairman of the Committee
on Subscriptions.

"A committee, consisting of Mrs. J. J. Brown, Mrs William Bucknell and
Mrs. George Stone, was appointed to look after the destitute. There
was a subscription taken up and up to Wednesday the amount contributed
totaled $15,000.

"The work of the crew on board the Carpathia in rescuing was most noble
and remarkable, and these four days that the ship has been overcrowded
with its 710 extra passengers could not have been better handled. The
stewards have worked with undying strength--although one was overcome
with so much work and died and was put to his grave at sea.

"I have never seen or felt the benefits of such royal treatment. I have
heard the captain criticised because he did not answer telegrams, but
all that I can say is that he showed us every possible courtesy, and if
we had been on our own boats, having paid our fares there, we could not
have had better food or better accommodations.

"Men who had paid for the best staterooms on the Carpathia left their
rooms so that we might have them. They fixed up beds in the smoking
rooms, and mattresses everywhere. All the women who were rescued
were given the best staterooms, which were surrendered by the regular
passengers. None of the regular passengers grumbled because their trip
to Europe was interrupted, nor did they complain that they were put to
the inconvenience of receiving hundreds of strangers.

"The women on board the Carpathia were particularly kind. It shows that
for every cruelty of nature there is a kindness, for every misfortune
there is some goodness. The men and women took up collections on board
for the rescued steerage passengers. Mrs. Astor, I believe, contributed
$2000, her check being cashed by the Carpathia. Altogether something
like $15,000 was collected and all the women were provided with
sufficient money to reach their destination after they were landed in
New York."

Under any other circumstances the suffering would have been intolerable.
But the Good Samaritans on the Carpathia gave many women heart's-ease.

The spectacle on board the Carpathia on the return trip to New York at
times was heartrending, while at other times those on board were quite
cheerful.



CHAPTER XI. PREPARATIONS ON LAND TO RECEIVE THE SUFFERERS

POLICE ARRANGEMENTS--DONATIONS OF MONEY AND SUPPLIES--HOSPITALS AND
AMBULANCES MADE READY--PRIVATE HOUSES THROWN OPEN--WAITING FOR THE
CARPATHIA TO ARRIVE--THE SHIP SIGHTED!

NEW YORK CITY, touched to the heart by the great ocean calamity and
desiring to do what it could to lighten the woes and relieve the
sufferings of the pitiful little band of men and women rescued from the
Titanic, opened both its heart and its purse.

The most careful and systematic plans were made for the reception and
transfer to homes, hotels or institutions of the Titanic's survivors.
Mayor Gaynor, with Police Commissioner Waldo, arranged to go down the
bay on the police boat Patrol, to come up with the Carpathia and take
charge of the police arrangements at the pier.

In anticipation of the enormous number that would, for a variety of
reasons, creditable or otherwise, surge about the Cunard pier at the
coming of the Carpathia, Mayor Gaynor and the police commissioner had
seen to it that the streets should be rigidly sentineled by continuous
lines of policemen Under Inspector George McClusky, the man of most
experience, perhaps, in handling large crowds, there were 200 men,
including twelve mounted men and a number in citizens' clothes. For two
blocks to the north, south and east of the docks lines were established
through which none save those bearing passes from the Government and the
Cunard Line could penetrate.

With all arrangements made that experience or information could suggest,
the authorities settled down to await the docking of the Carpathia. No
word had come to either the White Star Line or the Cunard Line, they
said, that any of the Titanic's people had died on that ship or that
bodies had been recovered from the sea, but in the afternoon Mayor
Gaynor sent word to the Board of Coroners that it might be well for
some of that body to meet the incoming ship. Coroners Feinberg and
Holtzhauser with Coroner's Physician Weston arranged to go down the
bay on the Patrol, while Coroner Hellenstein waited at the pier. An
undertaker was notified to be ready if needed. Fortunately there was no
such need.


EVERY POSSIBLE MEASURE THOUGHT OF

Every possible measure of relief for the survivors that could be thought
of by officials of the city, of the Federal Government, by the heads of
hospitals and the Red Cross and relief societies was arranged for.
The Municipal Lodging House, which has accommodations for 700 persons,
agreed to throw open its doors and furnish lodging and food to any of
the survivors as long as they should need it. Commissioner of Charities
Drummond did not know, of course, just how great the call would be for
the services of his department. He went to the Cunard pier to direct his
part of the work in person. Meanwhile he had twenty ambulances ready
for instant movement on the city's pier at the foot of East Twenty-sixth
Street. They were ready to take patients to the reception hospital
connected with Bellevue or the Metropolitan Hospital on Blackwell's
Island. Ambulances from the Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn were also
there to do their share. All the other hospitals in the city stood ready
to take the Titanic's people and those that had ambulances promised to
send them. The Charities ferryboat, Thomas S. Brennan, equipped as a
hospital craft, lay off the department pier with nurses and physicians
ready to be called to the Cunard pier on the other side of the city.
St. Vincent's Hospital had 120 beds ready, New York Hospital twelve,
Bellevue and the reception hospital 120 and Flower Hospital twelve.

The House of Shelter maintained by the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant
Aid Society announced that it was able to care for at least fifty
persons as long as might be necessary. The German Society of New York,
the Irish Immigrant Society, the Italian Society, the Swedish Immigrant
Society and the Young Men's Christian Association were among the
organizations that also offered to see that no needy survivor would go
without shelter.

Mrs. W. A. Bastede, whose husband is a member of the staff of St. Luke's
Hospital, offered to the White Star Line the use of the newly opened
ward at St. Luke's, which will accommodate from thirty to sixty persons.
She said the hospital would send four ambulances with nurses and doctors
and that she had collected clothing enough for fifty persons. The line
accepted her offer and said that the hospital would be kept informed as
to what was needed. A trustee of Bellevue also called at the White Star
offices to offer ambulances. He said that five or six, with two or three
doctors and nurses on each, would be sent to the pier if required.

Many other hospitals as well as individuals called at the mayor's
office, expressing willingness to take in anybody that should be sent to
them. A woman living in Fiftieth Street just off Fifth Avenue wished
to put her home at the disposal of the survivors. D. H. Knott, of 102
Waverley Place, told the mayor that he could take care of 100 and give
them both food and lodging at the Arlington, Holly and Earl Hotels.
Commissioner Drummond visited the City Hall and arranged with the
mayor the plans for the relief to be extended directly by the city. Mr.
Drummond said that omnibuses would be provided to transfer passengers
from the ship to the Municipal Lodging House.


MRS. VANDERBILT'S EFFORTS

Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr., spent the day telephoning to her friends,
asking them to let their automobiles be used to meet the Carpathia and
take away those who needed surgical care. It was announced that as a
result of Mrs. Vanderbilt's efforts 100 limousine automobiles and all
the Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive automobile buses would be at the
Cunard pier.

Immigration Commissioner Williams said that he would be at the pier when
the Carpathia came in. There was to be no inspection of immigrants at
Ellis Island. Instead, the commissioner sent seven or eight inspectors
to the pier to do their work there and he asked them to do it with the
greatest possible speed and the least possible bother to the shipwrecked
aliens. The immigrants who had no friends to meet them were to be
provided for until their cases could be disposed of. Mr. Williams
thought that some of them who had lost everything might have to be sent
back to their homes. Those who were to be admitted to the United States
were to be cared for by the Women's Relief Committee.


RED CROSS RELIEF

Robert W. de Forest, chairman of the Red Cross Relief Committee of the
Charity Organization Society, after conferring with Mayor Gaynor, said
that in addition to an arrangement that all funds received by the
mayor should be paid to Jacob H. Schiff, the New York treasurer of the
American Red Cross, the committee had decided that it could turn over
all the immediate relief work to the Women's Relief Committee.

The Red Cross Committee announced that careful plans had been made to
provide for every possible emergency.

The emergency committee received a telegram that Ernest P. Bicknell,
director of the American Red Cross, was coming from Washington. The Red
Cross Emergency Relief Committee was to have several representatives at
the pier to look out for the passengers on the Carpathia. Mr. Persons
and Dr. Devine were to be there and it was planned to have others.

The Salvation Army offered, through the mayor's office, accommodation
for thirty single men at the Industrial Home, 533 West Forty-eighth
Street, and for twenty others at its hotel, 18 Chatham Square. The
army's training school at 124 West Fourteenth Street was ready to take
twenty or thirty survivors. R. H. Farley, head of the White Star Line's
third class department, said that the line would give all the steerage
passengers railroad tickets to their destination.

Mayor Gaynor estimated that more than 5000 persons could be accommodated
in quarters offered through his orders. Most of these offers of course
would have to be rejected. The mayor also said that Colonel Conley of
the Sixty-ninth Regiment offered to turn out his regiment to police the
pier, but it was thought that such service would be unnecessary.


CROWDS AT THE DOCKS

Long before dark on Thursday night a few people passed the police lines
and with a yellow card were allowed to go on the dock; but reports had
been published that the Carpathia would not be in till midnight, and by
8 o'clock there were not more than two hundred people on the pier. In
the next hour the crowd with passes trebled in number. By 9 o'clock the
pier held half as many as it could comfortably contain. The early crowd
did not contain many women relatives of the survivors. Few nervous
people could be seen, but here and there was a woman, usually supported
by two male escorts, weeping softly to herself.

On the whole it was a frantic, grief-crazed crowd. Laborers rubbed
shoulders with millionaires.

The relatives of the rich had taxicabs waiting outside the docks. The
relatives of the poor went there on foot in the rain, ready to take
their loved ones.

A special train was awaiting Mrs. Charles M. Hays, widow of the
president of the Grand Trunk Railroad. A private car also waited Mrs.
George D. Widener.


EARLY ARRIVALS AT PIER

Among the first to arrive at the pier was a committee from the Stock
Exchange, headed by R. H. Thomas, and composed of Charles Knoblauch, B.
M. W. Baruch, Charles Holzderber and J. Carlisle. Mr. Thomas carried
a long black box which contained $5000 in small bills, which was to
be handed out to the needy steerage survivors of the Titanic as they
disembarked.

With the early arrivals at the pier were the relatives of Frederick
White, who was not reported among the survivors, though Mrs. White
was; Harry Mock, who came to look for a brother and sister; and Vincent
Astor, who arrived in a limousine with William A. Dobbyn, Colonel
Astor's secretary, and two doctors. The limousine was kept waiting
outside to take Mrs. Astor to the Astor home on Fifth Avenue.

EIGHT LIMOUSINE CARS

The Waldorf-Astoria had sent over eight limousine car to convey to the
hotel these survivors:

Mrs. Mark Fortune and three daughters, Mrs. Lucien P. Smith, Mrs. J.
Stewart White, Mrs. Thornton Davidson, Mrs. George C. Douglass, Mrs.
George D. Widener and maid, Mrs. George Wick, Miss Bonnell, Miss E.
Ryerson, Mrs. Susan P. Ryerson, Mrs. Arthur Ryerson, Miss Mary Wick, the
Misses Howell, Mrs. John P. Snyder and Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Bishop.


THIRTY-FIVE AMBULANCES AT THE PIER

At one time there were thirty-five ambulances drawn up; outside the
Cunard pier. Every hospital in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx was
represented. Several of the ambulances came from as far north as the
Lebanon Hospital, in the Bronx, and the Brooklyn Hospital, in Brooklyn.

Accompanying them were seventy internes and surgeons from the staffs of
the hospitals, and more than 125 male and female nurses.

St. Vincent's sent the greatest number of ambulances, at one time, eight
of them from this hospital being in line at the pier.

Miss Eva Booth, direct head of the Salvation Army, was at the pier,
accompanied by Miss Elizabeth Nye and a corps of her officers, ready
to aid as much as possible. The Sheltering Society and various other
similar organizations also were represented, all ready to take care of
those who needed them.

An officer of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, N. G. N. Y., offered the White
Star Line officials, the use of the regiment's armory for any of the
survivors.

Mrs. Thomas Hughes, Mrs. August Belmont and Mgrs. Lavelle and McMahon,
of St. Patrick's Cathedral, together with a score of black-robed Sisters
of Charity, representing the Association of Catholic Churches, were
on the pier long before the Carpathia was made fast, and worked
industriously in aiding the injured and ill.

The Rev. Dr. William Carter, pastor of the Madison Avenue Reformed
Church, was one of those at the pier with a private ambulance awaiting
Miss Sylvia Caldwell, one of the survivors, who is known in church
circles as a mission worker in foreign fields


FREE RAILROAD TRANSPORTATION

The Pennsylvania Railroad sent representatives to the pier, who said
that the railroad had a special train of nine cars in which it would
carry free any passenger who wanted to go immediately to Philadelphia
or points west. The Pennsylvania also had eight taxicabs at the pier for
conveyance of the rescued to the Pennsylvania Station, in Thirty-third
Street.

Among those who later arrived at the pier before the Carpathia docked
were P. A. B. Widener, of Philadelphia, two women relatives of J. B.
Thayer, William Harris, Jr., the theatrical man, who was accompanied by
Dr Dinkelspiel, and Henry Arthur Jones, the playwright.

RELATIVES OF SAVED AND LOST

Commander Booth, of the Salvation Army, was there especially to meet
Mrs. Elizabeth Nye and Mrs. Rogers Abbott, both Titanic survivors. Mrs.
Abbott's two sons were supposed to be among the lost. Miss Booth had
received a cablegram from London saying that other Salvation Army people
were on the Titanic. She was eager to get news of them.

Also on the pier was Major Blanton, U. S. A., stationed at Washington,
who was waiting for tidings of Major Butt, supposedly at the instance of
President Taft.

Senator William A. Clark and Mrs. Clark were also in the company. Dr.
John R. MacKenty was waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Henry S. Harper. Ferdinand
W. Roebling and Carl G. Roebling, cousins of Washington A. Roebling,
Jr., whose name is among the list of dead, went to the pier to see what
they could learn of his fate.

J. P. Morgan, Jr., arrived at the pier about half an hour before the
Carpathia docked. He said he had many friends on the Titanic and was
eagerly awaiting news of all of them.

Fire Commissioner Johnson was there with John Peel, of Atlanta, Gal, a
brother of Mrs. Jacques Futrelle. Mrs. Futrelle has a son twelve years
old in Atlanta, and a daughter Virginia, who has been in school in
the North and is at present with friends in this city, ignorant of her
father's death.


A MAN IN HYSTERICS

There was one man in that sad waiting company who startled those near
him about 9 o'clock by dancing across the pier and back. He seemed to be
laughing, but when he was stopped it was found that he was sobbing. He
said that he had a relative on the Titanic and had lost control of his
nerves.

H. H. Brunt, of Chicago, was at the gangplank waiting for A. Saalfeld,
head of the wholesale drug firm of Sparks, White & Co., of London, who
was coming to this country on the Titanic on a business trip and whose
life was saved.


WAITING FOR CARPATHIA

During the afternoon and evening tugboats, motor boats and even sailing
craft, had been waiting off the Ambrose Light for the appearance of the
Carpathia.

Some of the waiting craft contained friends and anxious relatives of the
survivors and those reported as missing.

The sea was rough and choppy, and a strong east wind was blowing. There
was a light fog, so that it was possible to see at a distance of only a
few hundred yards. This lifted later in the evening.

First to discover the incoming liner with her pitiful cargo was one
of the tugboats. From out of the mist there loomed far out at sea the
incoming steamer.


RESCUE BOAT SIGHTED

"Liner ahead!" cried the lookout on the tug to the captain.

"She must be the Carpathia," said the captain, and then he turned the
nose of his boat toward the spot on t he horizon.

Then the huge black hull and one smokestack could be distinguished.

"It's the Carpathia," said the captain. "I can tell her by the stack."

The announcement sent a thrill through those who heard it. Here, at the
gate of New York, was a ship whose record for bravery and heroic work
would be a famuliar{sic} name in history.


{illust. caption = Copyright by G. V. Buck. MRS. LUCIEN P. SMITH

Formerly Miss Eloise Hughes, daughter of Representative and Mrs. James
A. Hughes, of West Virginia. Mrs. Smith and her husband were passengers
on the Titanic. Mrs. Smith was saved, but her husband went to a watery
grave. Mr. and Mrs. Smith were married only a few months ago.}


{illust. caption = MAJOR ARCHIBALD BUTT

Military Aide to President Taft. Of Major Butt, who was one of the
victims of the Titanic, one of the survivors said: "Major Butt was the
real leader in all of that rescue work. He made the men stand back and
helped the women and children into the boats. He was surely one of God's
noblemen."}



CHAPTER XII. THE TRAGIC HOME-COMING

THE CARPATHIA REACHES NEW YORK--AN INTENSE AND DRAMATIC
MOMENT--HYSTERICAL REUNIONS AND CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENTS AT THE
DOCK--CARING FOR THE SUFFERERS--FINAL REALIZATION THAT ALL HOPE FOR
OTHERS IS FUTILE--LIST OF SURVIVORS--ROLL OF THE DEAD

IT was a solemn moment when the Carpathia heaved in sight. There
she rested on the water, a blur of black--huge, mysterious,
awe-inspiring--and yet withal a thing to send thrills of pity and then
of admiration through the beholder.

It was a few minutes after seven o'clock when she arrived at the
entrance to Ambrose Channel. She was coming fast steaming at better than
fifteen knots an hour, and she was sighted long before she was expected.
Except for the usual side and masthead lights she was almost dark, only
the upper cabins showing a glimmer here and there.

Then began a period of waiting, the suspense of which proved almost too
much for the hundreds gathered there to greet friends and relatives or
to learn with certainty at last that those for whom they watched would
never come ashore.

There was almost complete silence on the pier. Doctors and nurses,
members of the Women's Relief Committee, city and government officials,
as well as officials of the line, moved nervously about.

Seated where they had been assigned beneath the big customs letters
corresponding to the initials of the names of the survivors they came to
meet, sat the mass of 2000 on the pier.

Women wept, but they wept quietly, not hysterically, and the sound of
the sobs made many times less noise than the hum and bustle which is
usual on the pier among those awaiting an incoming liner.

Slowly and majestically the ship slid through the water, still bearing
the details of that secret of what happened and who perished when the
Titanic met her fate.

Convoying the Carpathia was a fleet of tugs bearing men and women
anxious to learn the latest news. The Cunarder had been as silent for
days as though it, too, were a ship of the dead. A list of survivors
had been given out from its wireless station and that was all. Even the
approximate time of its arrival had been kept a secret.


NEARING PORT

There was no response to the hail from one tug, and as others closed in,
the steamship quickened her speed a little and left them behind as she
swung up the channel.

There was an exploding of flashlights from some of the tugs, answered
seemingly by sharp stabs of lightning in the northwest that served to
accentuate the silence and absence of light aboard the rescue ship. Five
or six persons, apparently members of the crew or the ship's officers,
were seen along the rail; but otherwise the boat appeared to be
deserted.

Off quarantine the Carpathia slowed down and, hailing the immigration
inspection boat, asked if the health officer wished to board. She
was told that he did, and came to a stop while Dr. O'Connell and two
assistants climbed on board. Again the newspaper men asked for some
word of the catastrophe to the Titanic, but there was no answer, and the
Carpathia continued toward her pier.

As she passed the revenue cutter Mohawk and the derelict destroyer
Seneca anchored off Tompkinsville the wireless on the Government vessels
was seen to flash, but there was no answering spark from the Carpathia.
Entering the North River she laid her course close to the New Jersey
side in order to have room to swing into her pier.

By this time the rails were lined with men and women. They were very
silent. There were a few requests for news from those on board and a few
answers to questions shouted from the tugs.

The liner began to slacken her speed, and the tugboat soon was
alongside. Up above the inky blackness of the hull figures could be made
out, leaning over the port railing, as though peering eagerly at the
little craft which was bearing down on the Carpathia.

Some of them, perhaps, had passed through that inferno of the deep sea
which sprang up to destroy the mightiest steamship afloat.

"Carpathia, ahoy!" was shouted through a megaphone.

There was an interval of a few seconds, and then, "Aye, aye," came the
reply.

"Is there any assistance that can be rendered?" was the next question.

"Thank you, no," was the answer in a tone that carried emotion with it.
Meantime the tugboat was getting nearer and nearer to the Carpathia, and
soon the faces of those leaning over the railing could be distinguished.


TALK WITH SURVIVORS

More faces appeared, and still more.

A woman who called to a man on the tugboat was asked? "Are you one the
Titanic survivors?"

"Yes," said the voice, hesitatingly.

"Do you need help?"

"No," after a pause.

"If there is anything you want done it will be attended to."

"Thank you. I have been informed that my relatives will meet me at the
pier."

"Is it true that some of the life-boats sank with the Titanic?"

"Yes. There was some trouble in manning them. They were not far enough
away from her."

All of this questioning and receiving replies was carried on with the
greatest difficulty. The pounding of the liner's engines, the washing of
the sea, the tugboat's engines, made it hard to understand the woman's
replies.


ALL CARED FOR ON BOARD

"Were the women properly cared for after the crash?" she was asked.

"Oh, yes," came the shrill reply. "The men were brave--very brave." Here
her voice broke and she turned and left the railing, to reappear a few
moments later and cry:

"Please report me as saved."

"What name?" was asked. She shouted a name that could not be understood,
and, apparently believing that it had been, turned away again and
disappeared.

"Nearly all of us are very ill," cried another woman. Here several other
tugboats appeared, and those standing at the railing were besieged with
questions.

"Did the crash come without warning?" a voice on one of the smaller
boats megaphoned.

"Yes," a woman answered. "Most of us had retired. We saved a few of our
belongings."

"How long did it take the boat to sink?" asked the voice.


TITANIC CREW HEROES

"Not long," came the reply? "The crew and the men were very brave. Oh,
it is dreadful--dreadful to think of!"

"Is Mr. John Jacob Astor on board?"

"No."

"Did he remain on the Titanic after the collision?"

"I do not know."

Questions of this kind were showered at the few survivors who stood at
the railing, but they seemed too confused to answer them intelligibly,
and after replying evasively to some they would disappear.


RUSHES ON TO DOCK

"Are you going to anchor for the night?" Captain Rostron was asked by
megaphone as his boat approached Ambrose Light. It was then raining
heavily.

"No," came the reply. "I am going into port. There are sick people on
board."

"We tried to learn when she would dock," said Dr. Walter Kennedy, head
of the big ambulance corps on the mist-shrouded pier, "and we were told
it would not be before midnight and that most probably it would not be
before dawn to-morrow. The childish deception that has been practiced
for days by the people who are responsible for the Titanic has been
carried up to the very moment of the landing of the survivors."

She proceeded past the Cunard pier, where 2000 persons were waiting
her, and steamed to a spot opposite the White Star piers at Twenty-first
Street.

The ports in the big inclosed pier of the Cunard Line were opened, and
through them the waiting hundreds, almost frantic with anxiety over what
the Carpathia might reveal, watched her as with nerve-destroying leisure
she swung about in the river, dropping over the life-boats of the
Titanic that they might be taken to the piers of the White Star Line.

THE TITANIC LIFE-BOATS

It was dark in the river, but the lowering away of the life-boats
could be seen from the Carpathia's pier, and a deep sigh arose from the
multitude there as they caught this first glance of anything associated
with the Titanic.

Then the Carpathia started for her own pier. As she approached it the
ports on the north side of pier 54 were closed that the Carpathia might
land there, but through the two left open to accommodate the forward
and after gangplanks of the big liner the watchers could see her
looming larger and larger in the darkness till finally she was directly
alongside the pier.

As the boats were towed away the picture taking and shouting of
questions began again. John Badenoch, a buyer for Macy & Co., called
down to a representative of the firm that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Isidor
Straus were among the rescued on board the Carpathia. An officer of
the Carpathia called down that 710 of the Titanic's passengers were on
board, but refused to reply to other questions.

The heavy hawsers were made fast without the customary shouting of
ship's officers and pier hands. From the crowd on the pier came a long,
shuddering murmur. In it were blended sighs and hundreds of whispers.
The burden of it all was: "Here they come."


ANXIOUS MEN AND WOMEN

About each gangplank a portable fence had been put in place, marking
off some fifty feet of the pier, within which stood one hundred or more
customs officials. Next to the fence, crowded close against it, were
anxious men and women, their gaze strained for a glance of the first
from the ship, their mouths opened to draw their breaths in spasmodic,
quivering gasps, their very bodies shaking with suppressed excitement,
excitement which only the suspense itself was keeping in subjection.

These were the husbands and wives, children, parents, sweethearts and
friends of those who had sailed upon the Titanic on its maiden voyage.

They pressed to the head of the pier, marking the boats of the wrecked
ship as they dangled at the side of the Carpathia and were revealed in
the sudden flashes of the photographers upon the tugs. They spoke
in whispers, each group intent upon its own sad business. Newspaper
writers, with pier passes showing in their hat bands, were everywhere.

A sailor hurried outside the fence and disappeared, apparently on a
mission for his company. There was a deep-drawn sigh as he walked away,
shak

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