Titanic, First Accounts Read online

  PENGUIN CLASSICS DELUXE EDITION

  TITANIC, FIRST ACCOUNTS

  TIM MALTIN has been studying the Titanic for twenty-five years and is the author of 101 Things You Thought You Knew About The Titanic . . . But Didn’t! He is currently working on a National Geographic film and book about his ground-breaking Titanic research, which will be released in 2012. Tim works in London and lives in Wiltshire, England.

  MAX ELLIS, originally trained as a precision engineer, is a professional illustrator based in London. He is the winner of the British Illustration (AOI) award for humor, and his clients include Advertising Age, Maxim, and Wired magazines.

  NICHOLAS WADE is the grandson of Titanic survivor Lawrence Beesley and is the author of The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures and Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors.

  Titanic,

  First Accounts

  Edited with an Introduction by

  TIM MALTIN

  Afterword by

  NICHOLAS WADE

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

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  First published in Penguin Books 2012

  Introduction and selection copyright © Tim Maltin, 2012

  Afterword copyright © Nicholas Wade, 2012

  All rights reserved

  “The Sinking of the Titanic Seen from a Lifeboat” from The Loss of the Titanic: How I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic by Lawrence Beesley, published by Amberley Publishing, 2011. Reprinted by permission.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Titanic, first accounts / edited with an introduction by Tim Maltin; afterword by Nicholas Wade.

  p. cm. — (Penguin classics deluxe edition)

  ISBN 978-1-101-58750-8

  1. Titanic (Steamship) 2. Shipwrecks—North Atlantic Ocean. 3. Titanic (Steamship)—Pictorial works. I. Maltin, Tim.

  G530.T6T584 2012

  910.9163'4—dc23

  2011047511

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  Contents

  Introduction by TIM MALTIN

  A Note on the Texts

  TITANIC CLASSICS

  Lawrence Beesley’s The Loss of the Titanic

  Chapter IV. “The Sinking of the Titanic Seen from a Lifeboat”

  Archibald Gracie’s The Truth About the Titanic

  Chapter I. The Last Day Aboard Ship

  Chapter II. Struck by an Iceberg

  Chapter III. The Foundering of the Titanic

  Chapter IV. Struggling in the Water for Life

  Chapter V. All Night on Bottom of Half-Submerged Upturned Boat

  Chapter VI. The Port Side: Women and Children First

  Chapter VII. Starboard Side: Women First, but Men when There Were No Women

  U.S. SENATE AND BRITISH INQUIRIES AND MARCONI REPORT

  Daniel Buckley, US Inquiry (Day 13)

  John Collins, US Inquiry (Day 7)

  Charles Joughin, British Inquiry (Day 6)

  Harold S. Bride, Report to his Employer, Marconi Co., April 27, 1912

  NEWSPAPER FIRST ACCOUNTS

  Harold S. Bride, New York Times, April 19, 1912

  Laura Cribb, New York Evening Journal, April 19, 1912

  Hugh Woolner, New York Sun, April 19, 1912

  Margaret Brown, Newport Herald, May 28 & 29, 1912

  William T. Sloper, Hartford Times, April 19, 1912

  Vera Dick, Washington Post, April 19, 1912

  Walter Nichols, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 19, 1912

  THE TRAGIC HOME-COMING

  Logan Marshall, Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters

  Chapter XV: Jack Thayer’s Own Story of the Wreck

  Chapter XVI: Incidents Related by James McGough

  Chapter XI: Preparations on Land to Receive the Sufferers

  Chapter XII: The Tragic Home-Coming

  Chapter XXI: Searching for the Dead

  1912–2012 A SURVIVOR AND THE CENTENNIAL

  Lawrence Beesley, New York Times, April 29, 1912

  Lawrence Beesley, New York Times, May 8, 1912

  Afterword by NICHOLAS WADE

  Introduction

  This book is as much for people who know a lot about the Titanic disaster as it is for those who know very little about it. This is because, for both experts and newcomers, if you want to know what really happened the incredible night the Titanic sank, you need to ask the people who were there. But the last Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, died in 2009, aged ninety-seven, and she was only nine weeks old when the Titanic sank. In order to know what really happened on Titanic, all we have now is the recorded evidence of eyewitnesses.

  Many of the most important of these eyewitness accounts were written or dictated by people who were there in 1912, immediately after their rescue. Titanic’s Assistant Saloon Steward Walter Nichols was even still wearing the pajamas in which he was saved, as he dictated his account to his sister. These first accounts provide the most accurate picture of what really happened that night and what it was like to be a passenger or crew member on the Titanic before, during, and after the sinking.

  Titanic sank at 2:20 A.M. on April 15, 1912, on her maiden voyage. Under a perfect canopy of stars, more than 1,500 people drowned or froze to death that morning in the flat calm water of the North Atlantic. She was the latest in technology and contained within her steel walls a veritable Noah’s Ark of nationalities, people from all different walks of life. But after Titanic had departed the scene that night, only the fundamentals remained: The stars above and men, women, and children struggling and dying in the black water below.

  Although there are a few full-length accounts, many are in the form of private letters written by survivors aboard the rescue ship Carpathia or interviews given by survivors to the newspapers after they arrived in New York.
The evidence of 150 survivors is also recorded in the transcripts of the exhaustive American and British public inquiries into the Titanic disaster conducted in 1912.

  This book draws on all of these sources. We begin with “The Sinking of the Titanic Seen from a Lifeboat,” the fourth chapter from second-class passenger Lawrence Beesley’s The Loss of the Titanic, written in 1912. Beesley gives us the most beautiful description of that terrible night, and his account immediately places his reader right on the spot, watching Titanic sinking. Beesley’s is the most accessible full-length survivor account, written by a thirty-four-year-old man on his first voyage across the Atlantic. Beesley was a Cambridge scholar and later became the science master at Dulwich College in London. Indeed, at age seventy-nine, he taught my uncle—then twelve—at the Northwood School of Coaching in Middlesex, in 1956. It was Beesley’s scientific account of the Titanic disaster that inspired me to look more deeply into its true causes, and his comment that the stars seemed to be flashing messages across the sky to each other was an important clue in explaining why the Titanic and the nearby Californian failed to communicate with each other by Morse lamp. Similarly, his description of the stars that night appearing to be cut in half by the horizon and throwing long beams of light along the sea to the survivors proved to be a useful description of the abnormal refraction or miraging present on the horizon that night, which had fatal consequences for the Titanic.

  Beesley’s account is followed by the complete text of The Truth about the Titanic, written by Colonel Archibald Gracie in 1912, before his death in December of that year from illnesses compounded by his traumatic experiences on the Titanic, which haunted him until the day he died. Gracie was swept off the deck by a wave caused by Titanic’s sinking and then sucked down by the giant ship, but his strength and physical fitness allowed him to escape onto the top of an upturned lifeboat, where he barely survived the freezing night, before being rescued by another of Titanic’s lifeboats and finally delivered to the welcoming decks of the Carpathia.

  Archibald Gracie IV was the great-grandson of Archibald Gracie, a Scottish-born shipping magnate and early American businessman and merchant in New York City and Virginia whose spacious home, Gracie Mansion, now serves as the residence of the mayor of New York City. Coincidentally, one of Gracie IV’s fellow travelers on the Titanic was John Jacob Astor IV, the richest man in the world and great-grandson of frequent Gracie Mansion visitor and personal friend of Gracie I, John Jacob Astor.

  Fifty-four years old when the Titanic sank, first-class passenger Archibald Gracie IV was a real estate dealer, author, and military historian. Following completion of his book The Truth About Chickamauga, about one of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War, Gracie decided he needed to relax and took a trip to Europe. Leaving his wife and daughter at home, he travelled eastbound on the Oceanic, where he made friends with one of the ship’s officers, Herbert Pitman, who was later third officer on the Titanic.

  Boarding at Southampton for his return passage on the Titanic, Gracie travelled as a first-class passenger in cabin C 51 on ticket number 113780, which cost him £28 10s. Several months before, he had undergone an operation in America but was in surprisingly good health. Before she knew her father had been saved, his daughter, Edith, was quoted as follows in the New York Times:

  “I hardly know what to say or think,” said Miss Gracie this morning. “Why, only yesterday I received a letter from father, which he addressed to me from Southampton, England. He told me in the letter that he would be home in a few days, and I was awaiting word from mother as to whether we should both meet the Titanic or not. . . . My father, who was operated on several months ago, went to Europe to recuperate. He had regained his health, and by the tenor of his letter anticipated surprising us by the wonders his trip had worked in building up his constitution.”

  Archibald Gracie IV died on December 4, 1912—officially from a diabetic coma—and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, New York. His obituary in the New York Times the following day stated:

  After the Carpathia had brought the Titanic survivors to New York Col. Gracie did nothing to banish the tragedy from his thoughts. On the contrary, he spent the succeeding months in correspondence with other survivors, gathering data for his book, The Truth about the Titanic. The events of the night of the wreck were constantly on his mind. The manuscript of his work on the subject had finally been completed and sent to the printers when his last illness came. In his last hours the memories of the disaster did not leave him. Rather they crowded thicker, and he was heard to say:

  “We must get them into the boats. We must get them all into the boats.”

  Early chapters of The Truth about the Titanic describe Colonel Gracie’s personal experiences on board the ship, including his remarkable escape from death, from notes he made on board the Carpathia immediately after the disaster and before he arrived in New York. Chapter 3 is an attempt to deal with four points where the statements of survivors “were strangely at variance,” in Gracie’s words. The final two chapters present the record and story of each lifeboat on the port and starboard sides of the Titanic, respectively, giving the names of those aboard insofar as Colonel Gracie had been able to ascertain them at the time, including conditions aboard each lifeboat and incidents that occurred in the transfer of the passengers of each to the rescue ship Carpathia. These final chapters also include firsthand accounts by survivors in each of the lifeboats, where these were available to Gracie. Colonel Gracie was eventually transferred to lifeboat No. 12, the last one to reach the Carpathia.

  Within the first few paragraphs, Gracie’s account gives us important information about the navigation of the ship:

  The Captain had each day improved upon the previous day’s speed, and prophesied that, with continued fair weather, we should make an early arrival record for this maiden trip. . . . In the twenty-four hours’ run ending the 14th, according to the posted reckoning, the ship had covered 546 miles, and we were told that the next twenty-four hours would see even a better record made.

  In fact we now know that the captain was attempting to beat the maiden voyage time of Titanic’s slightly older sister ship, Olympic, a record set the year before, in June 1911. He hoped to arrive on Tuesday evening instead of on Wednesday, as scheduled, in order to generate publicity for the second of the Olympic Class liners. As Titanic’s owner, Joseph Bruce Ismay explained at the U.S. Inquiry into the Titanic disaster: “It was our intention, if we had fine weather on Monday afternoon or Tuesday, to drive the ship at full speed. That, owing to the unfortunate catastrophe, never eventuated.”

  Gracie speaks for the majority of Titanic passengers when he then memorably informs us that during the four days of the voyage preceding the disaster, “I enjoyed myself as if I were in a summer palace on the seashore. . . .” Gracie had undertaken vigorous physical exercise in the ship’s squash court, gymnasium, and swimming pool on the morning of the collision and had retired early on the night of the wreck, with the intention of continuing his fitness regimen the following day. He had therefore enjoyed three hours of invigorating sleep before the collision occurred at 11:40 P.M. and explained, “I was thus strengthened for the terrible ordeal, better even than had I been forewarned of it.”

  At first glance, it might appear to the modern reader that Gracie’s account is overly formal or stuffy, and certainly Colonel Archibald Gracie was a man of tradition and formality, even by the standards of 1912. He came from a strict and privileged background, and his book is partly aimed at those in his own social circle. But when read closely, Gracie’s account is surprisingly full of how he felt, rather than simply what he did. That emotion is of great interest to the modern reader, and the lack of it is the eternal frustration of most of the eyewitness evidence given at the courts of inquiry into the Titanic disaster.

  In the following paragraph, Gracie attempts to describe in some detail a particular sensation he felt at an importan
t moment during that terrible night:

  When I first saw and realized that every lifeboat had left the ship, the sensation felt was not an agreeable one. No thought of fear entered my head, but I experienced a feeling which others may recall when holding the breath in the face of some frightful emergency and when “vox faucibus haesit,” as frequently happened to the old Trojan hero of our school days.

  The full quote that Gracie is referring to is “Obstupui, steteruntque comae, et vox faucibus haesit,” meaning, “I was stupefied, and my hair stood on end, and my voice stuck to my throat.” This is a description of the physical effects of fear, from Virgil’s Aeneid, and gives us a real insight into how he and others on Titanic felt at that awful moment of realization.

  Gracie’s account also gives us important glimpses of how others may have felt, as in the following passage, where he describes seeing the Titanic’s owner, Bruce Ismay, shortly after the collision:

  Entering the companionway, I passed Mr. Ismay with a member of the crew hurrying up the stairway. He wore a day suit, and, as usual, was hatless. He seemed too much preoccupied to notice anyone. Therefore I did not speak to him, but regarded his face very closely, perchance to learn from his manner how serious the accident might be. It occurred to me then that he was putting on as brave a face as possible so as to cause no alarm among the passengers.

  The chief value of Gracie’s account is that it is a highly detailed one from a very observant witness who was on board the Titanic until she sank. He therefore also gives us many very important facts, as in this shocking and heartrending passage, where he describes the final minute before Titanic’s plunge:

  We had taken but a few steps in the direction indicated when there arose before us from the decks below, a mass of humanity several lines deep, covering the Boat Deck, facing us, and completely blocking our passage toward the stern.