Walter J. Lord - The Night Lives On: The Untold Stories & Secrets Behind the Sinking of the Unsinkable Ship-Titanic

For

J. Frank Supplee IV

JUST 20 MINUTES SHORT of midnight, April 14, 1912, the great new White Star Liner Titanic, making her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, had a rendezvous with ice in the calm, dark waters of the North Atlantic. She brushed the berg so gently that many on board didnt notice it, but so lethally that she was instantly doomed.

By midnight Captain Edward J. Smith knew the worst, and ordered the lifeboats filled and lowered. There were distressingly few of these, enough for only a third of the ships company. The rule was, of course, Women and children first. At 12:15 A.M. the Titanic sent her first distress call. At 12:45 she began firing rockets, for there was a light on the horizon, tantalizingly near. The light remained motionless.

On the Titanic, the ships bellboyslads of 14 or 15brought up loaves of bread for the lifeboats, now dropping one after another into the sea. Far below, the engineers kept the lights burning; topside, the band played cheerful music on the Boat Deck. The ship was noticeably down at the bow.

At 1:10, as Boat 1 pulled away, the water lapped the portholes just under the ships name. Thirty minutes later, as Collapsible C rowed off, the name had vanished into the sea, and the forward well deck was awash. The lights still burned, and the band still played.

By 2:05 the last boat had been launched, leaving 1,600 people stranded on the sloping decks. Richard N. Williams II, a 19-year-old First Class passenger, wandered into the main companionway on A Deck and idly watched the water creeping up the grand staircase. On the paneled wall nearby hung a handsomely framed chart, pins still in place, marking the Titanics daily progress across the Atlantic. The lights still burned, now with a reddish glow. The band probably played on, but no one is sure.

At 2:17 the Titanic slowly, almost majestically, stood on end. The lights blinked once and went out forever. Then came a thundering roar, as everything movable within the ship broke loose and plunged downward. The great hull itself sagged as though finally defeated. At 2:20 she settled back slightly and slipped beneath the sea. Over 1,500 people were lost in this, the greatest maritime disaster in history.

Understandably, the sinking of the Titanic was a sensation at the time. The morning after the rescue ship Carpathia reached New York with her pitiful load of 705 survivors, The New York Times devoted its first 12 pages to the story. But a single letter in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress gives a more vivid picture of the universal shock and grief than any number of newspaper pages. The letter is from a young naval officer, Alexander Macomb, to his mother. It is dated April 16, 1912, and describes what happened as he emerged from a pleasant evening at the theater.

The terrible news about the Titanic reached New York about 11 oclock last night, and the scene on Broadway was awful. Crowds of people were coming out of the theaters, cafes were going full tilt, when the newsboys began to cry, Extra! Extra! Titanic sunk with 1800 aboard! You cant imagine the effect of those words on the crowd. Nobody could realize what had happened, and when they did begin to understand, the excitement was almost enough to cause a panic in the theaters. Women began to faint and weep, and scores of people in evening clothes jumped into cabs and taxis and rushed to the offices of the White Star Line, where they remained all night waiting for news.

Understandable then, but there have been massive changes in the world since 1912. We dont even cross the ocean the same way now, and two great wars have numbed us to casualty lists. Compared to the implications of a nuclear confrontation, the figures of souls lost in a shipwreckany shipwreckseem almost quaint. Given the world today, one might suppose that people would no longer be gripped by the Titanic. Not so. She has never been more with us than now.

The discovery of her hulk in September 1985 created a wave of excitement that seemed in sharp contrast to the silent gray ghost resting so peacefully on the ocean floor. My own connection with the Titanic is peripheral at bestand with the expedition that found her, it is nilyet no less than 32 requests for interviews poured in from radio, television, and the press over the next ten days.

There seems no limit to the publics fascination. In America every survivor now rates an obituary in The New York Times. Typical was the case of 90-year-old Ethel Beane, who died in Rochester, New York, in 1983. She had lived a blameless but utterly uneventful life. She hadnt even told her Titanic experiences for 71 years. But she was nevertheless newsworthysimply by being a survivor.

No story is too farfetched, as long as it bears the magic label Titanic. In London The Times recently reported that a Los Angeles businessman planned to build three replicas of the Titanic for $1.5 billion. Each would accommodate 600 passengers at $1,000 a day. Preposterous? Nevertheless, The Times featured the story on the front page. The editor knew that the Titanic is always news.

Over the years the ship has become an enduring favorite on stage and screen. She has been the locale for five major motion pictures and played an important part in many others. In 1976 she was the subject of an opera jointly produced by the Berlin Opera and the UCLA Fine Arts Productions. In 1983 she was raised from the Thames in an extravaganza at the London International Festival of Theatre.

Meanwhile on television she played a crucial role in Upstairs, Downstairs, the memorable series about the Bellamy family. Going down with the ship, Lady Marjorie Bellamy joined Edward and Edith of Noel Cowards Cavalcade as probably the most famous of all the fictional victims of the disaster.

Gradually the Titanic has ceased to be merely a shipwreck; she has become a symbol. In Hitlers Germany, Joseph Goebbels used her to portray English decadence and cowardice. In postwar Germany, the message was different, but the Titanic was still a symbol. This time the producers were drawing a parallel between the disaster and the decision to deploy Pershing missiles on German soil. Both were seen as examples of technology out of control. A single miscalculationa momentary lapse in judgmentcould bring appalling destruction.

Not surprisingly, the Titanic has also become a great favorite with political cartoonists. She is completely nonpartisan: since 1976 she has been used to depict the troubles of Presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan. In British cartoons both the ship and the iceberg have represented Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The lost liner, poised for her final plunge, even graced the cover of Punch in April 1975 as Englands Glory.

This continuing fascination has seen a boom in the price of Titanic memorabilia. Contemporary books and pamphlets costing less than a dollar in the 1950s now routinely go for $45-$50. Recently a 1912 printed list of the Titanics passengerswith handwritten notations on where they lived and what happened to themwas sold at auction for $5,000, although no one seemed to know who drew up the list or why.

With the supply of original items running low, a lively industry has sprung up turning out new artifacts. Novelty stores do a brisk business selling