The Loss of the S.S. Titanic - Lawrence Beesley (e reader books TXT) 📗
- Author: Lawrence Beesley
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from the first it seemed as if the blow from the iceberg had taken all
the courage out of her and she had just come quietly to rest and was
settling down without an effort to save herself, without a murmur of
protest against such a foul blow. For the sea could not rock her: the
wind was not there to howl noisily round the decks, and make the ropes
hum; from the first what must have impressed all as they watched was
the sense of stillness about her and the slow, insensible way she sank
lower and lower in the sea, like a stricken animal.
The mere bulk alone of the ship viewed from the sea below was an
awe-inspiring sight. Imagine a ship nearly a sixth of a mile long, 75
feet high to the top decks, with four enormous funnels above the
decks, and masts again high above the funnels; with her hundreds of
portholes, all her saloons and other rooms brilliant with light, and
all round her, little boats filled with those who until a few hours
before had trod her decks and read in her libraries and listened to
the music of her band in happy content; and who were now looking up in
amazement at the enormous mass above them and rowing away from her
because she was sinking.
I had often wanted to see her from some distance away, and only a few
hours before, in conversation at lunch with a fellow-passenger, had
registered a vow to get a proper view of her lines and dimensions when
we landed at New York: to stand some distance away to take in a full
view of her beautiful proportions, which the narrow approach to the
dock at Southampton made impossible. Little did I think that the
opportunity was to be found so quickly and so dramatically. The
background, too, was a different one from what I had planned for her:
the black outline of her profile against the sky was bordered all
round by stars studded in the sky, and all her funnels and masts were
picked out in the same way: her bulk was seen where the stars were
blotted out. And one other thing was different from expectation: the
thing that ripped away from us instantly, as we saw it, all sense of
the beauty of the night, the beauty of the ship’s lines, and the
beauty of her lights,—and all these taken in themselves were
intensely beautiful,—that thing was the awful angle made by the level
of the sea with the rows of porthole lights along her side in dotted
lines, row above row. The sea level and the rows of lights should have
been parallel—should never have met—and now they met at an angle
inside the black hull of the ship. There was nothing else to indicate
she was injured; nothing but this apparent violation of a simple
geometrical law—that parallel lines should “never meet even if
produced ever so far both ways”; but it meant the Titanic had sunk by
the head until the lowest portholes in the bows were under the sea,
and the portholes in the stern were lifted above the normal height. We
rowed away from her in the quietness of the night, hoping and praying
with all our hearts that she would sink no more and the day would find
her still in the same position as she was then. The crew, however, did
not think so. It has been said frequently that the officers and crew
felt assured that she would remain afloat even after they knew the
extent of the damage. Some of them may have done so—and perhaps, from
their scientific knowledge of her construction, with more reason at
the time than those who said she would sink—but at any rate the
stokers in our boat had no such illusion. One of them—I think he was
the same man that cut us free from the pulley ropes—told us how he
was at work in the stoke-hole, and in anticipation of going off duty
in quarter of an hour,—thus confirming the time of the collision as
11.45,—had near him a pan of soup keeping hot on some part of the
machinery; suddenly the whole side of the compartment came in, and the
water rushed him off his feet. Picking himself up, he sprang for the
compartment doorway and was just through the aperture when the
watertight door came down behind him, “like a knife,” as he said;
“they work them from the bridge.” He had gone up on deck but was
ordered down again at once and with others was told to draw the fires
from under the boiler, which they did, and were then at liberty to
come on deck again. It seems that this particular knot of stokers must
have known almost as soon as any one of the extent of injury. He added
mournfully, “I could do with that hot soup now”—and indeed he could:
he was clad at the time of the collision, he said, in trousers and
singlet, both very thin on account of the intense heat in the
stoke-hole; and although he had added a short jacket later, his teeth
were chattering with the cold. He found a place to lie down underneath
the tiller on the little platform where our captain stood, and there
he lay all night with a coat belonging to another stoker thrown over
him and I think he must have been almost unconscious. A lady next to
him, who was warmly clad with several coats, tried to insist on his
having one of hers—a fur-lined one—thrown over him, but he
absolutely refused while some of the women were insufficiently clad;
and so the coat was given to an Irish girl with pretty auburn hair
standing near, leaning against the gunwale—with an “outside berth”
and so more exposed to the cold air. This same lady was able to
distribute more of her wraps to the passengers, a rug to one, a fur
boa to another; and she has related with amusement that at the moment
of climbing up the Carpathia’s side, those to whom these articles had
been lent offered them all back to her; but as, like the rest of us,
she was encumbered with a lifebelt, she had to say she would receive
them back at the end of the climb, I had not seen my dressing-gown
since I dropped into the boat, but some time in the night a steerage
passenger found it on the floor and put it on.
It is not easy at this time to call to mind who were in the boat,
because in the night it was not possible to see more than a few feet
away, and when dawn came we had eyes only for the rescue ship and the
icebergs; but so far as my memory serves the list was as follows: no
first-class passengers; three women, one baby, two men from the second
cabin; and the other passengers steerage—mostly women; a total of
about 35 passengers. The rest, about 25 (and possibly more), were crew
and stokers. Near to me all night was a group of three Swedish girls,
warmly clad, standing close together to keep warm, and very silent;
indeed there was very little talking at any time.
One conversation took place that is, I think, worth repeating: one
more proof that the world after all is a small place. The ten months’
old baby which was handed down at the last moment was received by a
lady next to me—the same who shared her wraps and coats. The mother
had found a place in the middle and was too tightly packed to come
through to the child, and so it slept contentedly for about an hour in
a stranger’s arms; it then began to cry and the temporary nurse said:
“Will you feel down and see if the baby’s feet are out of the blanket!
I don’t know much about babies but I think their feet must be kept
warm.” Wriggling down as well as I could, I found its toes exposed to
the air and wrapped them well up, when it ceased crying at once: it
was evidently a successful diagnosis! Having recognized the lady by
her voice,—it was much too dark to see faces,—as one of my vis-�-vis
at the purser’s table, I said,—“Surely you are Miss––?” “Yes,”
she replied, “and you must be Mr. Beesley; how curious we should find
ourselves in the same boat!” Remembering that she had joined the boat
at Queenstown, I said, “Do you know Clonmel? a letter from a great
friend of mine who is staying there at–– [giving the address] came
aboard at Queenstown.” “Yes, it is my home: and I was dining
at––just before I came away.” It seemed that she knew my friend,
too; and we agreed that of all places in the world to recognize mutual
friends, a crowded lifeboat afloat in mid-ocean at 2 A.M. twelve
hundred miles from our destination was one of the most unexpected.
And all the time, as we watched, the Titanic sank lower and lower by
the head and the angle became wider and wider as the stern porthole
lights lifted and the bow lights sank, and it was evident she was not
to stay afloat much longer. The captain-stoker now told the oarsmen to
row away as hard as they could. Two reasons seemed to make this a wise
decision: one that as she sank she would create such a wave of suction
that boats, if not sucked under by being too near, would be in danger
of being swamped by the wave her sinking would create—and we all knew
our boat was in no condition to ride big waves, crowded as it was and
manned with untrained oarsmen. The second was that an explosion might
result from the water getting to the boilers, and d�bris might fall
within a wide radius. And yet, as it turned out, neither of these
things happened.
At about 2.15 A.M. I think we were any distance from a mile to two
miles away. It is difficult for a landsman to calculate distance at
sea but we had been afloat an hour and a half, the boat was heavily
loaded, the oarsmen unskilled, and our course erratic: following now
one light and now another, sometimes a star and sometimes a light from
a port lifeboat which had turned away from the Titanic in the opposite
direction and lay almost on our horizon; and so we could not have gone
very far away.
About this time, the water had crept up almost to her sidelight and
the captain’s bridge, and it seemed a question only of minutes before
she sank. The oarsmen lay on their oars, and all in the lifeboat were
motionless as we watched her in absolute silence—save some who would
not look and buried their heads on each others’ shoulders. The lights
still shone with the same brilliance, but not so many of them: many
were now below the surface. I have often wondered since whether they
continued to light up the cabins when the portholes were under water;
they may have done so.
And then, as we gazed awe-struck, she tilted slowly up, revolving
apparently about a centre of gravity just astern of amidships, until
she attained a vertically upright position; and there she
remained—motionless! As she swung up, her lights, which had shone
without a flicker all night, went out suddenly, came on again for a
single flash, then went out altogether. And as they did so, there came
a noise which many people, wrongly I think, have described as an
explosion; it has always seemed to me that it was nothing but the
engines and machinery coming loose from their bolts and bearings,
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