7
Lightoller left the darkened bridge to his relief and turned in. Captain Smith went to his cabin. The steerage was long since quiet; in the first and second cabins lights were going out; voices were growing still; people were asleep. Murdoch paced back and forth on the bridge, peering out over the dark water, glancing now and then at the compass in front of Quartermaster Hichens at the wheel.
In the crow’s-nest, lookout Frederick Fleet and his partner, Leigh, gazed down at the water, still and unruffled in the dim, starlit darkness. Behind and below them the ship, a white shadow with here and there a last winking light; ahead of them a dark and silent and cold ocean.
There was a sudden clang. “Dong-dong. Dong-dong. Dong-dong. Dong!” The metal clapper of the great ship’s bell struck out 11:30. Mindful of the warnings, Fleet strained his eyes, searching the darkness for the dreaded ice. But there were only the stars and the sea.
8
In the wireless room, where Phillips, first operator, had relieved Bride, the buzz of the Californian’s set again crackled into the earphones:
Californian: “Say, old man, we are stuck here, surrounded by ice.”
Titanic: “Shut up, shut up; keep out. I am talking to Cape Race; you are jamming my signals.”
Then, a few minutes later—about 11:40 . . .
II
Out of the dark she came, a vast, dim, white, monstrous shape, directly in the Titanic’s path. For a moment Fleet doubted his eyes. But she was a deadly reality, this ghastly thing. Frantically, Fleet struck three bells—something dead ahead. He snatched the telephone and called the bridge:
“Iceberg! Right ahead!”
The first officer heard but did not stop to acknowledge the message.
9
“Hard-a-starboard!”
Hichens strained at the wheel; the bow swung slowly to port. The monster was almost upon them now.
Murdoch leaped to the engine-room telegraph. Bells clanged. Far below in the engine room those bells struck the first warning. Danger! The indicators on the dial faces swung round to “Stop!” Then “Full speed astern!” Frantically the engineers turned great valve wheels; answered the bridge bells . . .
There was a slight shock, a brief scraping, a small list to port. Shell ice—slabs and chunks of it—fell on the foredeck. Slowly the Titanic stopped.
Captain Smith hurried out of his cabin.
“What has the ship struck?”
Murdoch answered, “An iceberg, sir. I hard-a-starboarded and reversed the engines, and I was going to hard-a-port around it, but she was too close. I could not do any more. I have closed the watertight doors.”
10
Fourth Officer Boxhall, other officers, the carpenter, came to the bridge. The captain sent Boxhall and the carpenter below to ascertain the damage.
A few lights switched on in the first and second cabins; sleepy passengers peered through porthole glass; some casually asked the stewards:
“Why have we stopped?”
“I don’t know, sir, but I don’t suppose it is anything much.”
In the smoking room a quorum of gamblers and their prey were still sitting round a poker table; the usual crowd of kibitzers looked on. They had felt the slight jar of the collision and had seen an eighty-foot ice mountain glide by the smoking-room windows, but the night was calm and clear, the Titanic was “unsinkable”; they hadn’t bothered to go on deck.
11
But far below, in the warren of passages on the starboard side forward, in the forward holds and boiler rooms, men could see that the Titanic’s hurt was mortal. In No. 6 boiler room, where the red glow from the furnaces lighted up the naked, sweaty chests of coal-blackened firemen, water was pouring through a great gash about two feet above the floor plates. This was no slow leak; the ship was open to the sea; in ten minutes there were eight feet of water in No. 6. Long before then the stokers had raked the flaming fires out of the furnaces and had scrambled through the watertight doors in No. 5 or had climbed up the long steel ladders to safety. When Boxhall looked at the mailroom in No. 3 hold, twenty-four feet above the keel, the mailbags were already floating about in the slushing water. In No. 5 boiler room a stream of water spurted into an empty bunker. All six compartments forward of No. 4 were open to the sea; in ten seconds the iceberg’s jagged claw had ripped a three-hundred-foot slash in the bottom of the great Titanic.
Reports came to the bridge; Ismay in dressing gown ran out on deck in the cold, still, starlit night, climbed up the bridge ladder.
12
“What has happened?”
Captain Smith: “We have struck ice.”
“Do you think she is seriously damaged?”
Captain Smith: “I’m afraid she is.”
Ismay went below and passed Chief Engineer William Bell, fresh from an inspection of the damaged compartments. Bell corroborated the captain’s statement; hurried back down the glistening steel ladders to his duty. Man after man followed him—Thomas Andrews, one of the ship’s designers, Archie Frost, the builder’s chief engineer, and his twenty assistants—men who had no posts of duty in the engine room but whose traditions called them there.
On deck, in corridor and stateroom, life flowed again. Men, women, and children awoke and questioned; orders were given to uncover the lifeboats; water rose into the firemen’s quarters; half-dressed stokers streamed up on deck. But the passengers—most of them—did not know that the Titanic was sinking. The shock of the collision had been so slight that some were not awakened by it; the Titanic was so huge that she must be unsinkable; the night was too calm, too beautiful, to think of death at sea.