A Night to Remember

by Walter Lord

Woolner squinted into the night. About 150 yards astern he made out a mountain of ice standing black against the starlit sky. Then it vanished into the dark. The excitement, too, soon disappeared. The Titanic seemed as solid as ever, and it was too bitterly cold to stay outside any longer. Slowly the group filed back, Woolner picked up his hand, and the bridge game went on. The last man inside thought, as he slammed the deck door, that the engines were stopping. He was right. Up on the bridge First Officer William M. Murdoch had just pulled the engine-room telegraph handle all the way to “Stop.” Murdoch was in charge of the bridge this watch, and it was his problem, once Fleet phoned the warning. A tense minute had passed since then—orders to Quartermaster Hitchens to turn the wheel hard a-starboard … a yank on the engine-room telegraph for “Full-Speed Astern” … a hard push on the button closing the watertight doors … and finally those 37 seconds of breathless waiting. Now the waiting was over, and it was all so clearly too late.