The Loss of the S.S. Titanic by Lawrence Beesley (free ebook reader for pc .txt) 📕

stay in that long or we shall be

swamped; feel down on the floor and be ready to pull up the pin which

lets the ropes free as soon as we are afloat.” I had often looked over

the side and noticed this stream of water coming out of the side of

the Titanic just above the waterline: in fact so large was the volume

of water that as we ploughed along and met the waves coming towards

us, this stream would cause a splash that sent spray flying. We felt,

as well as we could in the crowd of people, on the floor, along the

sides, with no idea where the pin could be found,—and none of the

crew knew where it was, only of its existence somewhere,—but we never

found it. And all the time we got closer to the sea and the exhaust

roared nearer and nearer—until finally we floated with the ropes

still holding us from above, the exhaust washing us away and the force

of the tide driving us back against the side,—the latter not of much

account in influencing the direction, however. Thinking over what

followed, I imagine we must have touched the water with the condenser

stream at our bows, and not in the middle as I thought at one time: at

any rate, the resultant of these three forces was that we were carried

parallel to the ship, directly under the place where boat 15 would

drop from her davits into the sea. Looking up we saw her already

coming down rapidly from B deck: she must have filled almost

immediately after ours. We shouted up, “Stop lowering 14,” [Footnote:

In an account which appeared in the newspapers of April 19 I have

described this boat as 14, not knowing they were numbered

alternately.] and the crew and passengers in the boat above, hearing

us shout and seeing our position immediately below them, shouted the

same to the sailors on the boat deck; but apparently they did not

hear, for she dropped down foot by foot,—twenty feet, fifteen,

ten,—and a stoker and I in the bows reached up and touched her bottom

swinging above our heads, trying to push away our boat from under her.

It seemed now as if nothing could prevent her dropping on us, but at

this moment another stoker sprang with his knife to the ropes that

still held us and I heard him shout, “One! Two!” as he cut them

through. The next moment we had swung away from underneath 15, and

were clear of her as she dropped into the water in the space we had

just before occupied. I do not know how the bow ropes were freed, but

imagine that they were cut in the same way, for we were washed clear

of the Titanic at once by the force of the stream and floated away as

the oars were got out.

 

I think we all felt that that was quite the most exciting thing we had

yet been through, and a great sigh of relief and gratitude went up as

we swung away from the boat above our heads; but I heard no one cry

aloud during the experience—not a woman’s voice was raised in fear or

hysteria. I think we all learnt many things that night about the bogey

called “fear,” and how the facing of it is much less than the dread of

it.

 

The crew was made up of cooks and stewards, mostly the former, I

think; their white jackets showing up in the darkness as they pulled

away, two to an oar: I do not think they can have had any practice in

rowing, for all night long their oars crossed and clashed; if our

safety had depended on speed or accuracy in keeping time it would have

gone hard with us. Shouting began from one end of the boat to the

other as to what we should do, where we should go, and no one seemed

to have any knowledge how to act. At last we asked, “Who is in charge

of this boat?” but there was no reply. We then agreed by general

consent that the stoker who stood in the stern with the tiller should

act as captain, and from that time he directed the course, shouting to

other boats and keeping in touch with them. Not that there was

anywhere to go or anything we could do. Our plan of action was simple:

to keep all the boats together as far as possible and wait until we

were picked up by other liners. The crew had apparently heard of the

wireless communications before they left the Titanic, but I never

heard them say that we were in touch with any boat but the Olympic: it

was always the Olympic that was coming to our rescue. They thought

they knew even her distance, and making a calculation, we came to the

conclusion that we ought to be picked up by her about two o’clock in

the afternoon. But this was not our only hope of rescue: we watched

all the time the darkness lasted for steamers’ lights, thinking there

might be a chance of other steamers coming near enough to see the

lights which some of our boats carried. I am sure there was no feeling

in the minds of any one that we should not be picked up next day: we

knew that wireless messages would go out from ship to ship, and as one

of the stokers said: “The sea will be covered with ships to-morrow

afternoon: they will race up from all over the sea to find us.” Some

even thought that fast torpedo boats might run up ahead of the

Olympic. And yet the Olympic was, after all, the farthest away of them

all; eight other ships lay within three hundred miles of us.

 

How thankful we should have been to know how near help was, and how

many ships had heard our message and were rushing to the Titanic’s

aid. I think nothing has surprised us more than to learn so many ships

were near enough to rescue us in a few hours. Almost immediately after

leaving the Titanic we saw what we all said was a ship’s lights down

on the horizon on the Titanic’s port side: two lights, one above the

other, and plainly not one of our boats; we even rowed in that

direction for some time, but the lights drew away and disappeared

below the horizon.

 

But this is rather anticipating: we did none of these things first. We

had no eyes for anything but the ship we had just left. As the oarsmen

pulled slowly away we all turned and took a long look at the mighty

vessel towering high above our midget boat, and I know it must have

been the most extraordinary sight I shall ever be called upon to

witness; I realize now how totally inadequate language is to convey to

some other person who was not there any real impression of what we

saw.

 

But the task must be attempted: the whole picture is so intensely

dramatic that, while it is not possible to place on paper for eyes to

see the actual likeness of the ship as she lay there, some sketch of

the scene will be possible. First of all, the climatic conditions were

extraordinary. The night was one of the most beautiful I have ever

seen: the sky without a single cloud to mar the perfect brilliance of

the stars, clustered so thickly together that in places there seemed

almost more dazzling points of light set in the black sky than

background of sky itself; and each star seemed, in the keen

atmosphere, free from any haze, to have increased its brilliance

tenfold and to twinkle and glitter with a staccato flash that made the

sky seem nothing but a setting made for them in which to display their

wonder. They seemed so near, and their light so much more intense than

ever before, that fancy suggested they saw this beautiful ship in dire

distress below and all their energies had awakened to flash messages

across the black dome of the sky to each other; telling and warning of

the calamity happening in the world beneath. Later, when the Titanic

had gone down and we lay still on the sea waiting for the day to dawn

or a ship to come, I remember looking up at the perfect sky and

realizing why Shakespeare wrote the beautiful words he puts in the

mouth of Lorenzo:—

 

“Jessica, look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold.

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.”

 

But it seemed almost as if we could—that night: the stars seemed

really to be alive and to talk. The complete absence of haze produced

a phenomenon I had never seen before: where the sky met the sea the

line was as clear and definite as the edge of a knife, so that the

water and the air never merged gradually into each other and blended

to a softened rounded horizon, but each element was so exclusively

separate that where a star came low down in the sky near the clear-cut

edge of the waterline, it still lost none of its brilliance. As the

earth revolved and the water edge came up and covered partially the

star, as it were, it simply cut the star in two, the upper half

continuing to sparkle as long as it was not entirely hidden, and

throwing a long beam of light along the sea to us.

 

In the evidence before the United States Senate Committee the captain

of one of the ships near us that night said the stars were so

extraordinarily bright near the horizon that he was deceived into

thinking that they were ships’ lights: he did not remember seeing such

a night before. Those who were afloat will all agree with that

statement: we were often deceived into thinking they were

lights of a ship.

 

And next the cold air! Here again was something quite new to us: there

was not a breath of wind to blow keenly round us as we stood in the

boat, and because of its continued persistence to make us feel cold;

it was just a keen, bitter, icy, motionless cold that came from

nowhere and yet was there all the time; the stillness of it—if one

can imagine “cold” being motionless and still—was what seemed new and

strange.

 

And these—the sky and the air—were overhead; and below was the sea.

Here again something uncommon: the surface was like a lake of oil,

heaving gently up and down with a quiet motion that rocked our boat

dreamily to and fro. We did not need to keep her head to the swell:

often I watched her lying broadside on to the tide, and with a boat

loaded as we were, this would have been impossible with anything like

a swell. The sea slipped away smoothly under the boat, and I think we

never heard it lapping on the sides, so oily in appearance was the

water. So when one of the stokers said he had been to sea for

twenty-six years and never yet seen such a calm night, we accepted it

as true without comment. Just as expressive was the remark of

another—“It reminds me of a bloomin’ picnic!” It was quite true; it

did: a picnic on a lake, or a quiet inland river like the Cam, or a

backwater on the Thames.

 

And so in these conditions of sky and air and sea, we gazed broadside

on