A Night to Remember

And it was the end of class distinction in filling the boats. The White Star Line always denied anything of the kind – and the investigators backed them up – yet there’s overwhelming evidence that the steerage took a beating: Daniel Buckley kept from going into first class … Olaus Abelseth released from the poop deck as the last boat pulled away … steward Hart convoying two little groups of women topside, while hundreds were kept below … steerage passengers crawling along the crane from the well deck aft … others climbing vertical ladders to escape the well deck forward.

Then there were the people Colonel Gracie, Lightoller and others saw surging up from below, just before the end. Until this moment Gracie was sure the women were all off – they were so hard to find when the last boats were loading. Now, he was appalled to see dozens of them suddenly appear. The statistics suggest who they were – the Titanic’s casualty list included four of 143 first-class women (three by choice) … fifteen of ninety-three second-class women … and eighty-one of 179 third-class women.

Not to mention the children. Except for Lorraine Allison, all twenty-nine first- and second-class children were saved, but only twenty-three out of seventy-six steerage children.

Neither the chance to be chivalrous nor the fruits of chivalry seemed to go with a third-class passage.

It was better, but not perfect, in second class. Lawrence Beesley remembered an officer stopping two ladies as they started through the gate to first class. ‘May we pass to the boats?’ they asked.

‘No, madam; your boats are down on your own deck.’

In fairness to the White Star Line, these distinctions grew not so much from set policy as from no policy at all. At some points the crew barred the way to the boat deck; at others they opened the gates but didn’t tell anyone; at a few points there were well-meaning efforts to guide the steerage up. But generally third class was left to shift for itself. A few of the more enterprising met the challenge, but most milled helplessly about their quarters – ignored, neglected, forgotten.

If the White Star Line was indifferent, so was everybody else. No one seemed to care about third class – neither the Press, the official inquiries, nor even the third-class passengers themselves.

In covering the Titanic, few reporters bothered to ask the third-class passengers anything. The New York Times was justly proud of the way it handled the disaster. Yet the famous issue covering the Carpathia’s arrival in New York contained only two interviews with third-class passengers. This apparently was par for the course – of forty-three survivor accounts in the New York Herald, two again were steerage experiences.

Certainly their experiences weren’t as good copy as Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon (one New York newspaper had her saying, ‘The last voice I heard was a man shouting, “My God, my God!”’). But there was indeed a story. The night was a magnificent confirmation of ‘women and children first’, yet somehow the loss rate was higher for third-class children than first-class men. It was a contrast which would never get by the social consciousness (or news sense) of today’s Press.

Nor did Congress care what happened to third class. Senator Smith’s Titanic investigation covered everything under the sun, including what an iceberg was made of (‘Ice’, explained Fifth Officer Lowe), but the steerage received little attention. Only three of the witnesses were third-class passengers. Two of these said they were kept from going to the boat deck, but the legislators didn’t follow up. Again, the testimony doesn’t suggest any deliberate hush-up – it was just that no one was interested.

The British Court of Inquiry was even more cavalier. Mr W. D. Harbinson, who officially represented the third-class interests, said he could find no trace of discrimination, and Lord Mersey’s report gave a clean bill of health – yet not a single third-class passenger testified, and the only surviving steward stationed in steerage freely conceded that the men were kept below decks as late as 1.15 a.m.

Even the third-class passengers weren’t bothered. They expected class distinction as part of the game. Olaus Abelseth, at least, regarded access to the boat deck as a privilege that went with first- and second-class passage … even when the ship was sinking. He was satisfied as long as they let him stay above decks.

A new age was dawning, and never since that night have third-class passengers been so philosophical.