The Complete Titanic Chronicles Quotes

“Second Officer Lightoller also served in the Royal Navy during the first war. He returned to White Star after the Armistice and was made Chief Officer of the lumbering Celtic. For a while he had hopes of a transfer to the crack Olympic, but was passed over. He retired from the sea in the early 20’s and tried his hand (not too successfully) at everything from writing columns to raising chickens. But the sea still ran in his blood. He designed and sailed his own yacht Sundowner and had a final taste of peril in 1940. He took Sundowner over to Dunkirk with the great fleet of “little ships,” and rescued 131 British soldiers. At his best in the midst of disaster, he cheerfully wrote his brother-in-law several days later, “We’ve got our tails well up and are going to win no matter when or how.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“On June 30, 1913, Bruce Ismay retired as Chairman of the White Star Line and began an ever-widening withdrawal from public life. He remained on a number of boards, but they were mostly honorific, and he spent much of his time at a secluded estate in a remote corner of Northern Ireland. Many writers have called him a “recluse.” His affectionate and devoted biographer, Wilton J. Oldham, takes exception to the term, but it is really a matter of semantics.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“On July 28, 1916, the settlement was formally signed and sealed. In the end, White Star paid six times as much as it argued that it owed under limited liability…but only 22% of the scaled-down claims and less than 4% of the $16 million originally demanded. All in all, C. C. Burlingham had not done badly by his clients. After four years, three months, one week, and six days, the litigation over the Titanic was at last a closed book. CHAPTER XVI Why Was Craganour Disqualified?”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“On December 17, 1915, Burlingham suddenly announced that the parties were near settlement. White Star agreed to pay $664,000, to be apportioned among the claimants according to their scaled-down schedule. In return the claimants agreed to drop all suits both in America and in England, and agreed that the White Star Line had no “privity or knowledge” of any negligence on the Titanic. This last constituted an acknowledgment that the ship’s owners were indeed protected by limited liability and presumably barred any suits in the future. The lawyers for nearly all the claimants went along with the deal. Only a few loose ends remained to be cleared up. The loose ends, it turned out, took another six months. Much of the time was spent trying to divide up equitably the $664,000. The maximum allowed, for instance, would be $50,000 for loss of life under certain conditions—which meant that Renée Harris had to come down quite a bit from the $1,000,000 she originally claimed. On the other hand, the cut was far less severe for loss of life in steerage. The average claim had been $1,500; the average award would be $1,000.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Both American and British law had long given special protection to shipowners whose vessels, through negligent handling, caused damage to others. The risks of sending ships to sea were so great that some special incentive was needed, if maritime nations were to grow and prosper. Moreover, on land the factory owner could at least theoretically oversee the acts of his employees, but the shipowner had no such control over his captain and crew. By the very nature of the business he was usually out of touch, and it seemed unfair to hold him to the same degree of responsibility when something went wrong. Therefore, as long as he did not have “privity or knowledge” of the negligence, his liability would be limited.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Distress signals at night, as defined by regulations at the time, were “rockets or shells, throwing stars of any color or description, fired one at a time, at short intervals.” The Californian saw eight such rockets at approximately the same time the Titanic was firing a similar number. Over the years the Californian’s defenders have often sought to defuse these rockets by calling them “flares.” But nobody called them flares that night. They were called “rockets”—projectiles that shot up into the sky, and burst, sending down a shower of white stars. Once, when Gibson happened to raise his binoculars at the right moment, he even saw the thin trail of the rocket as it soared upward.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“It would take far longer than ten minutes—and more than a gratuitous slap at Captain Smith—to get the Californian off the hook. On the afternoon of April 26, the Senate Committee heard in turn Gill, Lord, and Evans…and ultimately rejected the Captain’s version of events. Putting all the evidence together, the Committee found that the Californian was less than 19 miles away, saw the Titanic’s rockets, and “failed to respond to them in accordance with the dictates of humanity, international usage, and the requirements of law.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“It was natural, then, for the musicians’ families to turn first to the White Star Line for financial benefits under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. Sorry, said White Star, the bandsmen were Second Class passengers and not covered by the Act. The Line suggested that the families contact C. W. and F. N. Black, the real employers. Sorry, said the Blacks. The problem wasn’t their responsibility. They carried insurance to cover such matters, and any claims should be laid at the insurer’s door. Sorry, said the insurance company, the bandsmen were not workmen as covered by the policy. They were independent contractors, using the Blacks as a booking agency, and the insurance company was under no liability. Months passed while White Star, the Blacks, and the insurer tossed this hot potato back and forth. Finally, in exasperation the families took the Blacks to court. The judge was sympathetic, but that was all. The bandsmen, he decided, were not the employees of anybody. They were passengers in the case of the White Star Line, and independent contractors in the case of the Blacks and the insurers.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“The masquerade continued when the Titanic sailed. She, of course, had not only the standard five-man band, but the special trio added for the Café Parisien. Hence there were now eight extra names on the Second Class passenger list. Otherwise nothing had changed: the musicians still had the cramped quarters on E Deck (next to the potato washer), and certainly none of the “perks” of passengers. When they played the last night, they played as disciplined members of the ship’s crew, not as a group of talented passenger-volunteers.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Finally, early in March 1912, a delegation from the union waited upon Bruce Ismay. As Managing Director of the White Star Line, Ismay was a mover and shaker in the British shipping industry, and maybe he could be persuaded to do something. The great Olympic was about to sail from Southampton, and the delegation pointed out that her five-man band was being paid at less than union scale, supplemented only by the monthly shilling that White Star paid to make them officially members of the crew. If the delegation expected to melt Ismay’s heart, they didn’t know their man. He replied that if the union objected to White Star carrying its bandsmen as members of the crew at a shilling a month, the company would carry them as passengers. Sure enough, when the Olympic reached New York on March 20, her five musicians were listed as Second Class passengers. All had regular tickets, and all had to appear before the immigration officials in the usual way. As a crowning irony in view of the reason for this masquerade, all had to produce $50 in cash to show that they were not destitute.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Until 1912 the various steamship lines dealt directly with their musicians, signing them up as members of the crew like stewards, firemen, and ordinary seamen. The pay was union scale, which worked out at £6 10s. a month, plus a monthly uniform allowance of 10s. Then the Blacks entered the picture. An enterprising talent agency based in Liverpool, they promised the steamship companies a simpler and cheaper way to good music. One after another the companies signed contracts, giving the Blacks the exclusive right to supply bands to their vessels. The musicians still signed the ship’s articles for a token shilling a month (putting them clearly under the captain’s authority), but they were now really working for the Blacks, and could get no jobs except through the Blacks. Since the musicians worked for the Blacks or not at all, they had to take what the Blacks were willing to pay them—which turned out to be a sharp cut in salary. Instead of a basic pay of £6 10s., they now got only £4. Instead of a uniform allowance of 10s. a month, they now got nothing at all. The terms of employment were also hard: if the steamship company objected to any musician, the Blacks had the right to remove the man without any investigation or explanation.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“What were they playing? All agree that the band featured light, cheerful music—ragtime, waltzes, and the comic songs that were then so popular in the London music halls. Survivors specifically recalled Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and a pretty English melody called “In the Shadows,” the big London hit of 1911. Colonel Gracie couldn’t remember the name of any tune, but he was sure the beat was lively to the end. Nevertheless, the Carpathia had no sooner reached New York than the story spread that the band went down playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” The idea was so appealing that it instantly became part of the Titanic saga—as imperishable as the enduring love of the Strauses and the courage of the engineers who kept the lights burning to the final plunge. Yet doubts persist. In the first place, the whole point of the band playing was to keep the passengers’ spirits up, and light music seems best suited to that. As Colonel Gracie observed, “If ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ was one of the selections, I assuredly would have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death, and more likely to create a panic that our special efforts were directed towards avoiding….”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“How long did they play? Legend has them carrying on with the water practically up to their knees, but by then the slant of the deck would have been so steep, no one could have stood. At the other extreme, Colonel Gracie, on board to the last, said that the band stopped playing about half an hour before the ship sank. He added that he himself saw the musicians lay down their instruments. Curiously, Gracie did not mention this in his authoritative study The Truth about the Titanic, but he went into some detail in a talk he gave at the University Club in Washington on November 23, 1912. This was less than two weeks before he died; so it is presumably his last word on the subject.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“The whole problem is further complicated by the fact that there were two distinct musical units on the Titanic, not just a single eight-piece orchestra, as is generally assumed. First, there was a quintet led by violinist Wallace Hartley and used for routine ship’s business—tea-time and after-dinner concerts, Sunday service and the like. There was no brass or drums. Vernon and Irene Castle had introduced the foxtrot, but it hadn’t reached the White Star Line yet. In addition to this basic orchestra, the Titanic had something very special: a trio of violin, cello, and piano that played exclusively in the Reception Room outside the À la Carte Restaurant and Café Parisien. This was all part of White Star’s effort to plant a little corner of Paris in the heart of a great British liner, and appropriately the trio included a French cellist and a Belgian violinist to add to the Continental flavoring. These two orchestras had completely separate musical libraries. They had their own arrangements, and they did not normally mix. It is likely (but not certain) that on the night of the collision they played together for the first time. Hence whatever they played had to be relatively simple and easy to handle without sheet music— the current hits and old numbers that the men knew by heart.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“There remained Collapsibles A and B, stowed on the roof of the officers’ quarters on either side of the forward funnel. These boats, too, were never fully utilized, but here the explanation was not haste or complacency. It was a case of poor design. It’s hard to imagine what Harland & Wolff had in mind when they put two boats in such an inaccessible spot. There was absolutely no mechanism for getting them down to the Boat Deck, where they then had to be fitted into the empty davits used by the two emergency boats.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Boat 4 offers a prime example of what could happen. This was the boat that Second Officer Lightoller had been unable to load from the Promenade Deck because all the windows were closed. They were soon opened, but by that time Lightoller and his team of “old hands” had moved on to Boat 6…then to Boat 8…and finally to Collapsible D, which was still lashed to the Boat Deck. More than an hour passed before he got a chance to break off and finish launching No. 4. Meanwhile the women waiting to enter the boat simply cooled their heels.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“By now there was no lack of people willing to leave the Titanic, but a new problem arose. The officers in charge of launching the boats were afraid to put too many passengers in them for fear they might buckle and pitch everyone into the sea. Actually, there was no danger of this. Harland & Wolff had designed all the boats on the Olympic and Titanic to be lowered with their full complement of people. In a test on May 9, 1911, the shipyard even loaded one of the Olympic’s boats with weights corresponding to 65 persons, then raised and lowered it six times without any sign of strain. Neither Captain Smith nor his officers seem to have been aware of the test. Harland & Wolff never told them that the boats could be lowered fully loaded; the builders simply assumed they knew this as “a matter of general knowledge.” If they ever knew, nobody remembered it that night. Boat 6 rowed off with a maximum of 28 people; Boat 8 with 39; Boat 2 with 26. Acting on his own, Lightoller decided he might get more people into the boats by utilizing the portside lower deck gangway. He sent six seamen down to open the doors, and ordered the boats, once afloat, to row down to the opening and receive additional passengers. It didn’t work. The doors were never opened; the men sent down were never seen again. They were probably trapped by some sudden inflow of water before they could get the job done.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“No firm procedure was ever followed. In the end, some of the boats were loaded from the Boat Deck, others from the Promenade Deck—meaning that the passengers were often not where the boats were.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Then there was the recurring problem of class distinction. At least some of the crew, and passengers too, believed that the boats were reserved for the class where they were located. When two Second Class ladies asked an officer if they could pass to the forward boats in First Class space, passenger Lawrence Beesley heard the officer reply, “No, madam, your boats are down on your deck.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Oddly enough, while the Third Class passengers were having such a hard time, many of the lifeboats were leaving the Titanic only half-filled. Considering that at best there was room for only half those on board the ship, it seems incredible that the space available—good for 1,178 people—was occupied by only 705. There was room for another 473—far more than enough for all the women and children lost. Why wasn’t it used? At the bottom of the trouble was the lack of organization that characterized the whole night. The Titanic had never held a boat drill, and few of the crew had any experience in handling the davits. They had boat assignments, but these had only been posted the day after leaving Queenstown. Few had bothered to look up their stations. The manning of the boats was hopelessly haphazard: No. 6 had a crew of only two; No. 3 had 15. The passengers had no boat assignments at all. They simply milled around the decks waiting for someone to tell them what to do, but there were no clear lines of authority. Later it was said that First Officer Murdoch was in charge on the starboard side, Second Officer Lightoller on the port. But Lightoller never got aft of the first four boats, nor had anything to do with the first boat, No. 2. The junior officers didn’t seem to have any assignments, and nobody even remembered to wake up Fifth-Officer Lowe. Finally aroused by some unusual noise on the Boat Deck, he looked out and saw passengers standing around in life belts.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“And so it went: no set policy, but incident piled on incident, all combining to make a mockery of Mr. Harbinson’s assurances that there was “not an atom or a tittle of evidence” to substantiate a charge that any attempt was made to keep back the Third Class passengers. Even Steward Hart’s testimony, heavily relied on by the White Star Line, showed clearly that the men in steerage were held back and that the women had what amounted to an hour’s handicap in the race for the boats.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“In steerage, the other place where there was big money to be made, “boats for all” would be even more costly. In calculating the number of lifeboats needed, the Board of Trade used a simple rule of thumb: each person took up ten cubic feet of space. Hence 1,134 steerage passengers—the number the Titanic was certified to carry—would require 11,340 cubic feet of space. This translated into 19 lifeboats required for steerage alone…or nearly 60 boats, counting everybody. Almost any owner would prefer to use most of this space in some revenue-producing way—if he could persuade himself that the boats weren’t really necessary.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“There was. The problem was not somnolence; it was subservience. The members of the Board of Trade itself knew little about ships or safety at sea. They were mostly decorative luminaries like the Archbishop of Canterbury. On nautical matters they deferred to the professional staff of the Board’s Marine Department. But these men were bureaucrats—better at carrying out policy than making it. When it came to such questions as whether ships should provide lifeboats for all on board, these men deferred to the Department’s Merchant Shipping Advisory Committee. This group was dominated by the ship-owners themselves, and they were only too happy to make policy. They knew exactly where they stood, and they did not want boats for all. In the luxury trade, “boats for all” meant less room on the upper decks for the suites, the games and sports, the verandahs and palm courts, and the glass-enclosed observation lounges that lured the wealthy travelers from the competition. On the Titanic, for instance, it would sacrifice that vast play area amidships and instead clutter the Boat Deck with (of all things) boats.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“The Titanic came under the Board’s regulations governing vessels of “10,000 tons and upwards,” the maximum category at the time the rules were issued in 1894. Since then the size and capacity of ships had increased dramatically—the Titanic was nearly four times as large as any vessel of the 90’s—but the lifeboat requirements remained the same.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“could have been worse. The Titanic was certified to carry 3,547 passengers and crew, but due to the slack season and uncertainties of travel during the coal strike, she was only two-thirds full. Also, the Board of Trade regulations required her to carry boats for only 962 persons, but the White Star Line liked little flourishes and threw in space for an extra 216. In a “worst case” situation the Titanic might lawfully have gone to sea with lifeboats for only 27% of her passengers and crew.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Why couldn’t Captain Smith and his officers see the difference? Certainly they knew the importance of wireless in an emergency. The help summoned by the sinking liner Republic in 1909 proved that. But no one on the Titanic’s bridge seemed to appreciate the value of wireless as a constant, continuous navigational aid. Basically, they still thought of it as a novelty—something that lay outside the normal running of the ship. It was a mindset tellingly illustrated by the way the wireless operators were carried on the roster of the crew. Phillips and Bride were not listed with the Deck Department; they came under the Victualling Department—like stewards and pastry chefs.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Suddenly there was a fearful crash, sending everybody sprawling among the palms and violins. The Arizona had smashed head on into a giant iceberg, shattering 30 feet of her bow. But the forward bulkhead held; there were no casualties; and two days later she limped into St. John’s. In a curious twist of logic, the accident was hailed as an example of the safety of ships, rather than the dangers of ice.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Yet there was still ample opportunity to avoid disaster. Every officer on the bridge, from Captain Smith to the very junior Moody, knew that sometime before midnight the Titanic might encounter ice. It was with this thought in mind that the Captain left the Wideners’ party shortly before 9:00 and joined Lightoller on the bridge.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“Strangest of all was an exchange between Lightoller and Sixth Officer Moody, who shared the watch from 8:00 to 10:00 P.M. Early on, Lightoller asked Moody when the ship would be up to the ice. Moody said about 11:00. Working it out for himself, Lightoller decided the time would really be closer to 9:30. But he never told Moody. Instead, he merely made a mental note of the Sixth Officer’s lapse, as though Moody were an errant schoolboy who had made some minor mistake in math, not worth fussing over. Later Lightoller said he thought that Moody’s calculations might have been based on some other ice message that Lightoller himself hadn’t seen, but this still doesn’t explain his silence. Nor does it help that the collision did not occur until 11:40—well after the time even Moody expected ice. The incident remains a striking illustration of the complacency that seems to have affected the whole bridge.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On

“This complacency is perhaps the most exasperating feature of the whole affair. Fourth Officer Boxhall did not even read the one message he saw. Third Officer Pitman saw the chit marked “ice” above the chart room table, but it failed to stir his interest—“I only looked at it casually.” Fifth Officer Lowe also looked at the chit “casually,” but once he saw the ship wouldn’t reach the position during his watch, he put it out of his mind. Second Officer Lightoller never even saw the chit when he came on duty that last Sunday night, “because I did not look.”
― Walter Lord, The Complete Titanic Chronicles: A Night to Remember and The Night Lives On