A Night to Remember

This group knew the crew almost as well as each other. It was the custom to cross with certain captains rather than on particular ships, and Captain Smith had a personal following which made him invaluable to the White Star Line. The captain repaid the patronage with little favours and privileges which kept them coming. On the last night John Jacob Astor got the bad news direct from Captain Smith before the general alarm, and others learned too.

But the other end of the bargain was to respect the privilege. Nobody took advantage of the captain’s confidence – hardly a man in the group was saved.

The stewards and waiters were on equally close terms with the group. They had often looked after the same passengers. They knew just what they wanted and how they liked things done. Every evening steward Samuel Etches would enter A-36 and lay out Thomas Andrews’ dress clothes just the way Mr Andrews liked. Then at 6.45 he would return and help Andrews dress. It happened all over the ship.

And when the Titanic was going down, it was with genuine affection that steward Etches made Mr Guggenheim wear his sweater … that steward Crawford laced Mr Stewart’s shoes … that second steward Dodd tipped off John B. Thayer that his wife was still on board, long after Thayer thought she had left. In the same spirit of devotion, dining-room steward Ray pushed Washington Dodge into boat 13 – he had persuaded the Dodges to take the Titanic and now felt he had to see them through.

The group repaid this loyalty with an intimacy and affection they gave few of their less-known fellow passengers. In the Titanic’s last hours men like Ben Guggenheim and Martin Rothschild seemed to see more of their stewards than the other passengers.

The Titanic somehow lowered the curtain on this way of living. It never was the same again. First the war, then income tax, made sure of that.

With this lost world went some of its prejudices – especially a firm and loudly voiced opinion of the superiority of Anglo-Saxon courage. To the survivors all stowaways in the lifeboats were ‘Chinese’ or ‘Japanese’; all who jumped from the deck were ‘Armenians’, ‘Frenchmen’ or ‘Italians’.

‘There were various men passengers,’ declared steward Crowe at the US inquiry, ‘probably Italians, or some foreign nationality other than English or American, who attempted to rush the boats.’ Steward Crowe, of course, never heard the culprits speak and had no way of knowing who they were. At the inquiry things finally grew so bad that the Italian ambassador demanded and got an apology from Fifth Officer Lowe for using ‘Italian’ as a sort of synonym for ‘coward’.

In contrast, Anglo-Saxon blood could do no wrong. When Bride described the stoker’s attack on Phillips, some newspapers made the stoker a Negro for better effect. And in a story headlined, ‘Desirable Immigrants Lost’, the New York Sun pointed out that, along with the others, seventy-eight Finns were lost who might have done the country some good.

But along with the prejudices, some nobler instincts also were lost. Men would go on being brave, but never again would they be brave in quite the same way. These men on the Titanic had a touch – there was something about Ben Guggenheim changing to evening dress … about Howard Case flicking his cigarette as he waved to Mrs Graham … or even about Colonel Gracie panting along the decks, gallantly if ineffectually searching for Mrs Candee. Today nobody could carry off these little gestures of chivalry, but they did that night.

An air of noblesse oblige has vanished too. During the agonizing days of uncertainty in New York, the Astors, the Guggenheims and others like them were not content to sit by their phones or to send friends and retainers to the White Star Line offices. They went themselves. Not because it was the best way to get information, but because they felt they ought to be there in person.

Today families are as loyal as ever, but the phone would probably do. Few would insist on going themselves and braving the bedlam of the steamship office. Yet the others didn’t hesitate a minute. True, Vincent Astor did get better information than the rest – and some even spoke to General Manager Franklin himself – but the point is that these people didn’t merely keep in touch – they were there.

Overriding everything else, the Titanic also marked the end of a general feeling of confidence. Until then men felt they had found the answer to a steady, orderly, civilized life. For 100 years the Western world had been at peace. For 100 years technology had steadily improved. For 100 years the benefits of peace and industry seemed to be filtering satisfactorily through society. In retrospect, there may seem fewer grounds for confidence, but at the time most articulate people felt life was all right.