In memoriam: RMS Titanic — April 15, 1912

Each American generation experiences a moral catastrophe, a cataclysmic event which unnerves the population, shakes the era’s complacency and becomes a saga of tragedy, heroism, villainy, romanticism and conspiracy; before Sept. 11, 2001, before John F. Kennedy’s assassination, before Pearl Harbor, there was the Titanic disaster. The loss of man’s unsinkable ship also shattered faith in progress and technology, which would be repeated with the Hindenburg, Edmund Fitzgerald, Challenger and Columbia disasters, albeit those were considerably less in scope than the Titanic tragedy. Although there were maritime disasters with greater loss of life before and after Titanic, it was — and has remained — assuredly the most infamous in history.

On April 16, 1912, before the full details of the disaster became known to the world, The Wall Street Journal declared, “The gravity of the damage to the Titanic is apparent but the important point is that she did not sink. … Man is the weakest and most formidable creature on Earth; his brain has within it the spirit of the divine, and he overcomes natural obstacles by thought, which is incomparably the greatest force in the universe.”

Upon its construction in 1912, the Titanic was the largest ship on earth, being 882 feet, 9 inches long and weighing 46,328 tons. Titanic’s passengers ranged from the world’s wealthiest tycoons to the poorest immigrant families. Newspapers across America reported how many residents of their cities or states had perished (“List of Washingtonians on Fated Steamer Grows” and “Three of Ten Jersey Passengers are Safe,” for example). About one-third of all those lost on the Titanic were crewmen from Southampton, England. Of the 1,513 victims of the Titanic disaster, more first class men survived than third class children. Although some crewmen, unsure or ignorant of their responsibilities or the seriousness of the disaster as it was happening, did prevent third class passengers — many of whom didn’t speak English — from reaching the boat deck, steerage women were allowed access to the boats but many refused to leave their husbands, and most steerage passengers got lost in Titanic’s eight decks trying to reach the lifeboats. Entire families were lost on the Titanic; to name a few:

• Hudson and Bessie Allison and their daughter Loraine, 2. (Son Trevor, 11 months, was rescued)
• Anders and Alfrida Andersson and their children Sigrid, 11, Ingeborg, 9, Ebba, 6, Sigvard, 4, and Ellis, 2.
• Edward and Margaret Ford and their children Dollina, 20, Edward, 18, William, 16, and Robina, 7.
• Frederick and Augusta Goodwin and their children Lillian, 16, Charles, 14, William, 11, Jessie, 10, Harold, 9, and Sidney, 1.
• Frances Lefebvre and her children Mathilde, 12, Jeannie, 8, Henry, 5, and Ida, 3.
• James Lester and his nephews Alfred, John and Joseph Davies.
• Andrew and Eliza Johnston and their children William, 8, and Catherine, 7.
• John and Annie Sage and their children Stella, 20, George, 19, Douglas, 18, Frederick, 16, Dorothy, 14, Anthony, 12, Elizabeth, 10, Constance, 7, and Thomas, 4.
• Julius and Emelie Vanderplancke and his sister Augusta Maria, 18, and his brother Leo, 15.

Among the famous who were lost included Titanic Capt. Edward J. Smith, real estate tycoon John Jacob Astor, Macy’s department store owner Isidor Straus and his wife Ida, Pennsylvania Railroad Vice President John B. Thayer, general manager of Grand Trunk Pacific Railway Charles Hays, presidential adviser Archibald Butt, artist Francis D. Millet, journalist W.T. Stead, banking magnate George Widener, Broadway producer Henry B. Harris, millionaire Benjamin Guggenheim, and Titanic’s designer with Harland & Wolff shipbuilding company Thomas Andrews. Milton Hershey, the corporate confectioner, and financier J.P. Morgan — whose bank subsidized International Mercantile Marine, the trust which owned the White Star Line — booked passage on the Titanic but canceled their reservations. Steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie wrote about Astor, Straus, Stead, Hays and Millet on April 21, “No epitaph needs to be written, no eulogy pronounced over them, for as long as the world endures their epitaph and eulogy will be found in the women and children, and their descendants, for whom these men sacrificed their lives.” Titanic survivor Kornelia Andrews of Lifeboat No. 10 would recall: “The men [made] no effort to get into the boat. As we pulled away we saw them all standing in an unbroken line on the deck. There, they stood, Maj. Butt, Col. Astor, waving a farewell to his wife; Mr. Thayer, Mr. Case, Mr. Clarence Moore, Mr. Widener, and hundreds of other men bravely remaining on board.”

• Thomas Andrews, 39, was a meticulous, ambitious shipbuilding designer who had been with Harland & Wolff since age 16. He was the first person to realize and convey to Capt. Smith and White Star Chairman J. Bruce Ismay that the iceberg had mortally damaged Titanic. Andrews did what he could to have passengers put on lifebelts and escape in lifeboats. He was last seen staring at a painting of Plymouth Sound, England, in the Smoking Room. Thomas Andrews Jr. Memorial Hall was dedicated in 1915 in his hometown of Comber, Ireland.
• John Jacob Astor IV, 47, a descendant of the famous fur trader with a personal net worth of up to $200 million (in 1912-era value), was a principal contributor to the construction of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, a writer and even an inventor. He was conferred the title of colonel during the Spanish-American War for his shipbuilding services. Survivors attested to how he put his pregnant wife Madeleine in a lifeboat and then helped other women into boats without doing anything to save himself; rumors circulated that he released passengers’ dogs from their kennel cages and saved a young boy by putting a women’s hat on his head to disguise his gender so he’d be allowed to enter a lifeboat. Survivor Hilda Slater would recall: “I saw Col. John Jacob Astor hand his young wife into a boat tenderly and then asked an officer whether he might also go. When permission was refused he stepped back and coolly took out his cigarette case. ‘Good-bye, dearie’ he called gaily, as he lighted a cigarette and leaned over the rail. ‘I’ll join you later.’ ”
• Col. Archibald Butt, 46, a Spanish-American War veteran and good friend and aide to Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, was an affable man and, being a former journalist himself, was well-liked by reporters in Washington, who Butt often helped to report their stories; they, and other good friends of the colonel, knew him as “Archie.” “He was like a member of my family, and I feel his loss as if he had been a younger brother,” President Taft said in a statement on April 19. “… I knew that he would certainly remain on the ship’s deck until every duty had been performed and every sacrifice made that properly fell on one charged, as he would feel himself charged, with responsibility, for the rescue of others.” The Butt Memorial Bridge was built in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia, in 1914, and a memorial fountain dedicated to Butt and his friend Millet was dedicated in Washington, D.C.
• Benjamin Guggenheim, 46, was a member of the Guggenheim mining magnate family but didn’t inherit the family fortune and lost most of his money in poor investments. He became estranged from his wife and stayed in Europe, coming back to America on the Titanic with his mistress. Yet, Guggenheim and his servant Rene Pernot refused to save themselves, and Guggenheim told survivor James Etches, “If anything should happen to me, tell my wife in New York that I’ve done my best in doing my duty.”
• Henry B. Harris, 45, was a theater manager, philanthropist and vice president of the Theater Managers of Greater New York and president of the Henry B. Harris Company; he had no fewer than 16 companies on tour during a single season. When an officer forbade Harris from entering a lifeboat, he responded, “I understand. The women must go first.” Actor Frank McIntyre, who on April 17 was unsure if Harris had survived or not, said Harris was “an honest man, a man of unusual foresight and mental ability, a man with the faculty of being able to make a success of a theatrical venture and at the same time retain the respect and confidence of every person with whom he was associated. Mr. Harris was a remarkable character. His loss would prove a blow to the profession in general.”
• Charles Hays, 55, had worked for railroad companies since age 17 and in 1896 became general manager of Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in Montreal. He had spearheaded the effort to build a second Canadian transcontinental railroad. Hays put his wife and daughter into a lifeboat but didn’t believe the ship would sink in less than 10 hours. During his memorial service, Grand Trunk suspended all rail operations for five minutes in a moment of mourning. Hays’ epitaph states: “And so he died and the example of his simple, devoted consecrated life is our priceless heritage. We are a different people, we are a better people, because this man worked and loved and died.”
• Francis D. Millet, 65, was a Civil War veteran, former war correspondent, writer and painter who painted murals at Trinity Church in Boston and was a member of several societies for the fine arts. He had just been appointed head of the American Academy at Rome in 1912. U.S. Sen. Elihu Root would say about Millet, “He must have been born with a sense of the beautiful and a love for it, for he devoted his life to it. ... He was one of the most unassuming and unselfish of men. ... He was a man of great strength and force, decision and executive capacity.” A memorial fountain dedicated to Millet and his friend Col. Butt was dedicated in Washington, D.C.
• Capt. Edward J. Smith, 62, was a veteran of over 30 years with the White Star line and the highest paid captain at the time. He was a well-liked captain and had piloted several roundtrips with Titanic’s sister ship Olympic but never in his career dealt with the calamities of a shipwreck, which probably worked against him as he managed rescue efforts in Titanic’s final hours. He planned to retire after Titanic’s maiden run. Smith said after Olympic collided with a ship while cruising close to land, “… the Olympic is unsinkable, and the Titanic will be the same when she is put in commission. Why, either of these vessels could be cut in halves and each half would remain afloat indefinitely. The non-sinkable vessel has been reached in these two wonderful crafts.” His body was never recovered and what happened to him as Titanic started lifting upward remains a mystery, although some claimed Smith had committed suicide while others say he rescued a child from drowning by carrying it to a lifeboat from the ocean. His wife Eleanor posted a message on the White Star office’s Southampton office: “To my poor fellow sufferers. My heart overflows with grief for you all, and is laden with sorrow that you are weighed down with this terrible burden that has been thrust upon us. May God be with us and comfort us all.” A statue of Smith was erected in his hometown of Lichfield, England.
• W.T. Stead, 62, was a British journalist and editor, best known for exposing widespread child prostitution. He was also a well-known antiwar advocate, preaching “peace through arbitration” and the formation of a European union of states. Invited by President Taft, Stead was on the Titanic to visit America to speak during a convention on “universal peace.” J.A. McDonald, editor of The Toronto Globe, said on April 22 during a memorial service, “Stead was an ordained apostle of universal peace. He pleaded for it with kings, czars and ministers. He fought with the beasts of greed and plunder and the fire-eating jingoists. … Had he been here tonight he would have undoubtedly made us face the awful facts of war — its inconceivable folly, its intolerable burden.”
• Isidor Straus, 67, a philanthropist and former congressman, gained full control of R.H. Macy and Co. in New York with his brother Nathan in 1896. Straus was prohibited from entering a lifeboat on Titanic and his wife Ida refused to leave his side, saying, “We have been together for many years, and where you go, I go; I will not be separated from my husband. As we have we lived, so will we die — together.” They were revered in synagogues all over New York City in memorial tributes. On April 20, the Rev. Dr. Rudolph Grossman told a congregation, “There is one which we as Jews especially mourn — Isidor Straus, a leader in every good and noble cause, whether patriotic, religious or educational. We must call attention also to the wonderfully beautiful, almost sublime, deed of his noble wife, who refused to leave him.” The Straus Memorial was erected in Straus Park, New York City, in 1915.
• John B. Thayer, 49, was second vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. His wife Marian escaped the Titanic in Lifeboat No. 4 and his 17-year-old son Jack survived clinging to overturned Collapsible Lifeboat B. Survivor Martha Stephenson recalled that she saw the elder Thayer attempt to launch a collapsible boat with other men when a huge wave washed them off the deck. “Mr. Thayer was one of the bravest men I ever saw,” she said. “Immediately after we felt the shock of the collision he bent every effort to comfort and console the women and to see that they got safely into the lifeboats. He refused to give a thought to his own safety until he had done all that mortal man could do for us.”
• George Widener, 50, was a member of the Fidelity Trust Co. of Philadelphia, operator of a successful streetcar firm and heir to the city’s largest fortune. Survivor Robert P. Daniels later recalled about Widener on Titanic, “Mrs. Widener did not want to go, and asked to be allowed to stand by her husband. However, Mr. Widener told her to save herself and son, and forced her almost to seek the lifeboat. Mrs. Widener kissed her husband good-bye. He told her not to worry, as it was possible that all would be saved, and the danger did not seem great.” Widener’s 27-year-old son, Harry, also perished in the disaster. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, Harvard University, was dedicated in 1915.

Most of the 705 Titanic survivors’ lives, careers and/or reputations were ruined by the disaster or its aftermath and some refused to talk about the tragedy for the rest of their lives. Virtually all were haunted by their fight for survival, parting from perished loved ones and the screams of the dying in the frigid Atlantic that night. But a handful of Titanic survivors wrote about their experiences, including second class passenger Lawrence Beesley, Second Officer Charles Lightoller, and first class passengers Jack Thayer and Archibald Gracie. The men who fled the ship in lifeboats were criticized for saving themselves while other men bravely went down with the ship, and especially since so many women and children had perished. Some women on the rescue ship Carpathia scorned some of the men in person, demanding to know how they were able to escape in lifeboats when they were forced to leave their husbands behind. Some families were forced to return to Europe because their family wage-earners had died in the disaster. At least three survivors, including Jack Thayer and Frederick Fleet, the lookout who first spotted the iceberg, would commit suicide. Although totally misconstrued from the facts, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon was accused of bribing the other men in Lifeboat No. 1 to keep them from returning to the foundering to rescue swimmers. White Star Chairman J. Bruce Ismay, although officially exonerated of any wrongdoing at the American and British inquiries of the disaster, was marred for life as a coward who escaped the Titanic in Collapsible Lifeboat C while hundreds perished on his ship. All of Titanic’s surviving officers — Lightoller, Third Officer Herbert Pitman, Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall and Fifth Officer Harold Lowe — would remain in shipping or enter the British Navy but would never command their own vessel.

The first Titanic movie debuted only a month after the disaster, starring Titanic survivor Dorothy Gibson, and propaganda officials in Nazi Germany produced their own Titanic movie with an anti-Britian slant.

The Titanic disaster, the loss of what was called a “practically unsinkable” ship upon her construction, was also marred by rumors and conspiracy theories. One conspiracy was that a boiler explosion sank the ship, and an iceberg-collision story was concocted to spare insurance losses (Lloyd’s of London did lose £500,000 after the unsinkable ship it insured for £1 million did in fact sink). The Daily Sketch of Britain even published an article eight days after Titanic’s sinking headlined, “Hope diamond again! Was the jewel of ill-luck on the Titanic?” The article speculated this, but the rumor was untrue. In 1940, a woman claiming to be Loraine Allison (a 2-year-old who died with her parents) came forward and with her lawyer said she had been rescued by Thomas Andrews (who also died on Titanic) and that J. Bruce Ismay paid Andrews to “disappear” so word of the ship’s speed wouldn’t be revealed; unable to prove her claim, the woman eventually stopped corresponding with the Allison family. Psychics and ordinary people started coming forward who claimed they predicted or dreamt the disaster.

The most renowned heroes of the disaster included the Titanic’s band, chief Marconi operator Jack Phillips and Carpathia’s captain, Arthur H. Rostron.
• The eight-member band, led by violinist Wallace Hartley, 33, played ragtime for passengers who gathered on deck as the ship sank and lifeboats were being launched. Although no one can be certain, soon before the foundering, according to legend, Hartley had the band play the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” The whole band died in the disaster. Hartley’s body was later recovered, and 40,000 mourners lined the route of his funeral procession in his hometown of Colne in Lancashire, England. A Worchester Evening Gazette article published on April 20 quoted survivor Hilda Slayer as saying, “From the moment the vessel struck, or as soon as the members of the orchestra could be collected, there was a steady round of lively airs. It did much to keep up the spirits of everyone and probably served as much as the efforts of the officers trying to prevent panic.” Memorials, statues and plaques would be erected to honor Hartley and Titanic’s band in places as far away as Australia, and the Apollo Club of Brooklyn held a fundraising concert on May 5 for the musicians’ families; the White Star Line sent the band’s families bills for lost uniforms.
• John “Jack” Phillips, 25, remained at his Marconi station with assistant Harold Bride until Capt. Smith dismissed them. Bride started collecting whatever belongings he had ready to escape when he saw Phillips remain at his post; “I learned to love him that night,” Bride later recalled. Bride survived by clinging to overturned Collapsible Lifeboat B, but Phillips perished and his body was never found. Reports later claimed that a group of fear-crazed first class passengers tried to steal the large lifejacket Phillips was wearing later that night. The largest Titanic memorial in the world is the Phillips Memorial Cloister in Godalming in Phillips’ home-county of Surrey, England, unveiled in 1914.
• The Carpathia was 48 miles from Titanic when Capt. Arthur H. Rostron, 42, received a Marconi distress message from the ship. He readied Carpathia with food and blankets, and kept passengers in their staterooms as the ship sped toward the disaster scene in the icy Atlantic. The Carpathia arrived two hours after it first received a distress call at dawn around 4 a.m., 90 minutes after Titanic had sunk. After the survivors were brought aboard, Rostron held a religious service of thanks for those rescued and a memorial service for the lost. After a stormy voyage at sea, the Carpathia arrived in New York at 8 a.m. three days after the disaster on April 18. For his heroism, Rostron was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and became a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, and later became commodore of the Cunard line. Titanic survivors presented him with a gold medal and silver “loving cup.”

The greatest villain of the Titanic disaster was Stanley Lord, 34, captain of the Californian, a ship stopped no more than 20 miles away from Titanic after it struck the iceberg. At 11:30 p.m., the Californian’s crew and Lord noticed a nearby vessel stop but thought it was another cargo ship no more than four miles away, with no sight of Titanic’s massive funnels or sounds of steam being released. Both Capt. Lord and Californian wireless operator Cyril Evans were asleep when Titanic’s first wireless distress messages were broadcast after midnight. Officers on Titanic’s deck noticed a ship off the port bow before 1 a.m. and attempted to contact it with Morse lamp, but failing to do so began firing distress rockets. Crewmen on the deck of the Californian noticed the Morse signals and Lord, who never went on deck himself, told them to respond in kind, but the ship did not respond. Lord knew the Titanic was in the vicinity but was convinced this vessel signaling its Morse lamp could not have been a massive steamship. When the crewmen reported to Lord that they witnessed rockets over the horizon and then see them apparently steam way, the captain had Evans contact the ship then Lord went to sleep. American inquiry chairman, U.S. Sen. William Alden Smith, grilled Lord on the question of the distress rockets:

Smith: Captain, these Morse signals are a sort of language or method by which ships speak to one another?
Lord: Yes, sir; at night.
Smith: The rockets that are used for the same purpose and are understood, are they not, among mariners?
Lord: As being distress rockets?
Smith: Yes.
Lord: Oh, yes; you never mistake a distress rocket.

Lord said an officer had reported to him that he saw rockets but reported they were not distress rockets. Furthermore, Lord said that if Titanic was nearly 20 miles from the Californian, as indicated by her coordinates, then Morse signals could not have been seen by or from his ship and rockets “might have been mistaken for a shooting star or anything at all.” It took the Californian 2½ hours to reach the disaster scene the next morning, so the soonest the Californian could’ve reached the Titanic after the distress rockets were fired was 3:30 a.m., an hour after the ship sank. Lord was scolded by both the American and British inquiries and the public, and was fired by the Leyland Line despite never being charged or convicted of anything. He was outraged by his character’s portrayal in the movie “A Night to Remember” in 1958 and contacted the Mercantile Marine Service to clear his name but to no immediate avail; Lord died in 1962. An investigation in the early 1990s cleared him of manslaughter but declared he should’ve acted more vigilantly to the distress rockets. Yet, a third ship of some kind, seen by Titanic’s passengers off the port bow and perhaps spotted by the Californian’s crew, was likely sailing in the 20 miles between the Titanic and Californian; but the existence or identity of this ship can never be proven.

Like the tragic events of historical proportion that followed, it would take the Titanic disaster to right misbegotten wrongs:
• Titanic had 20 lifeboats, four more than what was required by outdated maritime law which dictated lifeboat quantity based on tonnage not occupancy. Each lifeboat could hold about 58 people for a maximum capacity of 1,178 people (still only one-third of Titanic’s maximum capacity) but almost all of the lifeboats left Titanic less than full — Lifeboat No. 1 had only 12 people on board — with the expectation that they would return to the ship to pick up more passengers, but none did. Also, after Titanic sank, almost all the lifeboat survivors refused to return to pick up swimmers because they feared being swamped and capsized. After the disaster, all passenger ships were fitted with enough lifeboats.
• Titainic’s sinking despite its “unsinkable” design was technically not an engineering failure; Titanic was not designed to withstand the damage inflicted by the iceberg. The ship could stay afloat with the forward four watertight compartments flooded, but the iceberg ruptured the hull of the first six, caused partly by Titanic’s steel made brittle by freezing temperatures during the voyage. However, had the watertight bulkheads stretched higher and had watertight ceilings then the water would not have flowed up and into adjacent compartments, causing the Titanic’s stern to tilt upward as it did while sinking. New shipbuilding designs increased bulkhead size and included a full double hull.
• The wireless operator for the Californian, the closest vessel to Titanic during the sinking, was asleep at the time. The Radio Act of 1912 mandated that every vessel with a certain number of passengers carry a wireless communicator and have a 24 hour wireless service.
• The International Ice Patrol was formed, headed by the U.S. Coast Guard, to monitor Atlantic icebergs and destroy them before they become a hazard for navigation.
• Most of Titanic’s crewmen didn’t know each other and were unfamiliar with a ship of Titanic’s size, and, furthermore, many crewmen were unsure of their duties and communication broke down during the evacuation. For example, the commanding officer on one side of Titanic allowed anyone to enter the lifeboats, but the commander on the opposite side strictly obeyed the “women and children first” creed. After the disaster, all crewmen would have to undergo training for emergency protocols, and lifeboat drills were now mandatory.
• Wireless warnings about a massive ice field in Titanic’s path should’ve been yielded but many were ignored by the officers and Marconi operators. It was not unusual for a passenger steamship to charge through the sea at excessive speeds as Titanic did at 22 knots (25.3 mph), and Capt. Smith had the ship turn west further south than the original route in hope of dodging any ice. White Star Chairman J. Bruce Ismay did encourage Smith to push Titanic’s speed to the limit, in part to best Titanic’s sister ship Olympic’s maiden voyage record. Also, Smith and the senior officers were convinced that an iceberg large enough to damage the ship should be spotted in plenty of time to take action and avert a collision; unfortunately, Titanic’s lookouts had misplaced their binoculars and a moonless night made spotting an iceberg even more difficult. Titanic’s crew remained confident of the ship’s durability in case the vessel did encounter or collide with ice, and iceberg collisions were infrequent enough as to not give the crew any sense of immediate danger. After the disaster, ships would slow down and pay more attention to wireless warnings.

Archibald Gracie, who swam from the ship and stayed alive by clinging onto overturned Collapsible Lifeboat B after the Titanic sank, died on Dec. 3, 1912, the third survivor to pass away after the disaster. He never overcame the trauma of the disaster, especially since he witnessed his good friend Clinch Smith disappear beneath the waves right in front of him as they fled to the stern. Gracie’s last words on his deathbed were, “We must get them into the boats. We must get them all into the boats.”

The Evening Post published an article titled “The Sad ‘Might Have Beens’ ” on April 19, which decried the lack of lifeboats, ineffective watertight bulkheads, other ships’ unmanned wireless services and Titanic’s excessive speed that voyage. “Recklessness,” “greed” and “ostentation” led to the disaster, the article declared. “But as against all these faults the qualities that dignify human nature appear in the sad story. … It is the only part of the terrible story in which satisfaction can be taken and it was fittingly climaxed with the strains of the ship’s band playing ‘Nearer My God to Thee,’ as she went down.” On April 22, the Daily Sketch of Britain published an article which read in part, “So now, what about the Titanic? Have you found your picture, your keepsake of this that was so terrible, and so great in its terror? If you have not, you must seek for one, for this is a thing which must not be forgotten. Read all you can about it until you may reap your harvest.” The Rev. Dr. Joseph Silverman said during a tribute sermon for the Strauses on April 20: “Men learn by experience. Many may take comfort in the thought that the same errors will not again be committed, and that there will be no great sacrifice of life in the future from the same causes. All the progress in the world has been brought about by suffering on the part of individuals. Thousands have died and many more thousands have suffered ill because of science. Millions have died on battlefields for the sake of liberty. Those on the Titanic when it went down must be added to the great roll of martyrs to progress.”