A Night to Remember

Andrews had good reason to be exasperated. Women were never more unpredictable. One girl waiting to climb into No. 8 suddenly cried out, ‘I’ve forgotten Jack’s photograph and must get it.’ Everybody protested, but she darted below. In a moment she reappeared with the picture and was rushed into the boat.

It was all so urgent – and yet so calm – that Second Officer Lightoller felt he was wasting time when Chief Officer Wilde asked him to help find the firearms. Quickly he led the captain, Wilde and First Officer Murdoch to the locker where they were kept. Wilde shoved one of the guns into Lightoller’s hand, remarking, ‘You may need it.’ Lightoller stuck it in his pocket and hurried back to the boat.

One after another they now dropped rapidly into the sea: No. 6 at 12.55 … No. 3 at 1.00 … No. 8 at 1.10. Watching them go, first-class passenger William Carter advised Harry Widener to try for a boat. Widener shook his head : ‘I think I’ll stick to the big ship, Billy, and take a chance.’

Some of the crew weren’t as optimistic. When assistant second steward Wheat noticed chief steward Latimer wearing his lifebelt over his greatcoat, he urged the chief to put it under the coat – this made swimming easier.

On the bridge, as Fourth Officer Boxhall and Quartermaster Rowe fired off more rockets, Boxhall still couldn’t believe what was happening. ‘Captain,’ he asked, ‘is it really serious?’

‘Mr Andrews tells me,’ Smith answered quietly, ‘that he gives her from an hour to an hour and a half.’

Lightoller had a more tangible yardstick – the steep, narrow emergency staircase that ran from the boat deck all the way down to E deck. The water was slowly crawling up the stairs, and from time to time Lightoller walked over to the entrance and checked the number of steps it had climbed. He could see very easily, for the lights still gleamed under the pale green water.

His gauge showed time was flying. The pace grew faster – and sloppier. A pretty French girl stumbled and fell as she tried to climb into No. 9. An older woman in a black dress missed No. 10 entirely. She fell between the boat and the side of the ship. But as the crowd gasped, someone miraculously caught her ankle. Others hauled her into the promenade deck below and she climbed back to the boat deck for another try. This time she made it.

Some of them lost their nerve. An old lady made a big fuss at No. 9, finally shook off everybody, and ran away from the boat altogether. A hysterical woman thrashed about helplessly, trying to climb into No. 11. Steward Witter stood on the rail to help her, but she lost her footing anyway, and they tumbled into the boat together. A large fat woman stood crying near No. 13: ‘Don’t put me in the boat. I don’t want to go into the boat! I have never been in an open boat in my life!’

Steward Ray brushed aside her protests – ‘You’ve got to go, and you may as well keep quiet.’

A plan to fill some of the boats from the lower gangways went completely haywire. The doors that were to be used were never opened. The boats that were to stand by rowed off. The people who were to go were left stranded. When the Caldwells and several others went all the way down to a closed gangway on C deck, somebody who didn’t know about the plan locked the door behind them. Later some men on the deck above discovered the group and lowered a ladder for them to crawl back up.

A shortage of trained seamen made the confusion worse. Some of the best men had been used to man the early boats. Other old hands were off on special jobs – rounding up lanterns, opening the A deck windows, helping fire the rockets. Six seamen were lost when they went down to open one of the lower gangways; they never came back … probably trapped far below. Now Lightoller was rationing the hands he had left – only two crewmen to a lifeboat.

No. 6 was halfway down when a woman called up to the boat deck, ‘We’ve only one seaman in the boat!’

‘Any seamen there?’ Lightoller asked the people on deck.

‘If you like, I will go,’ called a voice from the crowd.

‘Are you a seaman?’

‘I am a yachtsman.’

‘If you’re sailor enough to get out on that fall, you can go down.’ Major Arthur Godfrey Peuchen – Vice-Commodore of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club – swung himself out on the forward fall and slid down into the boat. He was the only male passenger Lightoller allowed in a boat that night.

Men had it luckier on the starboard side. Murdoch continued to allow them in if there was room. The French aviator Pierre Maréchal and sculptor Paul Chevré climbed into No. 7. A couple of Gimbels buyers reached No. 5. When the time came to lower No. 3, Henry Sleeper Harper not only joined his wife, but he brought along his Pekingese Sun Yat-Sen and an Egyptian dragoman named Hamad Hassah, whom he had picked up in Cairo as a sort of joke.