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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 Sun
April 21, 1912
"Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes an Iceberg
[1912]
II. Abandoning Ship
(By a Philadelphia Schoolboy)
[New York Sun,April 21, 1912]
Father and I say "good-bye" to mother at the top of the stairs on A deck . . . Father and Mother went ahead and I followed. All went down to B deck and a crowd got in front of me. That is the last time I saw my father. This was about half an hour before she sank.
On the starboard side the beats were getting away quickly. Some beats were already off in the distance. We thought of geeing into one of the
boats, the last boat to go on the forward side of the starboard side. But there seemed to be such a crowd around that I thought it unwise to make any attempt to get into it . . .
The list to Fort had been growing greater all the time. About this time the people began jumping from the stem. I thought of jumping myself, but was afraid of being stunned on hitting the water. Three times I made up my mind to jump out and slide down the davit tope and try to make the boats that were lying off from the ship, but each time Long got hold of me and told me to wait a while. He then sat down and I stood up waiting to see what would happen. Even then we thought she might possibly stay afloat.
I got a sight of a rope between the davits and a star and noticed that she was gradually sinking. About this time she straightened up on an even keel and started to go down fairly fast at an angle of about thirty degrees. As she started to sink we left the davit and went back and stood by the rail about even with the second funnel. Long and myself said "Good-bye" to each other and jumped up on the rail. He put his legs over and held on a minute. He did not jump clear, but slipped on the side of the ship. I never saw him again. About five seconds after he jumped I jumped out feet first.
I was clear of the ship, went down and as I came up I was pushed away from the ship by some force. I came up facing the ship and one of the funnels seemed to be lifted off and fell toward me, about fifteen yards away, with a mass of sparks and steam coming out of it.
I saw the ship in a sort of red glare and it seemed to me that she broke in two just in front of the third funnel. At this time I was sucked down and as I came up I was pushed out again and twisted around by a large wave, coming up in the midst of a great deal of small wreckage.
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: John Borland Thayer Jr., "Unsinkable Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—II. Abandoning Ship," 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 December 10, 2023, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=CDXAYLNXJHSBK27.
MLA: Thayer, John Borland, Jr. ""Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—II. Abandoning Ship." 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. 10 Dec. 2023. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=CDXAYLNXJHSBK27.
Harvard: Thayer, JB, '"Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—II. Abandoning Ship' 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 10 December 2023, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=CDXAYLNXJHSBK27.
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