116 Buried at Sea—Nearly All Sailors—No Prominent Men Buried—No Bullet Wounds Found—Halifax’s Bells Toll For Dead—Astor’s Body Identified—Death Ship’s Voyage—The Captain’s Story—Canon Hind’s Narrative.
116 Buried at Sea—Nearly All Sailors—No Prominent Men Buried—No Bullet Wounds Found—Halifax’s Bells Toll For Dead—Astor’s Body Identified—Death Ship’s Voyage—The Captain’s Story—Canon Hind’s Narrative.
The cable ship Mackay-Bennett which had been sent out to recover as many as possible of the Titanic’s dead, reached her pier in the dockyard at Halifax, Nova Scotia, the nearest port, at 9.30 on the morning of April 30, almost exactly two weeks after the disaster.
Down the gangway to the pier in the sunlight of a perfect April day they carried 190 of those who had started forth on the maiden voyage of the biggest ship afloat.
In her quest the Mackay-Bennett had found 306 of the Titanic’s dead, but only 190 were brought to shore. The rest, the 116, were buried at sea. And 57 of those 116 were among the identified dead.
Of those who were brought to shore, 60 lay unnamed at the curling rink on the edge of the town. It was believed that the 60 were all members of the Titanic’s crew, but the slender hope that their own dead might be among them sent many to the rink.
One of the sixty was a little baby girl. Five of them were women, but none of the women that were found were from the first cabin passengers. There was no hope that the body of Mrs. Straus was among them. There was practically no hope that Major Butt was among the unnamed sixty. The quest of the Mackay-Bennett bore greater results than were anticipated, and Capt. Lardner believed that his ship recovered about all of those who did not go down in the Titanic.
The search was continued over five days, sometimes withthe ship drifting without success amid miles and miles of wreckage, tables, chairs, doors, pillows, scattered fragments of the luxury that was the White Star liner Titanic.
At other times the bodies were found close together, and once they saw more than a hundred that looked to the wondering crew of the Mackay-Bennett like a flock of sea gulls in the fog, so strangely did the ends of the life belts rise and fall with the rise and fall of the waves.
Those whose dead the Mackay-Bennett brought to shore came forward with their claims, and from the middle of the afternoon the rest of the day was filled with the steps of identification and the signing of many papers.
The first to be claimed was John Jacob Astor and for his death was issued the first “accidental drowning” death certificate of the hundreds who lost their lives in the wreck of the Titanic.
Vincent Astor and Nicholas Biddle started for New York with the body the next night.
The second identified was Isidor Straus. The start for New York was made early the next morning. Three went on the same night. These were George E. Graham, Milton C. Long, and C. C. Jones. Lawrence Millett has identified his father.
Friends quickly took charge of the bodies of E. H. Kent, W. D. Douglass, Timothy McCarty, George Rosenshine, E. C. Ostby, E. G. Crosby, William C. Porter, A. O. Holverson, Emil Brandies, Thomas McCafferty, Wykoff Vanderhoef, and A. S. Nicholson.
Sharp and distinct in all the tidings the Mackay-Bennett brought to shore the fact stands out that fifty-seven of those who were identified on board were recommitted to the sea. Of the 190 identified dead that were recovered from the scene of the Titanic wreck only 130 were brought to Halifax.
This news, which was given out almost immediately after the death ship reached her pier, was a confirmation of the suspicion that in the last few days had seized upon the colony of those waiting here to claim their dead.
Yet it came as a deep, a stirring surprise. It stunned the White Star men who have had to direct the work from Halifax.
They had been confidently posting the names of the recovered as the wireless brought the news in from the Atlantic. When the suspicion arose that some of the identified might have been buried at sea the White Star people said that they did not know, but they were working on the assumption that Capt. Lardner would bring them all to port, and that only the unidentifiable had been recommitted to the sea.
Then they learned that the Mackay-Bennett had brought in sixty unidentified. The hallway of the curling rink where the dead were removed from the cable ship was thronged all afternoon with friends and relatives eager beyond expression to see those unnamed dead, but the attention of the embalmers was turned to those already identified, for whom the claimants were waiting. For the most part the unidentified could not be viewed until the next morning.
One of them was thought to be Arthur White, a member of the Titanic’s crew.
The suspense was acute. Yet those who were most anxious for the morrow to come knew that hope was of the slenderest. They knew that the nameless sixty were almost all members of the crew. Capt. Lardner said that he was sure of it. He knew it by the clothes they wore.
As to the fifty-seven identified dead that were buried at sea, the whole colony was stirred by pity that it had to be, and not a few wonder if it really had to be, a wonder fed by the talk of some of the embalmers. Yet few were immediately concerned, most of those in Halifax were waiting for men who sailed first cabin of the Titanic. It appears that only one of these was among the ones who were buried at sea. This was Frederick Sutton, ofPhiladelphia. The large majority were either members of the Titanic’s crew or steerage passengers.
Of the 116 that Capt. Lardner thought best to return to the sea, he explained that the unidentified seemed unidentifiable, that the identified were too mutilated to bring to shore.
“Let me say first of all,” he announced when the reporters gathered around him, “that I was commissioned to bring aboard all the bodies found floating, but owing to the unanticipated number of bodies found, owing to the bad weather and other conditions it was impossible to carry out instructions, so some were committed to the deep after service, conducted by Canon Hind.”
Capt. Lardner explained that neither he nor any of his people had dreamed that so many of the Titanic’s dead would be found floating on the surface of the Atlantic.
It was more than his embalmer could handle, for, although the material for embalming seventy bodies, which was all that Halifax sent out with the Mackay-Bennett, was supplemented at sea by materials borrowed from the Minia, the number of dead so preserved for the return to shore was only 106.
He did not know how long he would have to stay at his grim work on the scene of the wreck. He did not know how long bad weather would impede the homeward voyage.
He did not know how long he could safely carry the multitude of dead. It seemed best to recommit some to the sea, and so on three different days 116 were weighted down and dropped over the edge of the ship into the Atlantic.
Then rose the question as to why some were picked for burial at sea and others left on board to be brought home to the waiting families on shore. The reporters put the question to the Captain, and he answered it:
“No prominent man was recommitted to the deep. It seemed best to embalm as quickly as possible in those cases where large property might be involved. It seemed best to be sure tobring back to land the dead where the death might give rise to such questions as large insurance and inheritance and all the litigation.
“Most of those who were buried out there were members of the Titanic’s crew. The man who lives by the sea ought to be satisfied to be buried at sea. I think it is the best place. For my own part I should be contented to be committed to the deep.”
To emphasize the uncertainty of the task he directed, Capt. Lardner pointed silently to the forward hold, where an hour before those on the pier had seen the dead lying side by side on the floor, each in the wrapping of tarpaulin.
“They were ready for burial,” the Captain said. “We had the weights in them, for we didn’t know when we should have to give them up.”
To those who hoped to find their own among the unidentified in the curling ring to-morrow Capt. Lardner held out little encouragement except the prospect that the quest of the Minia may result in a few more bodies being recovered. He believed that his own ship gathered in most of those who were kept afloat by the lifebelts.
Almost all of the rest, in his opinion, went down with the rush of waters that closed over the Titanic, driving them down in the hatchways and holding the dead imprisoned in the great wreck.
Survivors told of many pistol shots heard in those dark moments when the last lifeboats were putting off, and though the pier on the night the Carpathia landed was astir with rumors of men shot down as they fought to save their lives, not one of the bodies that were recovered yesterday had any pistol shots, according to Capt. Lardner and the members of his crew.
The mutilations which marked so many were broken arms and legs and crushed skulls, where the living on the Titanic were swept against the stanchions by the onrush of the sea.
The little repair shop on the Mackay-Bennett was a treasurehouse when she came to port. Fifteen thousand dollars in money was found on the recovered bodies and jewelry that will be worth a king’s ransom. One of the crew related his experience with one dead man whose pockets he turned inside out only to have seventeen diamonds roll out in every direction upon the littered deck.
It was a little after 9.30 that the Mackay-Bennett was sighted by those waiting for her since the break of day. For it was in the chill of 6 o’clock on a Canadian Spring morning that the people began to assemble on the pier in the dockyard.
They were undertakers for the most part, mingling with the newspaper men who hurried to and fro between the water’s edge and the little bell tent set up a few yards back to guard the wires that were to flash the news to the ends of the continent.
The dockyard was patrolled by twenty members of the crew and four petty officers from H. M. C. S. Niobe and by a squad of men from the Dominion police, who were instructed to keep out all without passes countersigned by the commandant, and who were particularly vigilant in the watch for men with cameras.
Just as the death ship reached her pier, and in the midst of the eager movement forward to learn what news she brought from the scene of the Titanic’s wreck, a little tug was spotted near by, and Commander Martin, in charge of the dockyard, scented a moving picture man.
In a very few moments he was putting out for the tug in the little patrol launch. Again a few moments and he was standing on the pier with a complacent smile on his face.
“I have the films,” he said in explanation, so the privacy was guarded.
The friends and relatives of those who were lost when the great liner went down were urged not to assume the ordeal of meeting the Mackay-Bennett. Almost without exception they followed this advice, and only a scattering few could be seen among those waiting on the pier.
In all the crowd of men, officials, undertakers, and newspaper men, there was just one woman, solitary, spare, clasping her heavy black shawl tightly around her.
This was Eliza Lurette, for more than thirty years in the service of Mrs. William August Spencer, who was waiting at her home on East Eighty-sixth Street, New York, while Miss Lurette had journeyed to Halifax to seek the body of Mr. Spencer, who went down with the Titanic.
So the crowd that waited on the pier was made up almost entirely of men who had impersonal business there, and the air was full of the chatter of conjecture and preparation.
Then, warned by the tolling of the bells up in the town, a hush fell upon the waiting people. The gray clouds that had overcast the sky parted, and the sun shone brilliantly on the rippling water of the harbor as the Mackay-Bennett drew alongside her pier.
Capt. Lardner could be seen upon the bridge. The crew hung over the sides, joyously alive and glad to be home. But in every part of the ship the dead lay. High on the poop deck coffins and rough shells were piled and piled.
Dead men in tarpaulins lined the flooring of the cable-wells both fore and aft, so that there was hardly room for a foot to be put down. And in the forward hold dead men were piled one upon another, their eyes closed as in sleep, and over them all a great tarpaulin was stretched. Those that pressed forward to see were sickened and turned back.
The business of moment was to discharge that freight, and this was done with all possible dispatch.
The uncoffined dead were carried down in stretchers, placed in the rough shells that were piled upon the pier, and one by one driven up the slope and into the town in the long line of hearses and black undertaker’s wagons that had been gathered from every quarter. It was speedily done, but quietly and without irreverent haste.
For two hours this business proceeded before anyone could go upon the pier and the sounds were like the hum of a small factory. There were the muffled orders, the shuffling and tramping of feet, the scraping as of packing boxes drawn across the rough flooring and the eternal hammering that echoed all along the coal sheds.
Two hours it was before any one could go on board, and then came another hour when the coffins were swung down from the deck and piled up on the wharf ready for the removal that took until well into the middle of the afternoon.
Few of the relatives were allowed to pass beyond the cordon that stretched all about the pier at which the dead were landed.
One of the first to get through the lines and the first of all the waiting crowd to make his way aboard after the ship reached her pier was Capt. Richard Roberts, of the Astor yacht, who was filled with a great concern at the news that had come from the Widener party.
For long before the Mackay-Bennett reached her pier it was established as definitely as it may ever be established that the man who was picked up at sea for George D. Widener was not Mr. Widener, but his man-servant Edward Keating.
Although the name was sent in by wireless, a later examination of the dead man’s clothing and effects proved that it was Keating’s body. A letter in the pocket was addressed to Widener, but the coat was labeled “E. K.” and the garments were of an inferior quality. Identification by features was out of the question, for the dead man had been struck by some spar or bit of wreckage, and the face was mutilated past recognition. He was buried at sea, and the news sent on to the waiting family.
Young Mr. Widener, who had been waiting here for a week with a private car to carry the body of his father home to Philadelphia, had heard of the uncertainty, and in a fever of impatience he met the Mackay-Bennett at Quarantine, went over the effectswith Captain Lardner, and was satisfied that it was Keating whose body was found and who was later committed to the deep.
The haunting fear that this same error might have been made in the case of Colonel Astor had possession of the whole Astor party and grew acute as the Widener story went out. That was what sent Captain Roberts hurrying to the ship. He was admitted and saw for himself. The coffin top was removed on board.
The plain gold ring with the two little diamonds set deep, the gold buckle on the belt that Colonel Astor always wore, and a sum amounting to nearly $3000 in the pockets settled the uncertainty. Twenty minutes after he had boarded the ship Captain Roberts was hurrying through the crowd to reach the nearest telephone that he might speed the news to waiting Vincent Astor.
Beyond these two cases the questions of identity were taken up at the Mayflower Curling Rink at the edge of the town, where the line of hearses had been trundling since the Mackay-Bennett landed. As they passed the crowds were hushed, men bowed their heads, and officers saluted.
At the rink the great main floor was given over to the coffins and shells containing the identified dead, and as soon as the embalmers had done their work the friends and relatives came forward and claimed their own.
Upstairs in the large, bare room the packets of clothing were distributed in rows upon the floor.
There the oak chests of the Provincial Cashier were opened for the sorting of the canvas bags that contained the valuables, the letters and the identifying trinkets of the dead. It was all very systematic. It was all very much businesslike, and while a lunch counter served refreshments to the weary workers, and while the Intercolonial set up a desk for railway tickets, the Medical Examiner was busy issuing death certificates, and the Registrar was issuing burial permits, all to the accompanying click, click of several typewriters.
A satisfactory arrangement was reached as to the disposition of the personal effects. A man would claim his dead, take the number, make his way to the representatives of the Provincial Secretary, and there claim the contents of the little canvas bag by making affidavit that he was the duly authorized representative of the executor or next of kin.
The little crimson tickets that are the death certificates were printed for the tragedies of every day in the year. Their formal points and dimensions seemed hopelessly inadequate for even the briefest statement of the tragedy of the Titanic.
The first body claimed and removed from the rink was that of John Jacob Astor. The certificate, the first issued for one of the Titanic dead, reads:
Name of deceased—John Jacob Astor. Sex—M. Age—47. Date of death—April 15, 1912. Residence, street, etc.—840 Fifth Av. N. Y. C. Occupation—Gentleman. Married. Cause—Accidental drowning. S. S. Titanic at sea. Length of illness—Suddenly. Name of physician in attendance.
Name of deceased—John Jacob Astor. Sex—M. Age—47. Date of death—April 15, 1912. Residence, street, etc.—840 Fifth Av. N. Y. C. Occupation—Gentleman. Married. Cause—Accidental drowning. S. S. Titanic at sea. Length of illness—Suddenly. Name of physician in attendance.
Such details as these filled the day.
After the greater part of the Titanic’s dead had been shifted from the Mackay-Bennett to the pier, Captain Lardner descended to the dining saloon, and with the reporters from all over the country gathered around the table, he opened the ship’s log and, slowly tracing his fingers over the terse entries, he told them the story of the death ship’s voyage.
Lardner is English by birth and accent, and tall and square of build, with a full brown beard and eyes of unusual keenness.
“We left Halifax,” he began, “shortly after noon on Wednesday, April 17, but fog and bad weather delayed us on the run out, and we did not get there till Saturday night at 8 o’clock.
“We asked all ships to report to us if they passed any wreckage or bodies, and on Saturday at noon we received a communication from the German mailboat steamship Rhein to the effectthat in latitude 42.1. N. longitude 49.13, she had passed wreckage and bodies.
“The course was shaped for that position. Later in the afternoon we spoke to the German steamship Bremen, and they reported having passed three large icebergs and some bodies in 42 N. 49.20 W.
“We arrived on the scene at 8 o’clock Saturday evening, and then we stopped and let the ship drift. It was in the middle of the watch that some of the wreckage and a few bodies were sighted.
“At daylight the boats were lowered, and though there was a heavy sea running at the time, fifty-one bodies were recovered.”
The Rev. Canon K. C. Hinds, rector of All Saints’ Cathedral, who officiated at the burial of 116 bodies, the greatest number consigned to the ocean at one time, tells the story of the Mackay-Bennett’s trip as follows:
We left Halifax shortly after noon on April 17, and had not proceeded far when fog set in so that our journey was slow. We reached the vicinity of the wreckage on Saturday evening. Early on Sunday morning the search for bodies began, when the captain and other officers of the ship kept a lookout from the bridge.
Soon the command was given “Stand by the boat!” and a little later the lifeboat was lowered and the work begun of picking up the bodies as they were pointed out in the water to the crew.
Through the day some fifty were picked up. All were carefully examined and their effects placed in separate bags, all bodies and bags being numbered.
It was deemed wise that some of them should be buried. At 8 P. M. the ship’s bell was tolled to indicate all was in readiness for the service. Standing on the bow of the ship as she rocked to and fro, one gazed at the starry heavens and across the boundless deep, and to his mind the psalmist’s words came with mighty force:
“Whither shall I go then from Thy spirit, or whither shall I go then from Thy presence? If I ascend up to heaven Thou art there, I make my bed in the grave, Thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.”
In the solemn stillness of the early night, the words of that unequaled burial office rang across the waters: “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in Me shall never die.”
When the time of committal came these words were used over each body:
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God to take up to Himself the soul of our dear brother departed, we, therefore, commit his body to the deep to be turned to corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the seas shall give up her dead) and the life of the world to come, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself.”
The prayers from the burial service were said, the hymn “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” sung and the blessing given.
Any one attending a burial at sea will most surely lose the common impression of the awfulness of a grave in the mighty deep. The wild Atlantic may rage and toss, the shipwrecked mariners cry for mercy, but far below in the calm untroubled depth they rest in peace.
On Monday the work began again early in the morning, and another day was spent in searching and picking up the floating bodies and at night a number were buried. On Tuesday the work was still the same until the afternoon, when the fog set in, and continued all day Wednesday.
Wednesday was partly spent in examining bodies, and at noon a number were committed to the deep. Thursday came infine and from early morning until evening the work went on.
During the day word came that the cable ship Minia was on her way to help and would be near us at midnight.
“Early on Friday some more bodies were picked up. The captain then felt we had covered the ground fairly well and decided to start on our homeward way at noon. After receiving some supplies from the Minia we bid good-bye and proceeded on our way.
“The Mackay-Bennett succeeded in finding 306 bodies, of which 116 were buried at sea, and one could not help feeling, as we steamed homeward, that of those bodies we had on board it would be well if the greater number of them were resting in the deep.
“It is to be noted how earnestly and reverently all the work was done and how nobly the crew acquitted themselves during a work of several days which meant a hard and trying strain on mind and body.
“What seems a very regrettable fact is that in chartering the Mackay-Bennett for this work the White Star Company did not send an official agent to accompany the steamer in her search for the bodies.
Loading at the Rail—Inadequate Life-saving Appliances—No Extra Lookout—Searchlights Blinding—Wireless Rivals Not All Aroused—Went to Death in Sleep—Scratch Seamen—Cries of Agony—A Pitiful Story—Senators Ascertain Pertinent Facts—Much Good Accomplished.
Loading at the Rail—Inadequate Life-saving Appliances—No Extra Lookout—Searchlights Blinding—Wireless Rivals Not All Aroused—Went to Death in Sleep—Scratch Seamen—Cries of Agony—A Pitiful Story—Senators Ascertain Pertinent Facts—Much Good Accomplished.
What has been accomplished by the Senatorial inquiry into the loss of the Titanic with sixteen hundred lives?
For more than a week of the two that have elapsed since the Titanic made a record on her maiden voyage—a record never paralleled in marine history for its horrors, its sacrifice of life and material property—an earnest body of United States Senators has been at work conscientiously striving to uncover the facts, not alone for the purpose of placing the responsibility for what has now become one of the most heart-rending chapters of all ocean history, but also in the hope of framing remedial legislation looking to the prevention of its recurrence.
To attempt to draw conclusions as to the value of the work of a committee which is yet upon the threshold of its task would be presumptuous, but it is not too soon to present and formulate some of the pertinent facts which its researches have established in the light of sworn evidence.
Any attempt at systematic analysis of the facts deduced from the many thousand of pages of testimony already taken naturally divided itself into two departments:
Were the Titanic’s equipment and her general state of preparedness such as to justify the broad claims made in her behalf before the crisis arose, that she represented the acme of human possibility not only in ocean going comfort and speed but also in safety at sea?
Were the personnel and discipline of her officers and crew of such a standard that, after the supreme crisis confronted them, they utilized to the best advantage such facilities for the safeguarding and preservation of life as remained at their disposal?
With ten thousand families on both sides of the Atlantic mourning the untimely death of relatives and friends who went down into the depths from the decks of a brand new ship, widely proclaimed the greatest and the safest that ever ploughed the sea, these are, after all, the most pertinent questions that may be asked by a sorrowing world as it looks to the future rather than the past.
It has been demonstrated—and frankly conceded by the company’s managers and officers in the light of after knowledge—that the Titanic’s life-saving appliances were woefully inadequate to the safeguarding of even one-half her complement of passengers and crew. On the day after the disaster was known to the world it was shown that the ship’s equipment of lifeboats complied with the requirements of the English Board of Trade, but that those requirements were so obsolete and antiquated that they dated back to 1898 and were drafted to provide for vessels of less than one-quarter the gross tonnage of the mammoth craft of 46,000 tons of displacement.
The Titanic carried on her boat deck—sometimes referred to as her sun deck—fourteen of the largest regulation size lifeboats, seven on her port side and seven on the starboard. Each of these had a carrying capacity, according to the Board of Trade’s established method of computation, of 65.5 persons. Their aggregate capacity when afloat, therefore, was 917. The ship carried, in addition, four of the so-called collapsible boats and two others known as emergency boats-comparatively small craft employed in occasional duty—as when a man falls overboard.
The combined capacity of these six when afloat was hardly more than sufficient to care for two hundred persons. At the most liberal estimate, therefore, the entire equipment of boats aboard the great White Star liner might have afforded refuge, in the most favorableconditions, to less than 1,200 persons, or not quite half the number actually aboard the ship, on her maiden voyage.
In stating the lifeboat capacity the term “when afloat” has been used advisedly. One of the points which each of the Titanic’s surviving officers has emphasized in evidence is the vast difference between loading with its human freight a boat that has been already placed in the water and loading one “at the rail,” from a deck seventy feet above the water, with the subsequent perils of lowering it by means of the tackles sustaining its weight from bow and stern. Several of the officers have said that, in lowering loaded boats from the rail of the Titanic’s boat deck, they would consider it unwise and even dangerous to fill the boats to more than one-half their rated capacity.
All the lifeboats that went away from the Titanic were loaded and lowered from the rail. Some of the smaller collapsible and emergency boats did not get away at all until the ship was so low in the water that they were simply pushed overboard, and one of them went over bottom up.
Harold G. Lowe, the fifth officer, commanded a boat which carried fifty-eight persons aboard. This, so far as is known, is the largest number of passengers carried in any of the lifeboats. Mr. Lowe testified that as his craft was lowered away from the davits he feared momentarily that, as a result of the tremendous strain upon her structure, she would buckle amidships and break before she reached the sustaining surface of the water, dropping all into the sea. “Had one more person leaped aboard her amidships as she was going down past the other decks,” he said, “it might well have proved to be the last straw.”
Mr. Lowe feared this might happen, as he saw steerage passengers “glaring at the boat” as it was lowered past the decks whereon they stood. It was for that reason, he explained to the investigating committee, that he discharged his revolver three times into the air as he and his boatload were dropping past the three lower decks. His purpose, he said, was to show that he was armed and to prevent anyeffort to overload the craft beyond a point which he already considered perilous.
C. H. Lightoller, second officer and ranking surviving officer of the Titanic, expressed the opinion that, in filling lifeboats from the Titanic’s boat deck, “at the rail,” it was involving serious risk to load them to more than half their rated capacity for filling while afloat. H. G. Boxhall, fourth officer, expressed a like view, but added that in an extreme emergency one man might take more chances than another.
In view of these expert opinions, it will be seen that, when it came to loading the Titanic’s passengers into lifeboats “from the rail,” the actual life-saving capacity of her available equipment was far less than the one thousand or eleven hundred that might have been carefully packed away into boats already resting safely on the surface of a calm sea.
And this consideration naturally suggests the query, Why were the Titanic’s lifeboats all loaded “from the rail” of the topmost deck, at a point fully seventy feet above the sea? Why were they not lowered empty, or with only the necessary officers or crew aboard, and then filled with their quota of passengers, either from some lower deck, or else after they had reached the sustaining surface of the water?
It is evident that course was contemplated. Three of the surviving officers have testified that the available force of seamen was depleted after the ship struck, because a detail of men had been sent below to open up the gangway doors, for the purpose of embarking the passengers into the lifeboats from those outlets. There is nothing in evidence as yet to show that this purpose was ever accomplished, or to reveal the fate of the men sent to do the work.
Whether the men were unable or incompetent to force open the gangway doors, from which the lowered boats might easily have been filled, as the sea was as smooth as a mill pond; whether these outlets were jammed as a result of collision with the berg, or stuckbecause the ship’s mechanisms were new, has not been revealed and may never be known.
Certain it is that all the lifeboats were loaded “from the rail,” and their safe capacity was thereby reduced one-half in the judgment of the officers to whom their command was entrusted.
The inadequacy of the Titanic’s lifeboat appliances is not disputed. Steamship companies are already vying with one another to correct in this respect the admitted shortcomings of the past. The sole excuse offered is that collision bulkheads, watertight compartments and other like devices have been regarded until now as making the marvelous vessels of the present day “their own best lifeboats.” The Titanic and many of her sister ships of the ocean fleets have been called “unsinkable.” They were generally believed to be so, and it is only since this greatest of disasters has shattered many illusions that marine engineers have confessed ruefully that the unsinkable ship has never yet been launched.
Since the day of the watertight compartment and of the wireless telegraph sea perils have been so minimized that in the most extreme of likely emergencies the function of the lifeboat had come to be regarded as that of an ocean ferry capable of transferring passengers safely and leisurely from an imperilled vessel to another standing by and co-operating in the task.
That was all the lifeboat had to do when the Republic sank. That was all they had to do years ago, when the Missouri, under Captain Hamilton Murrell’s expert management, took off a thousand persons from a foundering ship without the loss of a single life. So it had come to be believed that the lifeboats would never be called upon to do more than that, and least of all in the case of the Titanic, latest and most superb of all the vessels built by man since the world began.
So deep rooted was this conviction in the minds of seagoing men that when Senator Smith, of Michigan, chairman of the investigating committee, asked one of the surviving officers: “What was the purpose of the Titanic carrying her fourteen full-size lifeboats?” he naively replied; “To comply, I suppose, with the regulations of the London Board of Trade.”
There has been no evidence to indicate that the Titanic lacked the proper number of life jackets, or life belts—one for every person aboard the ship—and it has not been proven that these life belts were not new and of proper quality and strength. Major Peuchen, of Toronto, one of the surviving passengers, however, in the course of his testimony, made two significant comments. He said that when the Carpathia, on the morning after the disaster, steamed through a lot of the Titanic’s floating wreckage, he was surprised to note great quantities of broken bits of cork, such as are used in life preservers. He was astonished also that he did not see a larger number of floating bodies.
“I have always supposed,” said Major Peuchen, who is an experienced yachtsman, “that a life preserver in good condition would sustain a dead body as well as a live one.”
It has been demonstrated by ample evidence that at the time the Titanic hit the iceberg she was steaming at the undiminished speed of twenty-one knots an hour into a zone littered with icebergs and floating ice fields, warning of which her officers had received hours before by wireless from several other ships, including the Amerika, of the Hamburg-American Line. When day broke on Monday, according to Mr. Lane, at least twenty icebergs surrounded the Carpathia, the largest of which was 150 feet high. They were within a six-mile radius.
In the chart room, tucked into the corner of a frame above the table where the navigating officers of the Titanic did their mathematical work, was a written memorandum of the latitude and longitude wherein two large icebergs had been reported directly in the track. Mr. Boxhall had worked out this position under Captain Smith’s instructions. Mr. Lightoller, the second officer, was familiar with it, and when his watch ended at 10 o’clock Sunday night and he surrendered the post on the bridge to the first officer, Mr.Murdock, the remark was made that they would probably “be getting up into the ice during Mr. Murdock’s watch.”
Despite all this the Titanic was rushing on, driving at railroad speed toward the port of New York and “a record for a maiden voyage.”
It was a cloudless and starlit night with no sea running. No extra lookout was posted in the “ship’s eyes,” the most advanced position on the vessel’s deck. Up in the crow’s nest Fleet and Lee, both experienced lookouts, were keeping a sharp watch forward. They had been duly warned of ice by the pair of lookouts whom they had relieved.
But the men in the crow’s nest had to depend entirely upon the vision of the naked eye. They had no glass to aid them. Fleet had occupied a similar post of responsibility four years on the Oceanic without mishap. His testimony before the committee was that he never before had been without the aid of a glass. He had a pair of binoculars when the ship made her trial trip from Belfast, but they had been mislaid, and when the Titanic steamed out from Southampton he asked Mr. Lightoller for another pair and was told that there was no glass for him. Fleet’s warning was too late to prevent the impact. His testimony was that with a glass he would have reported the berg in time to have prevented the ship striking it.
When Quartermaster Hitchens came on watch at 10 o’clock the weather had grown so cold that he, experienced seaman that he was, immediately thought of icebergs, though it was no part of his duty to look out for them. The thermometer showed thirty-one degrees, and the first orders he received were to notify the ship’s carpenter to look to his fresh-water supply because of the freezing weather, and to turn on the steam-heating apparatus in the officers’ quarters.
Still no extra lookout was placed and the men in the crow’s nest were straining their tired eyes ahead without the help of a lens.
Captain Arthur Rostrom, of the Carpathia, testified that when he was rushing his ship to the aid of the stricken Titanic, taking unusual chances because he knew lives were at stake, he placed a double watch on duty.
Each of the surviving officers, when he was questioned as to the Titanic’s speed at a time when the proximity of dangerous ice was definitely reported and clearly indicated by the drop in temperature, said that it was “not customary” to slacken speed at such times, provided the weather was clear. The custom is, they said, “to go ahead and depend upon the lookouts in the crow’s nest and the watch on the bridge to ‘pick up’ the ice in time to avoid hitting it.”
Mr. Lowe, the fifth officer, who was crossing the Atlantic for the first time in his life, most of his fourteen years’ experience at sea having been in the southern and eastern oceans, yawned wearily in the face of the examiner as he admitted that he had never heard that icebergs were common off the Banks of Newfoundland and that the fact would not have interested him if he had. He did not know that the Titanic was following what is known as “the southern track,” and when he was asked, ventured the guess that she was on the northerly one.
Questions framed by Senator Smith several times have suggested that the use of a searchlight might have saved the Titanic. War ships of all nations make the searchlight a part of their regular equipment, as is well known. The Titanic’s surviving officers agreed that it has not been commonly used by vessels of the merchant marine. Some of them conceded that in the conditions surrounding the Titanic its use on a clear night might have revealed the iceberg in time to have saved the ship. Major Peuchen, of Toronto, said emphatically that it would have done so.
Mr. Lightoller, however, pointed out that, while the searchlight is often a useful device for those who stand behind it, its rays invariably blind those upon whom they are trained. Should the use of searchlights become general upon merchant vessels, he thought, it would be a matter for careful consideration, experiment and regulation.
The Senatorial inquiry has indicated that the single lifeboatdrill upon the Titanic had been a rather perfunctory performance; there had been neither a boat drill nor a fire drill from the time the great ship left Southampton until she struck the iceberg. While she lay in harbor before starting on her maiden voyage, and with her port side against the company pier, two of her lifeboats had been lowered away from her starboard side, manned by a junior or a warrant officer and a crew of four men each, who rowed them around a few minutes and then returned to the ship.
There had also been an inspection in the home port to see whether the lifeboats contained all the gear specified by the Board of Trade regulations and Officer Boxhall testified that they did. Yet, when the emergency came, many of the boats were found to contain no lights, while others lacked extra oars, biscuits and other specified requisites.
The Titanic’s loss has completely exploded the fallacy that watertight compartments, of which the big ship had fifteen in her main divisions, can save a vessel from foundering after having sustained a raking blow, tearing and ripping out her plates from thirty feet aft of the bow almost to midships.
Mr. Lightoller expressed the belief under oath that the starboard side of the Titanic had been pierced through compartments 1, 2, 3 and probably 4, numbering from the collision bulkhead toward the midship section. The testimony of Quartermaster Hitchins showed that the vessel filled so fast that when the captain looked at the commutator five minutes after the ship struck, the Titanic showed a list of five degrees to starboard. Rushing water drove the clerks out of the mail room before they could save their letter bags.
One reform that is likely to take shape early as a result of the Senatorial investigation is a more thorough regulation of wireless telegraphy both in shore stations and on ships at sea. Interference by irresponsible operators will probably be checked by governmental action, and the whole subject may come up for uniform international regulation in the Berlin conference.
It is conceded that on all ships the receiving apparatus of the wireless instruments should be manned at all hours of the day and night, just as are the ship’s bridge and the engine rooms. The Senate inquiry has showed that had the death call of the Titanic gone out five minutes later it would never have reached the Carpathia, whose one wireless operator was about to retire for the night when he heard the signal that took the Cunarder to the rescue of the seven hundred who survived.
There has been shown, too, grave need of some cure for the jealousies and rivalries between competing systems of wireless. To the Frankfurt, which was one of the nearest, if not the nearest, of the several ships to the sinking Titanic, her operator sent the curt message, “Shut up!” From the Californian the operator refused to take a message, which proved to be an ice warning, because “he was busy with his accounts.” With the sanction of high officers of their company wireless operators have suppressed vital public information for the purpose of commercializing their exclusive knowledge for personal profit.
So much for the Titanic’s boasted equipment—or the lack of it. There remains to be summarized the evidence adduced as to the personnel and discipline, as these were indicated by what occurred after the ship confronted the direst of all emergencies.
The Titanic was expected to make a record on her maiden voyage. She made one unapproached in ocean annals; one which, it is hoped, may long stand unparalleled.