A Night to Remember

The sea foamed and swirled around steward Brown’s feet as he sweated to get boat A to the edge of the deck. Then he realized he needn’t try any longer – the boat was floating off. He jumped in … cut the stern lines … yelled for someone to free the bow … and in the next instant was washed out by the same wave that swept off Peter Daly.

Down, down dipped the Titanic’s bow, and her stern swung slowly up. She seemed to be moving forward too. It was this motion which generated the wave that hit Daly, Brown and dozens of others as it rolled aft.

Lightoller watched the wave from the roof of the officers’ quarters. He saw the crowds retreating up the deck ahead of it. He saw the nimbler ones keep clear, the slower ones overtaken and engulfed. He knew that this kind of retreat just prolonged the agony. He turned and, facing the bow, dived in. As he reached the surface, he saw just ahead of him the crow’s-nest, now level with the water. Blind instinct seized him, and for a moment he swam towards it as a place of safety.

Then he snapped to and tried to swim clear of the ship. But the sea was pouring down the ventilators just in front of the forward funnel, and he was sucked back and held against the wire grating of an air shaft. He prayed it would hold. And he wondered how long he could last, pinned this way to the grating.

He never learned the answer. A blast of hot air from somewhere deep below came rushing up the ventilator and blew him to the surface. Gasping and spluttering, he finally paddled clear.

Harold Bride kept his head too. As the wave swept by, he grabbed an oarlock of collapsible B, which was still lying upside down on the boat deck near the first funnel. The boat, Bride and a dozen others were washed off together. The collapsible was still upside down, and Bride found himself struggling underneath it.

Colonel Gracie was not as sea-wise. He stayed in the crowd and jumped with the wave – it was almost like Newport. Rising on the crest, he caught the bottom rung of the iron railing on the roof of the officers’ quarters. He hauled himself up and lay on his stomach right at the base of the second funnel.

Before he could rise, the roof too had dipped under. Gracie found himself spinning round and round in a whirlpool of water. He tried to cling to the railing, then realized this was pulling him down deeper. With a mighty kick he pushed himself free and swam clear of the ship, far below the surface.

Chef John Collins couldn’t do much of anything about the wave. He had a baby in his arms. For five minutes he and a deck steward had been trying to help a steerage woman with two children. First they heard there was a boat on the port side. They ran there and heard it was on the starboard side. When they got there, somebody said their best chance was to head for the stern. Bewildered, they were standing undecided – Collins holding one of the babies – when they were all swept overboard by the wave. He never saw the others again, and the child was washed out of his arms.

Jack Thayer and Milton Long saw the wave coming too. They were standing by the starboard rail opposite the second funnel, trying to keep clear of the crowds swarming towards the stern. Instead of making for a higher point, they felt the time had come to jump and swim for it. They shook hands and wished each other luck. Long put his legs over the rail, while Thayer straddled it and began unbuttoning his overcoat. Long, hanging over the side and holding the rail with his hands, looked up at Thayer and asked, ‘You’re coming, boy?’

‘Go ahead, I’ll be right with you,’ Thayer reassured him.

Long slid down, facing the ship. Ten seconds later Thayer swung his other leg over the rail and sat facing out. He was about 10 feet above the water. Then with a push he jumped out as far as he could.

Of these two techniques for abandoning ship, Thayer’s was the one that worked.

The wave never reached Olaus Abelseth. Standing by the fourth funnel, he was too far back. Instead of plunging under, this part of the ship was swinging higher and higher.

As she swung up, Abelseth heard a popping and cracking … a series of muffled thuds … the crash of glassware … the clatter of deck chairs sliding down.

The slant of the deck grew so steep that people could no longer stand. So they fell, and Abelseth watched them slide down into the water right on the deck. Abelseth and his relatives hung on by clinging to a rope in one of the davits.

‘We’d better jump or the suction will take us down,’ his brother-in-law urged.

‘No,’ said Abelseth. ‘We won’t jump yet. We ain’t got much show anyhow, so we might as well stay as long as we can.’

‘We must jump off!’ the cry came again, but Abelseth held firm: ‘No, not yet.’