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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."
New York Daily Tribune
April 20, 1912
"Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes an Iceberg
[1912]
V. The Survivors Rescued
(By Captain Rostron of R.M.S. Carpathia)
[The New York Daily Tribune, April 20, 1912]
R.M.S. Carpathia,April 19, 1912
General Manager Cunard Steamship Company Ltd., Liverpool
Sir: I beg to report that at 12:35 a. m. on the 15th inst. I was informed of urgent distress message from Titanic, with her position. I immediately ordered ship turned around and put in course for that position; we being fifty-eight miles S. 52-E (T) from her. Had heads of all departments called and issued what I considered the necessary orders to be in preparation for any emergency.
At 2:40 a. m. saw flare half a point on Port bow, taking this for granted to be ship. Shortly after we sighted our first iceberg (I had previously had lookouts doubled, knowing that Titanic had struck ice, and so took every care and precaution).
We soon found ourselves in a field of bergs, large and small, and had to alter course several times to clear bergs; weather fine and clear, light airs, calm sea, beautifully clear night, though dark.
We stopped at 4 a. m., thus doing distance in three hours and a half, picking up the first boat at 4:10 a. m.; boat in charge of an officer and he reported to me that Titanic had foundered.
At 8:30 a. m. last boat picked up. All survivors aboard and all boats accounted for, viz., fifteen lifeboats alongside, One lifeboat abandoned, two Berthon boats alongside (saw one bottom upward among wreckage), and according to second officer (senior officer saved) it having got jammed, making sixteen lifeboats and four Berthon boats accounted for.
By the time we had cleared first boat it was breaking day, and we could distinguish the other boats all within an area of four miles. We also saw that we were surrounded by icebergs, large and small . . .
At 8 a. m. the Leyland S. S. Californian came up. I gave him the principal news and asked him to search and I would proceed to New York . . .
After getting all survivors aboard and while searching I got a clergyman to offer a short prayer of thankfulness for those saved and also a short burial service for those lost, in the saloon . . .
As most of the passengers saved were women and children, and they were very hysterical, and not knowing what medical attention they would require, thought it best to go to New York . . .
The majority of the women, first, second and third classes, lost their husbands, and considering all, have been wonderfully well.
Our first class passengers have behaved splendidly, giving up their cabins quite voluntarily, and supplying the ladies with clothes and so forth. Our crew also turned out to let the crew of the Titanic take their quarters . . .
I can assure you that I am very proud to have such a ship’s company under my command.
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: A. H. Rostron, "Unsinkable Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—V. The Survivors Rescued," 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 October 2, 2023, http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=QS98BECU3NWL22C.
MLA: Rostron, A. H. ""Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—V. The Survivors Rescued." 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. 2 Oct. 2023. http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=QS98BECU3NWL22C.
Harvard: Rostron, AH, '"Unsinkable" Titanic Strikes An Iceberg—V. The Survivors Rescued' 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 2 October 2023, from http://www.originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=QS98BECU3NWL22C.
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