Asthe ship sank and the commotion and swirl of the waves subsided, the most terrible experience of all began. The seas were not voiceless; the horrified people in the surrounding boats heard an awful sound from the dark central area, a collective voice, compound of moans, shrieks, cries and despairing calls, from those who were struggling in the water. It was an area of death and of agony towards which those in the boats dared not venture, even although they knew their own friends were perishing and crying for help there. They could only wait and listen, hoping that it might soon be over. But it was not soon over. There was a great deal offloating wreckage to which hundreds of people clung, some for a short time, some for a long time; and while they clung on they cried out to their friends to save them. One boat—that commanded by Mr. Lowe, the Fifth Officer—did, after transshipping some of its passengers into other boats, and embarking a crew of oarsmen, venture back into the dark centre of things. The wreckage and dead bodies showed the sea so thickly that they could hardly row without touching a dead body; and once, when they were trying to reach a survivor who was clinging to a piece of broken staircase, praying and calling for help, it took them nearly half an hour to cover the fifty feet that separated them from him, so thick were the bodies. This reads like an exaggeration, but it is well attested. The water was icy cold, and benumbed many of them, who thus died quickly; a few held on tolife, moaning, wailing, calling—but in vain.
A few strong men were still making a desperate fight for life. The collapsible boat, which Bride had seen a group of passengers attempting to launch a few minutes before the ship sank, was washed off by a wave in its collapsed condition. Such boats contain air compartments in their bottom, and thus, even although they are not opened, they float like rafts, and can carry a considerable weight. Some of those who were swept off the ship by the same wave that took the boat found themselves near it and climbed on to it. Mr. Lightoller, the Second Officer, had dived as the ship dived, and been sucked down the steep submerged wall of the hull against the grating over the blower for the exhaust steam. Far down under the water he felt the force of an explosion which blew him up to the surface,where he breathed for a moment, and was then sucked back by the water washing into the ship as it sank. This time he landed against the grating over the pipes that furnished the draught for the funnels, and stuck there. There was another explosion, and again he came to the surface not many feet from the ship, and found himself near the collapsible boat, to which he clung. It was quite near him that the huge funnel fell over into the water and killed many swimmers before his eyes. He drifted for a time on the collapsible boat, until he was taken off into one of the lifeboats.
Bride also found himself strangely involved with this boat, which he had last seen on the deck of the ship. When he was swept off, he found himself in the horrible position of being trapped under water beneath this boat. He struggled out and tried to climb on to it, but it tookhim a long time; at last, however, he managed to get up on it, and found five or six other people there. And now and then some other swimmer, stronger than most, would come up and be helped on board. Some thus helped died almost immediately; there were four found dead upon this boat when at last the survivors were rescued.
There was another boat also not far off, a lifeboat, capsized likewise. Six men managed to scramble on to the keel of this craft; it was almost all she could carry. Mr. Caldwell, a second-class passenger, who had been swimming about in the icy water for nearly an hour, with dead bodies floating all about him, was beginning to despair when he found himself near a crate to which another man was clinging. “Will it hold two?” he asked. And the other man, with a rare heroism, said: “Catch hold and try; wewill live or die together.” And these two, clinging precariously to the crate, reached the overturned lifeboat and were hauled up to its keel. Presently another man came swimming along and asked if they could take him on. But the boat was already dangerously loaded; the weight of another man would have meant death for all, and they told him so. “All right,” he cried, “good-bye; God bless you all!” And he sank before their eyes.
Captain Smith, who had last been seen washed from the bridge as the ship sank, with a child in his arms, was seen once more before he died. He was swimming, apparently only in the hope of saving the child that he held; for in his austere conception of his duty there was no place of salvation for him while others were drowning and struggling. He swam up to a boat with the child and gasped out: “Take the child!” A dozen willing hands werestretched out to take it, and then to help him into the boat; but he shook them off. Only for a moment he held on, asking: “What became of Murdoch?” and when they said that he was dead, he let go his hold, saying: “Let me go”; and the last that they saw of him was swimming back towards the ship. He had no lifebelt; he had evidently no wish that there should be any gruesome resurrection of his body from the sea, and undoubtedly he found his grave where he wished to find it, somewhere hard by the grave of his ship.
The irony of chance, the merciless and illogical selection which death makes in a great collective disaster, was exemplified over and over again in the deaths of people who had escaped safely to a boat, and the salvation of others who were involved in the very centre of destruction. The strangest escape of all was probably thatof Colonel Gracie of the United States army, who jumped from the topmost deck of the ship when she sank and was sucked down with her. He was drawn down for a long while, and whirled round and round, and would have been drawn down to a depth from which he could never have come up alive if it had not been for the explosion which took place after the ship sank. “After sinking with the ship,” he says, “it appeared to me as if I was propelled by some great force through the water. This may have been caused by explosions under the waters, and I remembered fearful stories of people being boiled to death. Innumerable thoughts of a personal nature, having relation to mental telepathy, flashed through my brain. I thought of those at home, as if my spirit might go to them to say good-bye. Again and again I prayed for deliverance, although I felt sure that theend had come. I had the greatest difficulty in holding my breath until I came to the surface. I knew that once I inhaled, the water would suffocate me. I struck out with all my strength for the surface. I got to the air again after a time that seemed to me unending. There was nothing in sight save the ocean strewn with great masses of wreckage, dying men and women all about me, groaning and crying piteously. I saw wreckage everywhere, and what came within reach I clung to. I moved from one piece to another until I reached the collapsible boat. She soon became so full that it seemed as if she would sink if more came on board her. We had to refuse to let any others climb on board. This was the most pathetic and horrible scene of all. The piteous cries of those around us ring in my ears, and I will remember them to my dying day. ‘Hold on to what youhave, old boy,’ we shouted to each man who tried to get on board. ‘One more of you would sink us all.’ Many of those whom we refused answered, as they went to their death, ‘Good luck; God bless you.’ All the time we were buoyed up and sustained by the hope of rescue. We saw lights in all directions—particularly some green lights which, as we learned later, were rockets burned by one of theTitanic’sboats. So we passed the night with the waves washing over and burying our raft deep in the water.”
It was twenty minutes past two when theTitanicsank, two hours and forty minutes after she had struck the iceberg; and for two hours after that the boats drifted all round and about, some of them in bunches of three or four, others solitary. Almost every kind of suffering was endured in them, although, after the mental horrors of the preceding hour, physicalsufferings were scarcely felt. Some of the boats had hardly anyone but women in them; in many the stokers and stewards were quite useless at the oars. But here and there, in that sorrowful, horror-stricken company, heroism lifted its head and human nature took heart again. Women took their turn at the oars in boats where the men were either too few or incapable of rowing; and one woman notably, the Countess of Rothes, practically took command of her boat and was at an oar all the time. Where they were rowing to most of them did not know. They had seen lights at the time the ship went down, and some of them made for these; but they soon disappeared, and probably most of the boats were following each other aimlessly, led by one boat in which some green flares were found, which acted as a beacon for which the others made. One man had a pocketelectric lamp, which he flashed now and then, a little ray of hope and guidance shining across those dark and miserable waters. Not all of the boats had food and water on board. Many women were only in their night-clothes, some of the men in evening dress; everyone was bitterly cold, although, fortunately, there was no wind and no sea.
The stars paled in the sky; the darkness became a little lighter; the gray daylight began to come. Out of the surrounding gloom a wider and wider area of sea became visible, with here and there a boat discernible on it, and here and there some fragments of wreckage. By this time the boats had rowed away from the dreadful region, and but few floating bodies were visible. The waves rose and fell, smooth as oil, first gray in colour, and then, as the light increased, the pure dark blue of mid-ocean. The eastern skybegan to grow red under the cloud bank, and from red to orange, and from orange to gold, the lovely pageantry of an Atlantic dawn began to unfold itself before the aching eyes that had been gazing on prodigies and horrors. From out that well of light in the sky came rays that painted the wave-backs first with rose, and then with saffron, and then with pure gold. And in the first flush of that blessed and comforting light the draggled and weary sufferers saw, first a speck far to the south, then a smudge of cloud, and then the red and black smoke-stack of a steamer that meant succour and safety for them.
Fromevery quarter of the ocean, summoned by the miracle of the wireless voice, many ships had been racing since midnight to the help of the doomed liner. From midnight onwards captains were being called by messages from the wireless operators of their ships, telling them that theTitanicwas asking for help; courses were being altered and chief engineers called upon to urge their stokehold crews to special efforts; for coal means steam, and steam means speed, and speed may mean life. Many ships that could receive the strong electric impulses sent out from theTitanichad not electric strength enough to answer; but they turned and came to that invisiblespot represented by a few figures which the faithful wireless indicated. Even as far as five hundred miles away, theParisianturned in her tracks in obedience to the call and came racing towards the north-west. But there were tragedies even with the wireless. The Leyland linerCalifornian, bound for Boston, was only seventeen miles away from theTitanicwhen she struck, and could have saved every soul on board; but her wireless apparatus was not working, and she was deaf to the agonized calls that were being sent out from only a few miles away. TheParisian, five hundred miles away, could hear and come, though it was useless; theCaliforniancould not hear and so did not come though, if she had, she would probably have saved every life on board. TheCincinnati, theAmerika, thePrinz Friedrich Wilhelm, theMenominee, theLa Provence, thePrinz Adalbert, theVirginian,theOlympic, and theBalticall heard the news and all turned towards Lat. 41° 46′ N., Long. 50° 14′ W. The dread news was being whispered all over the sea, and even ashore, just as the dwellers on the North Atlantic seaboard were retiring to rest, the station at Cape Race intercepted the talk of theTitanic270 miles away, and flashed the message out far and wide; so that Government tugs and ships with steam up in harbours, and everything afloat in the vicinity which heard the news might hurry to the rescue. Cape Race soon heard that theVirginianwas on her way to theTitanic’sposition, then that theOlympicandCarpathiahad altered their courses and were making for the wounded ship, and so on. Throughout the night the rumours in the air were busy, while still the steady calls came out in firm electric waves from theTitanic—still calling, still flashing “C.Q.D.” At1.20 she whispered to theOlympic, “Get your boats ready; going down fast by the head.” At 1.35 theFrankfurt(after an hour and a half’s delay) said, “We are starting for you.” Then at 1.41 came a message to theOlympic, “C.Q.D., boilers flooded.”
“Are there any boats round you already?” asked theOlympic, but there was no answer.
Other ships began to call, giving encouraging messages: “We are coming,” said theBirma, “only fifty miles away”; but still there was no answer.
All over the North Atlantic men in lighted instrument rooms sat listening with the telephones at their ears; they heard each other’s questions and waited in the silence, but it was never broken again by the voice from theTitanic. “All quiet now,” reported theBirmato theOlympic, and all quiet it was,except for the thrashing and pounding of a score of propellers, and the hiss of a dozen steel stems as they ripped the smooth waters on courses converging to the spot where the wireless voice had suddenly flickered out into silence.
But of all those who had been listening to the signals Captain Rostron of theCarpathiaknew that his ship would most likely be among the first to reach the spot. It was about midnight on Sunday that the passengers of theCarpathiafirst became aware that something unusual was happening. The course had been changed and a certain hurrying about on the decks took the place of the usual midnight quiet. The trembling and vibration increased to a quick jumping movement as pressure of steam was gradually increased and the engines urged to the extreme of their driving capacity. The chief steward summoned his staff and set themto work making sandwiches and preparing hot drinks. All the hot water was cut off from the cabins and bath-rooms, so that every ounce of steam could be utilized for driving the machinery.
TheCarpathiawas nearly seventy miles from the position of theTitanicwhen she changed her course and turned northward; she had been steaming just over four hours when, in the light of that wonderful dawn, those on the look-out descried a small boat. As they drew nearer they saw other boats, and fragments of wreckage, and masses of ice drifting about the sea. Captain Rostron stopped while he was still a good distance from the boats, realizing that preparations must be made before he could take passengers on board. The accommodation gangway was rigged and also rope ladders lowered over the sides, and canvas slings were arranged to hoist up those who were toofeeble to climb. The passengers crowded along the rail or looked out of their portholes to see the reaping of this strange harvest of the sea. The first boat came up almost filled with women and children—women in evening dress or in fur coats thrown over nightgowns, in silk stockings and slippers, in rags and shawls. The babies were crying; some of the women were injured and some half-fainting; all had horror on their faces. Other boats began to come up, and the work of embarking the seven hundred survivors went on. It took a long time, for some of the boats were far away, and it was not until they had been seven hours afloat that the last of them were taken on board theCarpathia. Some climbed up the ladders, others were put into the slings and swung on board, stewards standing by with rum and brandy to revive the fainting; and many willing hands were occupiedwith caring for the sufferers, taking them at once to improvised couches and beds, or conducting those who were not so exhausted to the saloon where hot drinks and food were ready. But it was a ghastly company. As boat after boat came up, those who had already been saved eagerly searched among its occupants to see if their own friends were among them; and as gradually the tale of boats was completed and it was known that no more had been saved, and the terrible magnitude of the loss was realized—then, in the words of one of theCarpathia’speople, “Bedlam broke loose.” Women who had borne themselves bravely throughout the hours of waiting and exposure broke into shrieking hysterics, calling upon the names of their lost. Some went clean out of their minds; one or two died there in the very moment of rescue. TheCarpathia’spassengersgave up their rooms and ransacked their trunks to find clothing for the more than half-naked survivors; and at last exhaustion, resignation, and the doctor’s merciful drugs did the rest. The dead were buried; those who had been snatched too late from the bitter waters were committed to them again, and eternally, with solemn words; and theCarpathiawas headed for New York.
TheCalifornianhad come up while theCarpathiawas taking the survivors on board, and it was arranged that she should remain and search the vicinity while theCarpathiamade all haste to New York. And the other ships that had answered the call for help either came up later in the morning and stayed for a little cruising about in the forlorn hope of finding more survivors, or else turned back and resumed their voyages when they heard theCarpathia’stidings.
In the meantime the shore stations could get no news. Word reached New York and London in the course of the morning that theTitanichad struck aniceberg and was badly damaged, but nothing more was known until a message, the origin of which could not be discovered, came to say that theTitanicwas being towed to Halifax by theVirginian, and that all her passengers were saved. With this news the London evening papers came out on that Monday, and even on Tuesday the early editions of the morning papers had the same story, and commented upon the narrow escape of the huge ship. Even the White Star officials had on Monday no definite news; and when their offices in New York were besieged by newspaper men and relatives of the passengers demanding information, the pathetic belief in theTitanic’sstrength was allowed to overshadow anxieties concerning the greater disaster. Mr. Franklin, the vice-president of the American Trust to which the White Star Company belongs, issued the followingstatement from New York on Monday:
“We have nothing direct from theTitanic, but are perfectly satisfied that the vessel is unsinkable. The fact that the Marconi messages have ceased means nothing; it may be due to atmospheric conditions or the coming up of the ships, or something of that sort.“We are not worried over the possible loss of the ship, as she will not go down, but we are sorry for the inconvenience caused to the travelling public. We are absolutely certain that theTitanicis able to withstand any damage. She may be down by the head, but would float indefinitely in that condition.”
“We have nothing direct from theTitanic, but are perfectly satisfied that the vessel is unsinkable. The fact that the Marconi messages have ceased means nothing; it may be due to atmospheric conditions or the coming up of the ships, or something of that sort.
“We are not worried over the possible loss of the ship, as she will not go down, but we are sorry for the inconvenience caused to the travelling public. We are absolutely certain that theTitanicis able to withstand any damage. She may be down by the head, but would float indefinitely in that condition.”
Still that same word, “unsinkable,” which had now indeed for the first time become a true one: for it is only when she lies at the bottom of the sea that anyship can be called unsinkable. On Tuesday morning when the dreadful news was first certainly known, those proud words had to be taken back. Again Mr. Franklin had to face the reporters, and this time he could only say:
“I must take upon myself the whole blame for that statement. I made it, and I believed it when I made it. The accident to theOlympic, when she collided with the cruiserHawke, convinced me that these ships, theOlympicandTitanic, were built like battleships, able to resist almost any kind of accident, particularly a collision. I made the statement in good faith, and upon me must rest the responsibility for error, since the fact has proved that it was not a correct description of the unfortunateTitanic.”
“I must take upon myself the whole blame for that statement. I made it, and I believed it when I made it. The accident to theOlympic, when she collided with the cruiserHawke, convinced me that these ships, theOlympicandTitanic, were built like battleships, able to resist almost any kind of accident, particularly a collision. I made the statement in good faith, and upon me must rest the responsibility for error, since the fact has proved that it was not a correct description of the unfortunateTitanic.”
And for three days while theCarpathiawas ploughing her way, now slowlythrough ice-strewn seas, and now at full speed through open water, and while England lay under the cloud of an unprecedented disaster, New York was in a ferment of grief, excitement, and indignation. Crowds thronged the streets outside the offices of the White Star Line, while gradually, in lists of thirty or forty at a time, the names of the survivors began to come through from theCarpathia. And at last, when all the names had been spelled out, and interrogated, and corrected, the grim total of the figures stood out in appalling significance—seven hundred and three saved, one thousand five hundred and three lost.
It is not possible, nor would it be very profitable, to describe the scenes that took place on these days of waiting, the alternations of hope and grief, of thankfulness and wild despair, of which the shipping offices were the scene. They culminatedon the Thursday evening when theCarpathiaarrived in New York. The greatest precautions had been taken to prevent the insatiable thirst for news from turning that solemn disembarkation into a battlefield. The entrance to the dock was carefully guarded, and only those were admitted who had business there or who could prove that they had relations among the rescued passengers. Similar precautions were taken on the ship; she was not even boarded by the Custom officials, nor were any reporters allowed on board, although a fleet of steam launches went out in the cold rainy evening to meet her, bearing pressmen who were prepared to run any risks to get a footing on the ship. They failed, however, and the small craft were left behind in the mist, as theCarpathiacame gliding up the Hudson.
Among the waiting crowd were nurses, doctors, and a staff of ambulance menand women; for all kinds of wild rumours were afloat as to the condition of those who had been rescued. The women of New York had devoted the days of waiting to the organization of a powerful relief committee, and had collected money and clothing on an ample scale to meet the needs of those, chiefly among the steerage passengers, who should find themselves destitute when they landed. And there, in the rain of that gloomy evening, they waited.
At last they saw theCarpathiacome creeping up the river and head towards the White Star pier. The flashlights of photographers were playing about her, and with this silent salute she came into dock. Gateways had been erected, shutting off the edge of the pier from the sheds in which the crowd was waiting, and the first sight they had of the rescued was when after the gangway had been rigged, and the brief formalities of the shore compliedwith, the passengers began slowly to come down the gangway. A famous English dramatist who was looking on at the scene has written of it eloquently, describing the strange varieties of bearing and demeanour; how one face had a startled, frightened look that seemed as if it would always be there, another a set and staring gaze; how one showed an angry, rebellious desperation, and another seemed merely dazed. Some carried on stretchers, some supported by nurses, and some handed down by members of the crew, they came, either to meetings that were agonizing in their joy, or to blank loneliness that would last until they died. Five or six babies without mothers, some of them utterly unidentified and unidentifiable, were handed down with the rest, so strangely preserved, in all their tenderness and helplessness, through that terrible time of confusion and exposure.
And in the minds of those who looked on at this sad procession there was one tragic, recurrent thought: that for every one who came down the gangway, ill perhaps, maimed perhaps, destitute perhaps, but alive and on solid earth again, there were two either drifting in the slow Arctic current, or lying in the great submarine valley to which the ship had gone down. They were a poor remnant indeed of all that composite world of pride, and strength, and riches; for Death winnows with a strange fan, and although one would suit his purpose as well as another, he often chooses the best and the strongest. There were card-sharpers, and orphaned infants, and destitute consumptives among the saved; and there were hundreds of heroes and strong men among the drowned. There were among the saved those to whom death would have been no great enemy, who had nolove for life or ties to bind them to it; and there were those among the drowned for whom life was at its very best and dearest; lovers and workers in the very morning of life before whom the years had stretched forward rich with promise.
And when nearly all had gone and the crowd in the docks was melting away, one man, who had until then remained secluded in the ship came quietly out, haggard and stricken with woe: Bruce Ismay, the representative and figure-head of that pride and power which had given being to theTitanic. In a sense he bore on his own shoulders the burden of every sufferer’s grief and loss; and he bore it, not with shame, for he had no cause for shame, but with reticence of words and activity in such alleviating deeds as were possible, and with a dignity which was proof against even the bitter injustice of which he was the victim in the days thatfollowed. There was pity enough in New York, hysterical pity, sentimental pity, real pity, practical pity, for all the obvious and patent distress of the bereaved and destitute; but there was no pity for this man who, of all that ragged remnant that walked back to life down theCarpathia’sgangway, had perhaps the most need of pity.
Thesymbols of Honour and Glory and Time that looked so handsome in the flooding sunlight of theTitanic’sstairway lie crushed into unrecognizable shapes and splinters beneath the tonnage of two thousand fathoms of ocean water. Time is no more for the fifteen hundred souls who perished with them; but Honour and Glory, by strange ways and unlooked-for events, have come into their own. It was not Time, nor the creatures and things of Time, that received their final crown there; but things that have nothing to do with Time, qualities that, in their power of rising beyond all human limitations, we must needs call divine.
TheTitanicwas in more senses than one a fool’s paradise. There is nothing that man can build that nature cannot destroy, and far as he may advance in might and knowledge and cunning, her blind strength will always be more than his match. But men easily forget this; they wish to forget it; and the beautiful and comfortable and agreeable equipment of this ship helped them to forget it. You may cover the walls of a ship with rare woods and upholster them with tapestries and brocades, but it is the bare steel walls behind them on which you depend to keep out the water; it is the strength of those walls, relatively to the strength of such natural forces as may be arrayed against them, on which the safety of the ship depends. If they are weaker than something which assails them, the water must come in and the ship must sink. It was assumed too readily that, in the case oftheTitanic, these things could not happen; it was assumed too readily that if in the extreme event they did happen, the manifold appliances for saving life would be amply sufficient for the security of the passengers. Thus they lived in a serene confidence such as no ship’s company ever enjoyed before, or will enjoy again for a long time to come. And there were gathered about them almost all those accessories of material life which are necessary to the paradise of fools, and are extremely agreeable to wiser men.
It was this perfect serenity of their condition which made so poignant the tragedy of their sudden meeting with death—that pale angel whom every man knows that he must some day encounter, but whom most of us hope to find at the end of some road a very long way off waiting for us with comforting and soothinghands. We do not expect to meet him suddenly turning the corner of the street, or in an environment of refined and elegant conviviality, or in the midst of our noonday activities, or at midnight on the high seas when we are dreaming on feather pillows. But it was thus that those on theTitanicencountered him, waiting there in the ice and the starlight, arresting the ship’s progress with his out-stretched arm, and standing by, waiting, while the sense of his cold presence gradually sank like a frost into their hearts.
To say that all the men who died on theTitanicwere heroes would be as absurd as to say that all who were saved were cowards. There were heroes among both groups and cowards among both groups, as there must be among any large number of men. It is the collective behaviour and the general attitude towards disaster thatis important at such a time; and in this respect there is ample evidence that death scored no advantage in the encounter, and that, though he took a spoil of bodies that had been destined for him since the moment of their birth, he left the hearts unconquered. In that last half-hour before the end, when every one on the ship was under sentence of death, modern civilization went through a severe test. By their bearing in that moment those fated men and women had to determine whether, through the long years of peace and increase of material comfort and withdrawal from contact with the cruder elements of life, their race had deteriorated in courage and morale. It is only by such great tests that we can determine how we stand in these matters, and, as they periodically recur, measure our advance or decline. And the human material there made the test a very severe one; for there werepeople on theTitanicwho had so entrenched themselves behind ramparts of wealth and influence as to have wellnigh forgotten that, equally with the waif and the pauper, they were exposed to the caprice of destiny; and who might have been forgiven if, in that awful moment of realization, they had shown the white feather and given themselves over to panic. But there is ample evidence that these men stood the test equally as well as those whose occupation and training made them familiar with the risks of the sea, to which they were continually exposed, and through which they might reasonably expect to come to just such an end. There was no theatrical heroism, no striking of attitudes, or attempt to escape from the dread reality in any form of spiritual hypnosis; they simply stood about the decks, smoking cigarettes, talking to one another, and waiting for theirhour to strike. There is nothing so hard, nothing so entirely dignified, as to be silent and quiet in the face of an approaching horror.
That was one form of heroism, which will make the influence of this thing deathless long after the memory of it has faded as completely from the minds of men as sight or sign of it has faded from that area of ocean where, two miles above the sunken ship, the rolling blue furrows have smoothed away all trace of the struggles and agonies that embittered it. But there was another heroism which must be regarded as the final crown and glory of this catastrophe—not because it is exceptional, for happily it is not, but because it continued and confirmed a tradition of English sea life that should be a tingling inspiration to everyone who has knowledge of it. The men who did the work of the ship were no composite,highly drilled body like the men in the navy who, isolated for months at a time and austerely disciplined, are educated into anesprit de corpsand sense of responsibility that make them willing, in moments of emergency, to sacrifice individual safety to the honour of the ship and of the Service to which they belong. These stokers, stewards, and seamen were the ordinary scratch crew, signed on at Southampton for one round trip to New York and back; most of them had never seen each other or their officers before; they had none of the training or the securities afforded by a great national service; they were simply—especially in the case of the stokers—men so low in the community that they were able to live no pleasanter life than that afforded by the stokehold of a ship—an inferno of darkness and noise and commotion and insufferable heat—men whose experience ofthe good things of life was half an hour’s breathing of the open sea air between their spells of labour at the furnaces, or a drunken spree ashore whence, after being poisoned by cheap drink and robbed by joyless women of the fruits of their spell of labour, they are obliged to return to it again to find the means for another debauch. Not the stuff out of which one would expect an austere heroism to be evolved. Yet such are the traditions of the sea, such is the power of those traditions and the spirit of those who interpret them, that some of these men—not all, but some—remained down in theTitanic’sstokeholds long after she had struck, and long after the water, pouring like a cataract through the rent in her bottom and rising like a tide round the black holes where they worked, had warned them that her doom, and probably theirs, was sealed.
In the engine-room were another groupof heroes, men of a far higher type, with fine intelligences, trained in all the subtleties and craft of modern ships, men with education and imagination who could see in their mind’s eye all the variations of horror that might await them. These men also continued at their routine tasks in the engine room, knowing perfectly well that no power on earth could save them, choosing to stay there while there was work to be done for the common good, their best hope being presently to be drowned instead of being boiled or scalded to death. All through the ship, though in less awful circumstances, the same spirit was being observed; men who had duties to do went on doing them because they were the kind of men to whom in such an hour it came more easily to perform than to shirk their duties. The three ship’s boys spent the whole of that hour carrying provisions from the store-roomto the deck; the post-office employés worked in the flooded mail-room below to save the mail-bags and carry them up to where they might be taken off if there should be a chance; the purser and his men brought up the ship’s books and money, against all possibility of its being any use to do so, but because it was their duty at such a time to do so; the stewards were busy to the end with their domestic, and the officers with their executive, duties. In all this we have an example of spontaneous discipline—for they had never been drilled in doing these things, they only knew that they had to do them—such as no barrack-room discipline in the world could match. In such moments all artificial bonds are useless. It is what men are in themselves that determines their conduct; and discipline and conduct like this are proofs, not of the superiority of one race over another, butthat in the core of human nature itself there is an abiding sweetness and soundness that fear cannot embitter nor death corrupt.
The twin gray horses are still at their work in Belfast Lough, and on any summer morning you may see their white manes shining like gold as they escort you in from the sunrise and the open sea to where the smoke rises and the din resounds.
For the iron forest has branched again, and its dreadful groves are echoing anew to the clamour of the hammers and the drills. Another ship, greater and stronger even than the lost one, is rising within the cathedral scaffoldings; and the men who build her, companions of those whom theTitanicspilled into the sea, speak among themselves and say, “this time we shall prevail.”
May 1912.
CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
BY THE SAME AUTHORCHRISTOPHER COLUMBUSANDTHE NEW WORLD OF HIS DISCOVERY.With Frontispiece in colour by Norman Wilkinson. Portrait, Maps, Illustrations, Appendices and a Note on the Navigation of Columbus’s First Voyage by the Earl of Dunraven, K.P. Large Post 8vo, cloth, gilt. 7s.6d.net. (Third Edition.)Mr. Henry Vignaud, late Secretary of the American Embassy and distinguished historian of Columbus, says:“In this book the hero who discovered the New World is shown for the first time as a living man.... A more true and lively picture of the great discoverer than is contained in any other work.”“Mr. Filson Young has done nothing better ... there is not a dull page in the seven hundred. His descriptions of visible things, of streets and hills, and seas and men, are vivid in his accustomed manner. His narrative is rich and marching, yet sufficiently precise.... For the modern taste there is really nothing about Columbus to compare with Mr. Young’s for matter and style.”—The Morning Post.“If these volumes do not bring the figure of Columbus into closer relation with the mind of the present generation, it must be because people simply do not care to learn about anything that lies a few yards beyond their own thresholds. Our hope, however, is better; and we imagine that there will be a wide public for a narrative so fresh and spirited.“Mr. Filson Young tells his story, without turning to the right hand or to the left, in a free and fluent fashion.... Very vigorous too are the passages dealing with his voyages, for Mr. Filson Young has drunk deep of the spirit of the sea and nowhere writes so well as in his account of the seafarer’s business in great waters.... The book abounds in interludes of suggestive thought and clear, vigorous expression. But, the book must be commended for the keen, eager spirit of its narrative and the abounding interest of its romances. If all gleaners in the field of history were as skilful as Mr. Young, we should not hear so much about the dry-as-dust dullness of what ought to be always one of the most fascinating forms of literary art.”Mr. W. L. Courtney inThe Daily Telegraph.“Mr. Young has given us an estimate of the man which is attractive and poetical. His account of the four voyages to the Indies is a romance of the sea.... His book is a book of colour and the spirit of adventure. We delight in that vision of his which shows to others the world and the sea and the strange ‘Indias’ very much as Columbus saw them, with his keen eyes, four centuries ago.”—The Manchester Guardian.“History clothed with a gracious humanity ... history that has reality and life ... not a mere record of his acts, but a reconstruction of the man who died four centuries ago, so that at the end of the book we feel that we have known and spoken with Columbus.... Breathes interest from every page.”—The Daily Chronicle.“He writes with charm, with colour, and with humour ... very readable and eloquent.... We can give but a little quotation to show Mr. Young’s eloquence, but we can assure the reader that he has many passages that set one longing for the sea.”—Mr. John Masefield inThe Tribune.“It is almost impossible to do justice to the splendour and romance of these two finely produced volumes.... ‘Charity, truth, and justice,’ that is the meed Columbus has from Mr. Filson Young, whose book—austere, dignified, stately—forms by far the most striking and vivid portrait of the hero in our language.”—The Morning Leader.“To write a new book on Columbus seems a daring project; so many folios have already been dedicated to his life. Mr. Young has justified himself; so many books on the Genoese sailor have been either unexpectedly dull or painfully inaccurate. Mr. Young is neither; in a style pleasant and lucid he has set before us with vigour the period and the setting of these famous voyages. In his pages we can enter into the feelings and aspirations of those Western seamen.”—The Pall Mall Gazette.GRANT RICHARDS, LTD.7, Carlton St. London, S.W.
With Frontispiece in colour by Norman Wilkinson. Portrait, Maps, Illustrations, Appendices and a Note on the Navigation of Columbus’s First Voyage by the Earl of Dunraven, K.P. Large Post 8vo, cloth, gilt. 7s.6d.net. (Third Edition.)
Mr. Henry Vignaud, late Secretary of the American Embassy and distinguished historian of Columbus, says:
“In this book the hero who discovered the New World is shown for the first time as a living man.... A more true and lively picture of the great discoverer than is contained in any other work.”
“Mr. Filson Young has done nothing better ... there is not a dull page in the seven hundred. His descriptions of visible things, of streets and hills, and seas and men, are vivid in his accustomed manner. His narrative is rich and marching, yet sufficiently precise.... For the modern taste there is really nothing about Columbus to compare with Mr. Young’s for matter and style.”—The Morning Post.
“If these volumes do not bring the figure of Columbus into closer relation with the mind of the present generation, it must be because people simply do not care to learn about anything that lies a few yards beyond their own thresholds. Our hope, however, is better; and we imagine that there will be a wide public for a narrative so fresh and spirited.
“Mr. Filson Young tells his story, without turning to the right hand or to the left, in a free and fluent fashion.... Very vigorous too are the passages dealing with his voyages, for Mr. Filson Young has drunk deep of the spirit of the sea and nowhere writes so well as in his account of the seafarer’s business in great waters.... The book abounds in interludes of suggestive thought and clear, vigorous expression. But, the book must be commended for the keen, eager spirit of its narrative and the abounding interest of its romances. If all gleaners in the field of history were as skilful as Mr. Young, we should not hear so much about the dry-as-dust dullness of what ought to be always one of the most fascinating forms of literary art.”
Mr. W. L. Courtney inThe Daily Telegraph.
“Mr. Young has given us an estimate of the man which is attractive and poetical. His account of the four voyages to the Indies is a romance of the sea.... His book is a book of colour and the spirit of adventure. We delight in that vision of his which shows to others the world and the sea and the strange ‘Indias’ very much as Columbus saw them, with his keen eyes, four centuries ago.”—The Manchester Guardian.
“History clothed with a gracious humanity ... history that has reality and life ... not a mere record of his acts, but a reconstruction of the man who died four centuries ago, so that at the end of the book we feel that we have known and spoken with Columbus.... Breathes interest from every page.”—The Daily Chronicle.
“He writes with charm, with colour, and with humour ... very readable and eloquent.... We can give but a little quotation to show Mr. Young’s eloquence, but we can assure the reader that he has many passages that set one longing for the sea.”—Mr. John Masefield inThe Tribune.
“It is almost impossible to do justice to the splendour and romance of these two finely produced volumes.... ‘Charity, truth, and justice,’ that is the meed Columbus has from Mr. Filson Young, whose book—austere, dignified, stately—forms by far the most striking and vivid portrait of the hero in our language.”—The Morning Leader.
“To write a new book on Columbus seems a daring project; so many folios have already been dedicated to his life. Mr. Young has justified himself; so many books on the Genoese sailor have been either unexpectedly dull or painfully inaccurate. Mr. Young is neither; in a style pleasant and lucid he has set before us with vigour the period and the setting of these famous voyages. In his pages we can enter into the feelings and aspirations of those Western seamen.”—The Pall Mall Gazette.
GRANT RICHARDS, LTD.7, Carlton St. London, S.W.