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Bullets, Bottles, and Gardenias
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Historical SummaryIT was nearing midnight on Sunday, April 14, 1912 (11:40 P.M. ship’s time), when the British steamship Titanic, of the White Star Line, proceeding at full speed through a region of ice, collided with an iceberg in latitude 41.46 north and longitude 50.14 west—about 1,600 miles due east of New York. Two hours and forty minutes later the gigantic ship sank with a loss of 1,513 lives out of 2,224 on board. Of those saved, the great majority were women. The largest and most magnificent passenger ship the world had ever seen, the Titanic was on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic from Southampton. She was 883 feet long, had 8 steel decks, a cellular double bottom, 29 enormous boilers, and 159 furnaces. All her structure was of steel. White Star Line officials, her crew, the passengers, marine experts, all the world regarded her as unsinkable. Yet the massive underwater shelf of the iceberg, like an immense can-opener, tore the Titanic open from bow to amidships. At first both Captain E. J. Smith and his passengers refused to believe that the ship was in any danger. There had been a slight jar when ship and iceberg struck. Boys and girls picked up pieces of ice which had fallen on the deck, some seventy feet above the sea. Stewards informed the passengers that the ship had "grazed an iceberg," but there was no danger. Then suddenly Captain Smith gave the order: "Put on your life-belts!" Millions had been spent in decorating the ship with palm-gardens, Turkish baths, squash courts, tapestried saloons, and libraries, but the vitally important essential of sufficient lifeboats was lacking. Women and children were placed in the available lifeboats first. Hundreds preferred to stay with the ship, still believing her to be unsinkable. Amidst scenes of horror, deck after deck sank out of sight, as the Titanic, like a kneeling giant, crouched lower. "Marconigrams"—wireless calls for help—were sent out frantically. Blazing rockets illuminated the huge iceberg on the starboard side. There were roars of explosion as the ship’s huge machinery cut through bulkheads as if they were butter. Incredibly, the Titanic’s little band remained at its post and played "Nearer My God to Thee." Mrs. Isidor Straus, wife of the noted financier, refused to leave her husband and met all protests with the answer that whatever happened to him should happen to her. (The London Times in an editorial gave this as an example of "an unselfish bravery of which Anglo-Saxons on both sides of the Atlantic may well be proud.") Another casualty, Colonel John Jacob Astor, helped his young bride, who was pregnant, into a boat. He then requested the permission of the second officer to go with her for her protection. "No, sir," replied the officer, "no man shall go in the boat until all the women are off." Eyewitnesses in most sections of the ship reported that there was no hurry, no confusion, no crowding. However, Dr. Lengyel Arpad, a Hungarian steerage physician of the rescue-ship Carpathia, gleaned a tale of horror from the bruised, scalded, and frostbitten men and women who had been rescued from the steerage of the Titanic. "Piling up to their deck, shouting and crying, dragging their bundles, the men and women at first were beyond control. Despair took possession of them because the first and second boats lowered past them were not stopped at that deck and neither was half-filled." The officers had to battle to drag out the men and let the women take their places. One rescued woman could talk of nothing but "the beautiful goose livers and cheese" she had lost. Hundreds crowded file rails, shrieking and praying and screaming. A panic began when the stokers rushed up from below and tried to beat a path through the steerage passengers to the boats. With iron bars and shovels they struck down all who stood in their way. The surviving wireless operator, Harold Bride, reported that, while radioman Phillips kept at his post even after the captain had shouted: "Every man for himself," and continued sending, sending, a stoker tried to steal his life-belt from off his back. "I suddenly felt a passion not to let that man die a decent sailor’s death," he confessed. "I hope I finished him. I don’t know. We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room and he was not moving." Many stokers were scalded to death when the Titanic listed. The officers had pistols, but could not use them for fear of killing women and children. Only a few of the steerage passengers wore lifebelts because they could not understand orders to put them on. The stark simplicity of eyewitness accounts shows the tragedy of the sinking. Here are five on-the-spot reports which together give a running account of the catastrophe: (1) August H. Weikman, the Titanic’s barber, who had crossed the ocean 705 times and had been with the White Star Line for thirty-four years, gives his impressions of what happened when the ship and iceberg collided; (2) J. B. Thayer, Jr., a seventeen-year-old schoolboy from Haverford, Pa., tells the story of his escape; (3) Lady Rothes, an Englishwoman, describes her experiences in a lifeboat; (4) Lawrence Beesley, a British schoolmaster, describes the sinking ship as witnessed from the ocean; and (5) Captain A. H. Rostron, of the R.S.M. Carpathia, reports to the Cunard Steamship Company on the rescue of the Titanic survivors.
Key Quote"It was impossible to think anything could be wrong with such a leviathan."
The New York Globe
April 22, 1912
"Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes an Iceberg
[1912]
III. In the Lifeboats
[New York Globe,April 22, 1912]
Capt. Smith stood shoulder to shoulder with me as I got into the lifeboat, and his last words were to the lone seaman—Tom Jones—"Row straight for those lights over there; leave your passengers on board of her and return as soon as you can." Capt. Smith’s whole attitude was one of great calmness and courage, and I am sure he thought that the ship—whose lights we could plainly see—would pick us up and that our lifeboats would be able to do double duty in ferrying passengers to the help that gleamed so near.
There were two stewards with us and thirty-one women. The name of the steward was Crawford. We were lowered quietly to the water, and when we had pushed off from the Titanic’s side I asked the seaman if he would care to have me take the tiller, as I knew something about boats. He said. "Certainly, lady." I climbed aft into the stem and asked my cousin to help me.
The first impression f had as we left the ship was that above all things we must not lose our serf-control. We had no officer to take command of our boat, and the little seaman had to assume all the responsibility. He did it nobly, alternately cheering us with words of encouragement, then rowing doggedly.
Then Signora de Satode Penasco began to scream for her husband. It was too horrible. I left the tiller to my cousin and slipped down beside her to be of what comfort I could. Poor woman! Her sobs tore our hearts and her moans were unspeakable in their sadness.
For three hours we pulled steadily for the two masthead lights that showed brilliantly in the darkness. For a few minutes we saw the ship’s port light, then it vanished, and the masthead lights got dimmer on the horizon until they, too, disappeared.
When the awful end came, I tried my best to keep the Spanish woman from hearing the agonizing sounds of distress. They seemed to continue forever, although it could not have been more than ten minutes until the silence of the lonely sea dropped down. The indescribable loneliness, the ghastliness of our feeling, never can be told.
We tried to keep in touch with the other boats by shouting and succeeded fairly well. Our boat was farthest away because we had chased the phantom lights for three hours.
Public reaction to the Titanic disaster was so strong that a special committee of the United States Senate under Senator Smith was appointed
to investigate the sinking. The committee found that the Titanic, though warned by wireless of the existence of an icefield in the vicinity, had dashed ahead at full speed; that the ship did not have sufficient lifeboats or lifebelts; that the crew was small and badly trained; that the wireless service was inadequate; and that the lookouts lacked proper glasses. Later in London a special commission presided over by Lord Mersey issued a complete report on the disaster. As a result of these two inquiries, laws regarding proper facilities for ocean liners were revised in both England and the United States as a means of forestalling further major disasters of this kind.
Contents:
Chicago: Noel Leslie, "Unsinkable Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—III. In the Lifeboats," Bullets, Bottles, and Gardenias in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Co., 1951), Original Sources, accessed January 15, 2025, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=AGHH7PQ25IW9Q6G.
MLA: Leslie, Noel. ""Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—III. In the Lifeboats." Bullets, Bottles, and Gardenias, in History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, edited by Louis Leo Snyder and Richard B. Morris, Harrisburg, Pa., Stackpole Co., 1951, Original Sources. 15 Jan. 2025. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=AGHH7PQ25IW9Q6G.
Harvard: Leslie, N, '"Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—III. In the Lifeboats' in Bullets, Bottles, and Gardenias. cited in 1951, History in the First Person: Eyewitnesses of Great Events: They Saw It Happen, ed. , Stackpole Co., Harrisburg, Pa.. Original Sources, retrieved 15 January 2025, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=AGHH7PQ25IW9Q6G.
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