A Night to Remember

Jack Thayer and Milton Long debated whether to jump. The davit they were using as a gauge showed the Titanic was going much faster now. Thayer wanted to jump out, catch an empty lifeboat fall, slide down and swim out to the boats he could dimly see 500 or 600 yards away. He was a good swimmer. Long, not nearly as good, argued against it and persuaded Thayer not to try.

Further forward, Colonel Gracie lent his penknife to the men struggling with the collapsibles lashed to the officers’ quarters. They were having a hard time, and Gracie wondered why.

Some of the third-class passengers had now worked their way up to the boat deck, and others were drifting towards the gradually rising stern. The after poop deck, normally third-class space anyhow, was suddenly becoming attractive to all kinds of people.

Olaus Abelseth was one of those who reached the boat deck. Most of the evening he had been all the way aft with his cousin, his brother-in-law and the two Norwegian girls. With other steerage men and women, they aimlessly waited for someone to tell them what to do.

Around 1.30 an officer opened the gate to first class and ordered the women to the boat deck. At 2.00 the men were allowed up too. Many now preferred to stay where they were – this would clearly be the last point above water. But Abelseth, his cousin and brother-in-law went up on the chance there was still a boat left. The last one was pulling away.

So they just stood there, as worried about being in first class as by the circumstances that had brought them there. Abelseth watched the crew trying to free the collapsibles. Once an officer, searching for extra hands, called, ‘Are there any sailors here?’

Abelseth had spent sixteen of his twenty-seven years on the sea and felt he should speak up. But his cousin and brother-in-law pleaded, ‘No, let us just stay here together.’

So they did. They felt rather awkward and said very little. It was even more awkward when Mr and Mrs Straus drew near. ‘Please,’ the old gentleman was saying, ‘get into a lifeboat and be saved.’

‘No, let me stay with you,’ she replied. Abelseth turned and looked the other way.

Within the ship the heavy silence of the deserted rooms had a drama of its own. The crystal chandeliers of the à la carte restaurant hung at a crazy angle, but they still burned brightly, lighting the fawn panels of French walnut and the rose-coloured carpet. A few of the little table lights with their pink silk shades had fallen over, and someone was rummaging in the pantry, perhaps for something to fortify himself.

The Louis Quinze lounge with its big fireplace was silent and empty. The Palm Court was equally deserted – one passer-by found it hard to believe that just four hours ago it was filled with exquisitely dressed ladies and gentlemen, sipping after-dinner coffee, listening to chamber music by the same men who now played gay songs on the boat deck above.

The smoking-room was not completely empty. When a steward looked in at 2.10, he was surprised to see Thomas Andrews standing all alone in the room. Andrews’ lifebelt lay carelessly across the green cloth top of a card table. His arms were folded over his chest; his look was stunned; all his drive and energy were gone. A moment of awed silence, and the steward timidly broke in: ‘Aren’t you going to have a try for it, Mr Andrews?’

There was no answer, not even a trace that he heard. The builder of the Titanic merely stared aft.

Outside on the decks, the crowd still waited; the band still played. A few prayed with the Reverend Thomas R. Byles, a second-class passenger. Others seemed lost in thought.

There was much to think about. For Captain Smith there were the four ice messages he had received during the day – a fifth, which he may not have seen, told exactly where to expect the berg. And there was the thermometer that fell from forty-three degrees at seven o’clock to thirty-two degrees at ten o’clock. And the temperature of the sea, which dropped to thirty-one degrees at 10.30 p.m.

Wireless operator Jack Phillips could ponder over the sixth ice warning – when the Californian broke in at 11.00 p.m. and Phillips told her to shut up. That one never even reached the bridge.

George Q. Clifford of Boston had the rueful satisfaction of remembering that he took out 50,000 dollars’ extra life insurance just before the trip.

For Isidor Straus there was the irony of his will. A special paragraph urged Mrs Straus to ‘be a little selfish; don’t always think only of others.’ Through the years she had been so self-sacrificing that he especially wanted her to enjoy life after he was gone. Now the very qualities he admired so much meant he could never have his wish.