A Night to Remember

He could indeed. When the Titanic brushed by, several tons of ice crumbled off the berg and landed on the starboard well deck, just opposite the foremast. This was third-class recreation space, and the ice was soon discovered by steerage passengers coming up to investigate. From her cabin window on B deck, Mrs Natalie Wick watched them playfully throwing chunks at each other.

The ice soon became quite a tourist attraction. Major Arthur Godfrey Peuchen, a middle-aged manufacturing chemist from Toronto, used the opportunity to descend on a more distinguished compatriot, Charles M. Hays, President of the Grand Trunk Railroad. ‘Mr Hays!’ he cried, ‘Have you seen the ice?’

When Mr Hays said he hadn’t Peuchen followed through – ‘If you care to see it, I will take you up on deck and show it to you.’ And so they went all the way forward on A deck and looked down at the mild horseplay below.

Possession of the ice didn’t remain a third-class monopoly for long. As Colonel Gracie stood in the A deck foyer, he was tapped on the shoulder by Clinch Smith, a New York society figure whose experiences already included sitting at Stanford White’s table the night White was shot by Harry K. Thaw. ‘Would you like,’ asked Smith, ‘a souvenir to take back to New York?’ And he opened his hand to show a small piece of ice, flat like a pocket watch.

The same collector’s instinct gripped others. Able seaman John Poingdestre picked up a sliver and showed it around the crew’s mess room. A steerage passenger presented Fourth Officer Boxhall with a chunk about the size of a small basin. As greaser Walter Hurst lay half awake, his father-in-law – who shared the same quarters – came in and tossed a lump of ice into Hurst’s bunk. A man entered the stewards’ quarters, displaying a piece about as big as a teacup, and told steward F. Dent Ray, ‘There are tons of ice forward!’

‘Ah, well,’ Ray yawned, ‘that will not hurt.’ And he prepared to go back to sleep.

A little more curious, first-class steward Henry Samuel Etches – off duty at the time of the crash – walked forward along the alleyway on E deck to investigate, and ran into a third-class passenger walking the other way. Before Etches could say anything, the passenger – as though confronting Etches with irrefutable evidence about something in dispute – threw a block of ice on to the deck and shouted, ‘Will you believe it now?’

Soon there was far more disturbing evidence that all was not as it should be. By 11.50 – ten minutes after the collision – strange things could be seen and heard in the first six of the Titanic’s sixteen watertight compartments.

Lamp trimmer Samuel Hemming, lying off duty in his bunk, heard a curious hissing sound coming from the fore-peak, the compartment closest to the bow. He jumped up, went as far forward as he could, and discovered that it was air escaping from the forepeak locker where the anchor chains were stowed. Far below, water was pouring in so fast that air rushed out under tremendous pressure.

In the next compartment aft, containing the firemen’s quarters and cargo hatch No. 1, leading fireman Charles Hendrickson was also roused by a curious sound. But here it was not air – it was water. When he looked down the spiral staircase that led to the passageway connecting the firemen’s quarters with the stokeholds, he saw green sea-water swirling around the foot of the grated, cast-iron steps.

Steerage passenger Carl Johnson had an even more disturbing experience in the third compartment aft. This contained the cheapest passenger accommodation – lowest in the ship and closest to the bow. As Johnson got up to see what was causing a mild commotion outside his cabin, water seeped in under the door and around his feet. He decided to dress, and by the time his clothes were on, the water was over his shoes. With a detached, almost clinical interest, he noticed that it seemed to be of very even depth all over the floor. Nearby, steerage passenger Daniel Buckley was a little slower to react, and when he finally jumped out of his bunk, he splashed into water up to his ankles.

Five postal clerks working in the fourth compartment were much wetter. The Titanic’s post office took up two deck levels – the mail was stacked, along with first-class luggage, on the orlop deck and was sorted just above on G deck. The two levels were connected by a wide iron companionway, which continued up to F deck and the rest of the ship. Within five minutes water was sloshing around the knees of the postal clerks, as they dragged 200 sacks of registered mail up the companionway to the drier sorting room.

They might have spared themselves the trouble – in another five minutes the water reached the top of the steps and was lapping on to G deck. The clerks now abandoned the mail room altogether, retreating further up the companionway to F deck.