Historical Summary

IT 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."