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‘So that if the reader will come and stand with the crowd on deck, he must first rid himself entirely of the knowledge that the Titanic has sunk… he must get rid of any foreknowledge of disaster to appreciate why people acted as they did.
The greasers lubricated the engines, while trimmers shovelled coal out of the bunkers and delivered it at top speed in heavy barrows to the firemen who then shovelled it into the furnaces for seven minutes, cleared white-hot clinkers for seven minutes and then raked the ashes for a further seven minutes. The firemen rested every 21 minutes until a gong sounded and the cycle started again. They worked in four-hour shifts, twice a day.
They usually have a pair of binoculars, but these have gone missing.
In 1909 he’d testified before Congress that a wireless telegraph should be mandatory on all ships. By 1912 only 400 out of 20,000 British registered ships have wireless.
Marion Wright is also heading to a fruit farm in America – to marry its owner Arthur Woolcott, whom she met in Somerset a few years before. They plan to get married soon after she arrives.
There are a number of obnoxious, ostentatious American women, the scourge of any place they infest and worse on shipboard than anywhere… many of them carry tiny dogs, and lead husbands around like pet lambs.
US law also stipulates that there should be gates between third class and the other passengers to prevent the spread of disease.
in 1861, the United States had three millionaires; by 1900 it had 3800.
Senator Smith: What is an iceberg made of? Fifth Officer Harold Lowe: Ice, I suppose. (Laughter)
April is one of the worst months for icebergs in the Atlantic.
The Titanic sends a message from Captain Smith in reply to Caronia’s ice warning: ‘Thanks for message and information. Have had variable weather throughout – Smith.’
‘The acres of decks were cleared of loungers, even of those whose chairs were placed well behind the plate-glass weather screen… servants brought tea and toast and a general feeling of well-being brought content and in this soft silence the titan was flying like an arrow on the trackless sea.’
Esther has vowed that she won’t fall asleep at night, but will instead rest during the day. Every night since Southampton she has sat fully dressed on a case or laid wide awake on their bunk convinced that something terrible will happen to the ship. She wants to be ready.
The 33-year-old journalist, who writes under the name Edith Russell, has been in Paris reporting on the latest fashions. She’s paid for a cabin on E-deck, just to store the large number of trunks filled with clothes she has for her clients in America. When she tried to get insurance for the trip, she was told it was unnecessary as the Titanic was unsinkable. In fact, the White Star Line never described Titanic as ‘unsinkable.’ During the ship’s construction they described her watertight doors in their literature like this: ‘…in the event of an accident, or at any time that might be advisable,
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To say that it is wonderful, is unquestionable, but not the cozy ship-board feeling of former years… Am going to take my very much needed rest on this trip, but I cannot get over my feeling of depression and premonition of trouble. How I wish it were over! Yours sincerely, Edith
It’s not only passengers who feel uneasy. Even the Titanic’s chief officer Henry Wilde wrote to his sister in a letter sent from Queenstown: ‘I still don’t like this ship… I have a queer feeling about it.’
Although Ismay doesn’t let the ladies hold the wireless message, Emily Ryerson can see a mention of another vessel that seems to be in trouble. ‘That’s the Deutschland wanting a tow – “not under control”.’ ‘What are you going to do about that?’ Emily Ryerson asks him. ‘We have no time to worry about the Deutschland, we want to get in [to New York] and surprise everybody.’
A message comes in from the Leyland Line ship the Californian, heading to Boston from London under the command of Captain Stanley Lord: ‘Three large bergs five miles to southward of us, regards, Lord.’ Bride doesn’t write the message down or acknowledge it.
It seems likely that Pitman miscalculates by one minute when he translates these measurements to the Titanic’s chronometer time. This will have serious consequences for the rescue attempts later that night and indeed for the attempts decades later to find the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean.
The voyage so far has been smooth, but Marguerite has been seasick almost continually since they left Queenstown on 11th April. (‘If only the darn ship would sink!’ she’d said to her father.)
In the Titanic’s wireless room, Harold Bride hears the Californian send a message to another Leyland Line ship, the Antillian. It’s the same message sent to him 20 minutes ago: ‘Three large bergs five miles to southward of us, regards, Lord.’ This time Bride jots it down and taps out a message to the Californian, thanking them. He then heads off to the bridge to give it to the officer of the watch, Charles Lightoller.
Each first-class passenger was given a copy of the White Star Line Music Book containing 352 tunes. They call out a number, and the band, who have rehearsed them all, play it. This is the origin of a song being known as ‘a number’.
Earlier that evening the musicians played a piece from Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffman. Many years later, Lucy, Countess of Rothes was dining out with friends when she suddenly had ‘the awful feeling of intense cold and horror’. She realised it had been the last piece of music that she’d heard the Titanic’s band play.
On the bridge, Lightoller is scanning the darkness, occasionally using the binoculars that are always to hand. What Lightoller doesn’t know is that the Titanic has been sailing past icebergs for almost an hour.
Martha is reading Ernest Shackleton’s book The Heart of the Antarctic, with its fine selection of pictures of glaciers and icebergs.
The Hart family are in their second-class cabin. Seven-year-old Eva is fast asleep in her bunk, and her father Benjamin is reading in the bunk above. Esther is keeping her anxious vigil, sitting on a suitcase fully dressed, all the time waiting and listening, knowing that something bad is going to happen.
The freighter SS Mesaba is sending a message to all ships heading west: ‘Saw much heavy pack ice, and a great number large icebergs. Also field ice. Weather good. Clear.’ The message is picked up by Jack Phillips in the Titanic’s wireless room, but he simply puts the message under a paperweight.
He calls up the bridge and speaks to his fellow quartermaster Robert Hichens to give him the log reading. It shows that Titanic has travelled 45 nautical miles since the last reading at 8pm, at an average speed of 22.5 knots. One of the key tasks of the quartermaster on the afterbridge is to measure the ship’s speed and the distance run every two hours, using a log-line that trails in the ship’s wake. The Titanic is sailing at speed and at night into an area where Captain Smith has been warned there is ice. The Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton said in 1912 that it was his policy to slow
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‘It is the first time that there have been hymns sung on this boat on a Sunday evening, but we trust and pray it won’t be the last,’ he adds.
Lord decides that the Californian should stay put for the night. Although it is his first encounter with Atlantic ice, he knows it is too dangerous to proceed. The Californian is on the edge of an ice field 28 miles long. The Titanic is less than an hour away and heading right for it.
As instructed by his captain, the wireless operator on the Californian, Cyril Evans, is sending a message to the Titanic: ‘Say old man we are surrounded by ice and stopped.’ Because the Californian is so close, the message comes through Jack Phillips’ headset at a deafening level. ‘Shut up, shut up, I am busy working Cape Race!’ Phillips taps back in irritation. This time it’s Evans’ turn to be deafened. Passengers’ messages to the United States are Phillips’ priority.
To lookout Frederick Fleet it didn’t seem to be very large at first – a black object high above the water, even darker than the darkness. Fleet rings the brass bell above him three times and then reaches across Reginald Lee to grab the telephone and call the bridge. Sixth Officer James Moody answers in the wheelhouse. ‘Yes. What do you see?’ ‘Iceberg dead ahead!’ ‘Thank you.’
Forty-six thousand tons of metal and wood collide with 500,000 tons of ice.
If the Titanic had hit the iceberg head on she would have survived; six years later, in the First World War, the Olympic proved how well built the class was by successfully ramming and sinking a German U-boat.
The Titanic’s engines stop for the last time. Her three propellers spin slowly to a halt.
Senator Smith: When were the ship’s clocks set; do you know? Pitman: They are set at midnight every night. Senator Smith: And were they set at midnight Sunday night? Pitman: No. We had something else to think of.
So, in total, the Titanic has enough lifeboats for 1178 people. On her maiden voyage, she is carrying 2224 people.
Then suddenly an order is given and the firemen start to file off the deck. They must return below; women and children will fill the lifeboats first. Peuchen is impressed by how obedient the men are, putting up no resistance. Helen Candee can see the anguish on their faces ‘though their bravery was supreme’.
The first two watertight bulkheads extend only as high as D-deck; the next eight to E-deck. With five compartments breached, the weight of water will pull the Titanic down until the water cascades over the bulkheads into the sixth compartment, filling it and then pouring over the bulkhead into the seventh, and so on until the ship sinks.
We’ve dressed up in our best, and we are prepared to go down like gentlemen,’ Guggenheim says. He asks Etches for a favour: ‘If anything should happen to me, tell my wife in New York that I’ve done my best in doing my duty.’
Hovering now by lifeboat 8 are Isidor and Ida Straus. Ida helps her maid Ellen Bird to get on board, and then steps onto the gunwales herself as if to join her. Suddenly Ida has a change of heart. She takes off her fur coat and gives it to Ellen. ‘I won’t be needing it,’ she says, and climbs out and clings to her husband. ‘We have been together all these years. Where you go, I go.’
Helen Candee is watching the crowds on the boat deck, some in evening dress, some in their nightclothes. ‘Each one walked with his life-clutching pack to await the coming horrors. It was a fancy-dress ball in Dante’s Hell.’
The noise from the eight exhausts on the Titanic’s funnels suddenly stops. Second Officer Lightoller wrote later that ‘there was a death-like silence a thousand times more exaggerated, fore and aft the ship. It was almost startling to hear one’s voice again’.
Every time one of his port lifeboats is lowered, Second Officer Lightoller walks to the top of an emergency staircase that leads down to C-deck and looks down at the water level to judge how long the ship has got.
Charlotte has had no time to say goodbye to her husband, neither has Esther Hart, who is also in the lifeboat with her daughter Eva. Benjamin Hart told Lowe as the boat was loaded, ‘I’m not going in. For God’s sake look after my wife and child.’ He told Eva to ‘hold mummy’s hand and be a good girl’, then turned and left. Esther knows she will never see Benjamin again.
‘Aren’t you even going to try for it, Mr Andrews?’ Andrews says nothing. His lifebelt is on a card table next to him. Stewart leaves him to his thoughts.
The deck lights on the Titanic are starting to glow red – a sign that they are about to fail.
The ship’s chief baker, Charles Joughin, is in the first-class lounge pantry to take ‘a drink of water’ when he hears a sound ‘as if part of the ship had buckled… it was like as if the iron was parting’. The Titanic is starting to break up.
Charles Lightoller, standing on top the wheelhouse, looks at the mass of people heading for the stern, knowing full well they are merely prolonging the agony. There is no safety in a crowd.
