Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage Quotes

“Yet by the early years of the new century the New York/Newport social set was growing tired of Mrs. Astor’s stiffly elegant gatherings. When a stroke diminished her faculties in 1905, Caroline Astor became a recluse, inspiring a depiction in the Edith Wharton story “After Holbein” in which “the poor old lady who was gently dying of softening of the brain … still came down every evening to her great shrouded drawing-rooms with her tiara askew on her purple wig, to receive a stream of imaginary guests.” The death of the Mrs. Astor in 1908 marked the end of an era in New York society, but it also provided an opportunity for her son and his wife to end their moribund union.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“Sealed Orders”:”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“Norris met another survivor on board who told him that he had been bringing home a prized dog on the Titanic and had gone to the kennels and released all the dogs a half hour before the ship went under. Norris described to him how when he was swimming away from the sinking liner he had spied the black face of a French bulldog in the water.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“On the same day that Marcelle Navratil arrived in New York, a brand-new movie entitled Saved from the Titanic was announced on the marquees of the city’s nickelodeons. The ten-minute silent film had been made in three weeks at Éclair’s studios in New Jersey and starred a real-life survivor of the shipwreck, Miss Dorothy Gibson, wearing the same white silk dress and black pumps in which she had escaped from the sinking liner. Dorothy had at first been unwilling to relive her ordeal so soon after the disaster and according to one newspaper there were times during the filming when she had “practically lost her reason by virtue of the terrible strain she had been under.” The one-reeler, which was produced by Jules Brulatour, would be Dorothy’s last film since she then embarked on a career in opera. This would prove to be short-lived, as would her marriage to Brulatour in 1917. Following a generous divorce settlement in 1919, the prettiest girl retreated from public attention and was never seen on stage or screen again.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“Chivalrous or not, there was no denying that of the 1,667 men on board, only 338, or 20.27 percent, had survived as compared with a 74.35 percent survival rate for the 425 women. On April 21 the bodies of the Titanic’s victims began to be pulled out of the north Atlantic by the Mackay-Bennett, a cable ship that had been sent out from Halifax with a hundred tons of ice and 125 coffins on board. The Mackay-Bennett’s captain described the scene as resembling “a flock of sea gulls resting on the water.… All we could see at first would be the top of the life preservers. They were all floating face upwards, apparently standing in the water.” John Jacob Astor’s body was found floating with arms outstretched, his gold pocket watch dangling from its platinum chain. To the ship’s undertaker it looked as if Astor had just glanced at his watch before he took the plunge. It is often written that Astor’s body was found mangled and soot-covered and that he must therefore have been crushed when the forward funnel came down. Yet according to three eyewitnesses, Astor’s body was in good condition and soot-free, and like most of the other floating victims, he appeared to have died of hypothermia. On April 25 the body of the Buffalo architect Edward Kent was recovered. In the pocket of his gray overcoat was the silver flask and ivory miniature given to him by Helen Candee on the grand staircase, and these were later returned to her by Kent’s sister. Frank Millet’s body was found on the same day and identified by the initials F. D. M. on his gold watch. The next evening the Mackay-Bennett left for Halifax with 190 bodies on board, another 116 having been buried at sea. A second ship, the Minia, had arrived on the scene, but after a week’s search it retrieved only seventeen bodies, and two other ships would find only an additional five. The Mackay-Bennett landed in Halifax on April 30 to the tolling of church bells and flags flying at half-staff. Horse-drawn hearses took the bodies from the dock to a temporary morgue set up in a curling rink.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“In fact, the “women and children first” protocol for abandoning ship was not a particularly ancient one. It began with the HMS Birkenhead, a British troopship that was wrecked off Cape Town, South Africa, on February 26, 1852. The soldiers famously stood in formation on deck while the women and children boarded the boats, and only 193 of the 643 people on board survived. Hymned as the “Birkenhead drill” in a poem by Rudyard Kipling, it became a familiar touchstone of Britain’s imperial greatness and AS BRAVE AS THE BIRKENHEAD was a much-used heading in UK Titanic press coverage. A story that Captain Smith had exhorted his men to “Be British!” further burnished the oft-cited claim that Anglo-Saxon men had not forgotten how to die.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“Margaret Brown was already miffed that she had not been asked to testify before the Senate inquiry given her prominence on the Survivors’ Committee and the acclaim she was enjoying as a heroine of the Titanic. And as a supporter of women’s suffrage, Margaret was not shy about using her newfound fame to wade into the debate over gender equality swirling around the disaster. (One newspaper poet noted how the cry of “Votes for women” had become “Boats for women/When the brave/Were come to die.”) Margaret Brown stated in an interview that while “ ‘Women first’ is a principle as deep-rooted in man’s being as the sea … to me it is all wrong. Women demand equal rights on land—why not on sea?”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“In the afternoon, it was Second Officer Lightoller’s turn to answer questions, the first of nearly two thousand he would be asked by this committee and the British inquiry that followed. Throughout his testimony, Lightoller acquitted himself well and skillfully steered criticism away from Captain Smith and the White Star Line even while he considered the American inquiry to be “nothing but a complete farce.” The second officer came to have particular contempt for Senator Smith, whose ignorance of nautical matters led to him being ridiculed by the English press as “Watertight Smith” for asking whether the watertight compartments were meant to shelter passengers. The London Globe called Smith “a gentleman from the wilds of Michigan” who felt it necessary “to be as insolent as possible to Englishmen.” British resentment toward America’s waxing power was captured by the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who wrote in his diary that if anyone had to drown it was best that it be American millionaires. To the English elites, the U.S. inquiry seemed to be yet another example of American muscle flexing. But a Labor parliamentarian, George Barnes, noted more dispassionately that “it may be humiliating to some to have an [American] inquiry into the loss of a British ship but … the average person realizes that Americans get to work very quickly, and the average person, I think, is rather glad it is so.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“At breakfast on Friday morning a crowd of curious hotel guests gathered around Arthur Peuchen in the Waldorf-Astoria’s dining room and made him recount his story once again. In the hotel’s largest ballroom, meanwhile, seven U.S. senators were preparing to question J. Bruce Ismay, the first witness to appear before the U.S. Senate investigation. As he began his testimony that morning, Ismay still seemed shaken by the disaster, and his voice was almost a whisper as he expressed his “sincere grief at this deplorable catastrophe” and offered his full cooperation to the inquiry. Yet his answers were guarded and often prefaced with “I presume” or “I believe” and concluded by “More than that I cannot say”—giving his testimony an air of evasiveness. His claims that he was simply a passenger like any other and that the Titanic was not pushed to its maximum speed were greeted with skepticism by the senators and with open hostility by the press. The Hearst newspapers famously dubbed him J. “Brute” Ismay and ran his photograph framed by those of Titanic widows. Edith Rosenbaum was among the few survivors who thought that the White Star chairman was being made a scapegoat and made a point of telling reporters that it was Ismay who had put her into a lifeboat.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“While the Duff Gordons drank champagne at the Ritz that Thursday night, Margaret Brown was still on the Carpathia, helping out with the steerage passengers. Immigration and health officials had come on board to spare the Titanic’s third-class survivors the customary hiatus at Ellis Island, but it was after eleven o’clock before the first of them began to leave the ship. Still wearing the black velvet suit she had donned after the collision, “Queen Margaret,” as some in first class had dubbed her, worked to organize the disembarkation of the steerage women and help with their travel arrangements. The Countess of Rothes was doing likewise, and one passenger of particular concern for her was Rhoda Abbott, who was unable to walk due to her ordeal in Collapsible A. Although Rhoda assured the countess and Margaret Brown that she would be looked after by the Salvation Army, she was transferred by ambulance to New York Hospital at Noëlle’s expense and later to a hotel room that Mrs. Brown arranged for her. The small, slim countess eventually walked down the gangway and into the arms of her husband Norman, the Earl of Rothes, and before long, she, too, was in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. But Margaret Brown remained on the ship, where she improvised beds in the lounge for the remaining steerage women and spent the night with them. The next day her brother, who had come from Denver to greet her, came on board and told Margaret that her ailing grandson—the reason she had come home on the Titanic—was recovering well. This encouraged her to stay in New York, where she set up headquarters for the Titanic Survivors’ Committee in her suite at the Ritz-Carlton.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“At the White House that morning, Taft had met with Senator William Alden Smith of Michigan, who was also heading to New York for the Carpathia’s arrival. Smith was carrying subpoenas requiring J. Bruce Ismay and the Titanic’s officers and crew to give testimony at a U.S. Senate inquiry into the disaster. The senator had read Ismay’s intercepted “Yamsi” wireless messages that revealed his intention to spirit himself and the Titanic’s crew out of American jurisdiction as quickly as possible. Smith intended to head this off and hand Ismay the subpoena in person, and Taft had offered the senator his full support for the investigation.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“In London similar scenes played out as names were posted at Oceanic House, White Star’s London office, near Trafalgar Square. Southampton was the hardest-hit city of all since that was where most of the crew and victualing staff lived—of whom only 212 out of 885 had survived.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“In New York, the city was in the grip of Titanic fever. Flags flew at half-staff, the Henry Harris theaters were dark, and even Macy’s department store had closed out of respect for Isidor and Ida Straus. Police had been called in to control the crowds in front of the White Star office at 9 Broadway.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“President Taft, too, was preoccupied by the fate of his aide and frustrated by his inability to receive word of whether Archie might be on board the rescue ship. On Tuesday, Taft instructed the secretary of the navy to send out two scout cruisers, the Salem and the Chester, to establish radio contact with the Carpathia.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“With a historian’s eye, Archibald Gracie attempted to separate truth from fantasy as he listened to the survivors’ stories, a potential book beginning to form in his mind. Second Officer Lightoller and Third Officer Pitman regularly stopped by the small cabin Gracie shared with Hugh Woolner to discuss various aspects of the disaster. All agreed that the explosions heard during the sinking could not have been the ship’s boilers blowing up. From the discovery of the severed wreck in 1985 we now know that the “explosions” were actually the sound of the ship being wrenched apart. But Gracie and Lightoller firmly believed that the ship had sunk intact—a view that would become the prevailing opinion for the next seventy-three years. Gracie thought that Norris Williams and Jack Thayer, “the two young men cited as authority … of the break-in-two theory,” had confused the falling funnel for the ship breaking apart. But both Williams and Thayer knew exactly what they had seen, as did some other eyewitnesses. On the Carpathia, Jack Thayer described the stages of the ship’s sinking and breaking apart to Lewis Skidmore, a Brooklyn art teacher, who drew sketches that were later featured in many newspapers. The inaccuracies in Skidmore’s drawings, however, only bolstered the belief that the ship had, in fact, sunk intact. And what of the most famous Titanic legend of all—that the band played “Nearer My God to Thee” as the ship neared its end? It’s often claimed that this was a myth that took hold among survivors on the Carpathia and captivated the public in the aftermath of the disaster. None of the musicians survived to confirm or deny the story, but Harold Bride noted that the last tune he heard being played as he left the wireless cabin was “Autumn.” For a time this was believed to be a hymn tune by that name, but Walter Lord proposed in The Night Lives On that Bride must have been referring to “Songe d’Automne,” a popular waltz by Archibald Joyce that is listed in White Star music booklets of the period. Historian George Behe, however, has carefully studied the survivor accounts regarding the music that was heard during the sinking and has found credible evidence that “Nearer My God to Thee” and perhaps other hymns were played toward the end. Behe also recounts that the orchestra’s leader, Wallace Hartley, was once asked by a friend what he would do if he ever found himself on a sinking ship. Hartley replied, “I don’t think I could do better than play ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’ or ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ ” The legendary hymn may not have been the very last tune played on the Titanic but it seems possible that it was heard on the sloping deck that night.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“By early afternoon the Carpathia had passed the last of the ice and could begin to pick up speed, but at 4:00 p.m its engines were stopped. Father Anderson then appeared on deck in his clerical garb, followed by Carpathia crewmen carrying four corpses sewn into canvas bags. These were the bodies of two male passengers, one fireman, and one seaman, that had been brought aboard from the lifeboats. Each of the canvas bags in turn was laid on a wide plank and covered with a flag. As the words “Unto Almighty God we commend the soul of our brother departed, and we commit his body to the deep” were read aloud, the bodies were tipped into the sea one at a time. A large crowd stood nearby with heads bared. The canvas bags had been weighted so that the bodies would fall feet first but one of them struck the water flat. A Carpathia passenger wrote that he would never forget the sound of that splash. One of those buried at sea was first-class passenger William F. Hoyt, the heavy man who had been pulled into Boat 14 and died shortly thereafter. When May Futrelle learned that a large man had been lifted into one of the lifeboats, she questioned the crew of Boat 14 but soon realized that the man they described could not have been her husband. She also heard that Archibald Gracie had been pulled under with the ship and worked up her courage to ask him if he had suffered as he was being dragged down. Gracie reassured her that if he had never come up, he would have had no more suffering, giving May some comfort that perhaps Jacques had not endured an agonizing death. That afternoon Charles Lightoller had a serious talk with the three other surviving officers, Pitman, Boxhall, and Lowe, about what lay ahead. It was agreed that their best hope for escaping what Lightoller called “the inquisition” that awaited in New York was to immediately board the Cedric, scheduled to sail for Liverpool on Thursday. Their case was taken to Bruce Ismay who sent a message to Philip Franklin suggesting that the Cedric be held for the Titanic’s crew and himself. Ismay also asked that clothes and shoes be put on board for him. The cable was signed “Yamsi,” his coded signature for personal messages.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“The Olympic’s Marconi operators were relaying all the messages from the Carpathia to stations onshore, due to the Cunard liner’s limited wireless range. Marconi forms had been distributed to the survivors that morning but many of their messages would not be sent for another day or two—if at all. Captain Rostron had instructed that the first priority was to transmit a list of the survivors. The Carpathia’s chief purser and his assistant were busy compiling the names of passengers while Lightoller worked on the list of the surviving crew and engine room staff and a senior steward gathered the names of the cooks and stewards. The grim tally would come to 712 people rescued from a ship that had held 2,209. Over two-thirds of those on board the Titanic had perished.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“Captain Rostron paid another visit to Ismay’s room that morning. He had received a wireless message from the Olympic proposing that the Titanic’s passengers be transferred to her. Rostron thought that putting the survivors into boats for a second sea transfer was a very bad idea. Even the sight of a ship that so closely resembled the Titanic might stir up panic among the survivors. Ismay agreed emphatically—the Olympic should stay out of sight. On board the sister liner, however, Frank Millet’s friend Daniel Burnham had been told that they were steaming to the rescue of the Titanic’s passengers, and he was preparing to give up his suite to Frank and Archie Butt. He could use the time on board with Frank to prepare him for the next meeting of the Lincoln Memorial Commission. In a letter waiting for Frank in New York, Burnham had written, “The rats swim back and begin to gnaw at the same old spot the moment the dog’s back is turned,” the “rats” being several congressmen who were still pushing for John Russell Pope’s design over that of Henry Bacon. The letter had concluded, “I leave the thing confidently in your hand.” When a list of the Titanic’s survivors was posted on the Olympic’s notice board the next morning, however, Burnham saw that Millet’s name was not on it. In his diary entry for April 16, the ailing architect recorded the news of the Titanic’s loss and noted that “Frank D. Millet, whom I loved, was aboard of her … and probably [has] gone down.” Burnham himself would die two weeks later, but the classical white temple he had championed for the Lincoln Memorial would prevail—a tribute to the architect’s persistence and that of the friend he loved.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“After napping for almost an hour behind a stove in the galley, Norris Williams had awakened and gone out on deck just as the Carpathia was departing. But with his legs still feeling very numb and painful, he made his way to the ship’s hospital. A surgeon who was helping Dr. McGee examined Norris and expressed grave concern about the state of his legs. He thought that amputation might be necessary and cheerfully ventured that this could even be done on board before the ship reached New York. But there was a chance, he thought, that the young tennis player might be able to save his legs if he were to exercise them continually. Norris seized on this option and resolved to walk the decks day and night. First, however, he found a change of clothes and steeped himself in a hot bath.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“That morning Captain Rostron had considered several places he might land his more than seven hundred unexpected passengers. He’d first considered the Azores so that he could continue to the Mediterranean as scheduled; then Halifax, which was the nearest port. But on seeing the survivors come aboard, many of them in a distressed state and some in need of medical attention, it soon became clear that he should take them directly to New York. Rostron decided to visit Bruce Ismay to discuss the decision with him but the shattered White Star chairman quickly gave his agreement to whatever the captain thought was best. It was Rostron who had earlier prompted a dazed Ismay to send a wireless message notifying the White Star Line’s New York office about the accident. To Philip Franklin, the U.S. vice president of White Star’s parent company, the International Mercantile Marine, Ismay had written: Deeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning after collision iceberg, resulting serious loss life. Full particulars later. Bruce Ismay.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“When the sun came up fully, the ice field began to glow in mauves and corals, a breathtaking sight. There was one iceberg with a double peak about two hundred feet high. To Lucy Duff Gordon the illuminated bergs looked like giant opals, and May Futrelle noted how they glistened like rock quartz, though one of them, she thought, was doubtless the murderer. The scene reminded Hugh Woolner of photographs of an Antarctic expedition. Seven-year-old Douglas Spedden raised a few smiles in Boat 3 by exclaiming to his nurse, “Oh Muddie, look at the beautiful North Pole with no Santa Claus on it!” Daisy Spedden recorded in her diary that as their boat was rowed toward rescue, “the tragedy of the situation sank deep into our hearts as we saw the Carpathia standing amidst the few bits of wreckage with the pitifully small number of lifeboats coming up to her from different directions.” After racing through the night to the Titanic’s distress position, the Carpathia had spotted Fourth Officer Boxhall’s green flares and had headed for them. “Shut down your engines and take us aboard,” Boxhall shouted up as the Carpathia drew alongside Boat 2 at 4:10 a.m. “I have only one sailor,” he added, as the boat tossed on the choppy swells. “All right,” came back the voice of the Carpathia’s captain, Arthur Rostron.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“In Boat 6, Margaret Brown had doffed her sables to free her up for rowing. She had encouraged the other women to row as well, defying the quartermaster who railed at her from the stern. But Robert Hichens had chosen the wrong group of women to bully. In addition to the forceful Mrs. Brown, the plucky Mrs. Candee, and the voluble Berthe Mayné, there were two English suffragettes on board, Elsie Bowerman and her mother, Edith Chibnall. Both were active members of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, the most militant of Britain’s votes-for-women organizations. Edith was one of ten women who had accompanied Mrs. Pankhurst on a 1910 deputation to Parliament that had resulted in arrests after a scuffle with police. She had also donated a banner for a Hyde Park demonstration that read “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” A full-scale rebellion against one male tyrant was soon under way in Boat 6. The women tried to taunt the quartermaster into joining them at the oars, but Hichens refused, preferring to stand at the tiller shouting out rowing instructions and doom-filled warnings that they could be lost for days with no food or water. Eventually Boat 16 came near and the two lifeboats tied up together. Margaret Brown spotted a chilled, thinly clad stoker in the adjoining boat and after he jumped over into Boat 6 to help with the rowing, she wrapped him in her sables, tying the tails around his ankles. She then handed him an oar and instructed Boat 16 to cut them loose so they could row to keep warm. Howling curses in protest, Hichens moved to block this but an enraged Mrs. Brown rose up and threatened to throw him overboard. The fur-enveloped stoker reproached Hichens for his foul language in the broadest of Cockney accents: “Soy, don’t you know you are talking to a loidy!”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“As they prepared to leave the scene, a floating door was suddenly spotted with what appeared to be a small Japanese man lashed to it. He looked frozen stiff and Lowe said, “What’s the use? He’s dead, likely, and if he isn’t there’s others better worth saving than a Jap.” Eventually Lowe relented and the man was pulled into the boat, where several women began rubbing his chest, hands, and feet. Within seconds he opened his eyes, said a few words that no one understood, and then stood up and stretched. He soon took an oar and began rowing so diligently that Lowe had to admit that he was ashamed of what he’d said about “the little blighter.” The rescued man was actually Chinese, one of eight Donaldson Line crewmen traveling in third class, four of whom had secreted themselves in the bow of Collapsible C.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“In Boat 4, most of the women realized that their husbands and sons could be among those struggling in the icy water, since they had waved good-bye to them only half an hour before. With Quartermaster Perkis at the tiller, Marian Thayer, Madeleine Astor, and Emily Ryerson and her younger daughter began rowing back determinedly, despite a few protests in their boat. Seven men were pulled into Boat 4, all of them crew or stewards. One passenger, the wife of a New York stockbroker, recognized her bedroom steward as he was hauled aboard. Two of the rescued men soon died, and several others lay moaning and delirious for most of the night.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“The failure of all but two of the eighteen lifeboats to go to the aid of the dying remains another of the great “if only’s” of the Titanic story. Many of the boats were only half-full and, had they returned quickly, could have saved dozens of lives. In the Duff Gordons’ boat alone, there was room for twenty-eight more passengers. But in Boat 1, as in most of the lifeboats, the fear of being swamped by the panicked throng overruled all other instincts. “It would have been sheer madness to have returned,” harrumphed Hugh Woolner in Collapsible D, only recently pulled into a boat himself.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“Vigorous activity in cold water, it is now known, only intensifies the effects of hypothermia. Those who tried to swim without lifejackets out to boats were therefore likely among the first to perish.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“Yet there were, in fact, nearly two hundred women and children still on board the Titanic. More than half of them were waiting in the third-class public rooms and corridors or on the decks near the stern. At 1:30 a.m. the gates on the stairs up from third class had been opened for women but many had chosen to remain with their men. Father Thomas Byles circulated among the third-class passengers, hearing confessions and reciting the rosary with them. At 2:00 a.m. the gates were opened for third-class men as well as women, and many more steerage passengers soon crowded the boat deck. As he began loading Collapsible D on the port side, Lightoller was forced to pull his revolver to clear a crowd of what he called “dagoes” out of the boat. He then formed a cordon of crewmen to prevent a rush on the boat. As small knots of steerage women were escorted across the deck toward the last boat, there were still a few women from first class on board as well. Archibald Gracie was shocked to see Caroline Brown and Edith Evans standing by the starboard railing. He had escorted Evans and the three Lamson sisters to the staircase landing below the boat deck over an hour ago and had then gone in search of his other “unprotected” ward, Helen Candee, but discovered that she had already gone up on deck. Caroline Brown began to explain to Gracie how they had become separated from the others, but he and Jim Smith simply hustled them both toward the ring of men surrounding Collapsible D. Once they were let through, Edith Evans said to Caroline Brown, “You go first. You are married and have children.” Brown was then lifted into the lifeboat, but when Evans went to follow, she was unable to clamber over the railing in her tapered skirt. “Never mind,” she called out to Brown, “I will go on a later boat,” and turned and hurried away down the deck. Evans had earlier told Archibald Gracie that she had been told by a fortune-teller to beware of water and that she now knew she would be drowned. Gracie had dismissed this as superstition but Edith Evans would become one of only four women from first class to perish.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“On the steamer Californian, which is estimated to have been anywhere from eleven to twenty miles away, eight rockets were sighted but none were heard. A recent study has revealed that the unusually flat sea that night would have acted like a mirror that reflected and thus deadened the sound, making it inaudible beyond five to six nautical miles. Yet the rockets were definitely seen if not heard by the Californian, and the fact that its captain, Stanley Lord, did not wake the ship’s wireless operator to find out why a ship was firing rockets in the middle of the night remains one of the most haunting “if only’s” of the Titanic story.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“The German steamer Frankfurt had been the first to respond to the CQD call, but she was more than 170 miles, and many hours, away. The Cunard liner Carpathia was roughly 58 miles from the Titanic and had sent a message saying they were coming as quickly as possible and expected to be there within four hours.”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World

“It was now just after 1:30 a.m. Ten of the Titanic’s sixteen regular lifeboats had departed, carrying approximately 330 people—only a fraction of the 2,209 on board. To the passengers still on deck, the downward slope toward the bow was now very apparent. Yet many of them, the first-class men in particular, still believed that the ship would last till morning and that help would arrive”
― Hugh Brewster, Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World