25
III
The boats that the Titanic had launched pulled safely away from the slight suction of the sinking ship, pulled away from the screams that came from the lips of the freezing men and women in the water. The boats were poorly manned and badly equipped, and they had been unevenly loaded. Some carried so few seamen that women bent to the oars. Mrs. Astor tugged at an oar handle; the Countess of Rothes took a tiller. Shivering stokers in sweaty, coal-blackened singlets and light trousers steered in some boats; stewards in white coats rowed in others. Ismay was in the last boat that left the ship from the starboard side; with Mr. Carter of Philadelphia and two seamen he tugged at the oars. In one of the lifeboats an Italian with a bro ken wrist—disguised in a woman’s shawl and hat—huddled on the floorboards, ashamed now that fear had left him. In another rode the only baggage saved from the Titanic—the carryall of Samuel L. Goldenberg, one of the rescued passengers.
There were only a few boats that were heavily loaded; most of those that were half empty made but perfunctory efforts to pick up the moaning swimmers, their officers and crew fearing they would endanger the living if they pulled back into the midst of the dying. Some boats beat off the freezing victims; fear-crazed men and women struck with oars at the heads of swimmers. One woman drove her fist into the face of a half-dead man as he tried feebly to climb over the gunwale. Two other women helped him in and staunched the flow of blood from the ring cuts on his face.
26
One of the collapsible boats, which had floated off the top of the officers’ quarters when the Titanic sank, was an icy haven for thirty or forty men. The boat had capsized as the ship sank; men swam to it, clung to it, climbed upon its slippery bottom, stood knee-deep in water in the freezing air. Chunks of ice swirled about their legs; their soaked clothing clutched their bodies in icy folds. Colonel Archibald Gracie was cast up there, Gracie who had leaped from the stern as the Titanic sank; young Thayer who had seen his father die; Lightoller who had twice been sucked down with the ship and twice blown to the surface by a belch of air; Bride, the second operator, and Phillips, the first. There were many stokers, half naked; it was a shivering company. They stood there in the icy sea, under the far stars, and sang and prayed—the Lord’s Prayer. After a while a lifeboat came and picked them off, but Phillips was dead then or died soon afterward in the boat.
Only a few of the boats had lights; only one—No. 2—had a light that was of any use to the Carpathia, twisting through the ice field to the rescue. Other ships were “coming hard” too; one, the Californian, was still dead to opportunity.
The blue sparks still danced, but not the Titanic’s. La Provence to Celtic: “Nobody has heard the Titanic for about two hours.”
27
It was 2:40 when the Carpathia first sighted the green light from No. 2 boat; it was 4:10 when she picked up the first boat and learned that the Titanic had foundered.17 The last of the moaning cries had just died away then.
Captain Rostron took the survivors aboard, boatload by boatload. He was ready for them, but only a small minority of them required much medical attention. Bride’s feet were twisted and frozen; others were suffering from exposure; one died, and seven were dead when taken from the boats, and were buried at sea.
It was then that the fleet of racing ships learned they were too late; the Parisian heard the weak signals of MPA, the Carpathia, report the death of the Titanic. It was then—or soon afterward, when her radio operator put on his earphones—that the Californian, the ship that had been within sight as the Titanic was sinking, first learned of the disaster.
And it was then, in all its white-green majesty, that the Titanic’s survivors saw the iceberg, tinted with the sunrise, floating idly, pack ice jammed about its base, other bergs heaving slowly nearby on the blue breast of the sea.
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IV
But it was not until later that the world knew, for wireless then was not what wireless is today, and garbled messages had nourished a hope that all of the Titanic’s company were safe. Not until Monday evening, when P.A.S. Franklin, vice president of the International Mercantile Marine Company, received relayed messages in New York that left little hope, did the full extent of the disaster begin to be known. Partial and garbled lists of the survivors; rumors of heroism and cowardice; stories spun out of newspaper imagination, based on a few bare facts and many false reports, misled the world, terrified and frightened it. It was not until Thursday night, when the Carpathia steamed into the North River, that the full truth was pieced together.
Flashlights flared on the black river when the Carpathia stood up to her dock. Tugs nosed about her, shunted her toward Pier 54. Thirty thousand people jammed the streets; ambulances and stretchers stood on the pier; coroners and physicians waited.
29
In midstream the Cunarder dropped over the Titanic’s lifeboats; then she headed toward the dock. Beneath the customs letters on the pier stood relatives of the 711 survivors, relatives of the missing—hoping against hope. The Carpathia cast her lines ashore; stevedores looped them over bollards. The dense throngs stood quiet as the first survivor stepped down the gangway. The woman half staggered—led by customs guards—beneath her letter. A “low wailing” moan came from the crowd; fell, grew in volume, and dropped again.
Thus ended the maiden voyage of the Titanic. The lifeboats brought to New York by the Carpathia, a few deck chairs and gratings awash in the ice field off the Grand Bank eight hundred miles from shore, were all that was left of the world’s greatest ship.
V
The aftermath of weeping and regret, of recriminations and investigations, dragged on for weeks. Charges and countercharges were hurled about; the White Star Line was bitterly criticized; Ismay was denounced on the floor of the Senate as a coward but was defended by those who had been with him on the sinking Titanic and by the Board of Trade investigation in England.