A Night to Remember

About this time Marguerite Frolicher was introduced to an important piece of picnic equipment. Still deathly seasick, she was noticed by a kindly gentleman sitting nearby. He pulled out a silver flask with a cup top and suggested a drink of brandy might help. She took the suggestion and was instantly cured. Perhaps it was the brandy, perhaps the novel experience – in all her twenty-two years, she had never seen a flask before, and she was fascinated.

But no picnic was ever so cold. Mrs Crosby shivered so hard in No. 5 that Third Officer Pitman wrapped a sail around her. A stoker in No. 6 sat beside Mrs Brown, his teeth chattering with the cold. Finally she wrapped her sable stole about his legs, tying the tails around his ankles. In No. 16 a man in white pyjamas looked so cold he reminded the other passengers of a snowman. Mrs Charlotte Collyer was so numb she toppled over in No. 14; her hair caught in an oarlock and a big tuft came out by the roots.

The crew did their best to make the women more comfortable. In No. 5 a sailor took off his stockings and gave them to Mrs Washington Dodge. When she looked up in startled gratitude, he explained, ‘I assure you, ma’am, they are perfectly clean, I just put them on this morning.’

In No. 13, fireman Beauchamp shivered in his thin jumpers, but he refused to take an extra coat offered him by an elderly lady, insisting it go to a young Irish girl instead. For the people in this boat there was additional relief from an unexpected quarter. When steward Ray left his cabin for the last time, he picked up six handkerchiefs lying in his trunk. Now he gave them out, telling people to tie a knot in each corner and turn them into caps. As a result, he recalls with pride, ‘six heads were crowned’.

Besides the cold, the number of lady oarsmen dispelled the picnic illusion. In No. 4, Mrs John B. Thayer rowed for five hours in water up to her shins. In No. 6 the irrepressible Mrs Brown organized the women, two to an oar. One held the oar in place, while the second did the pulling. In this way Mrs Brown, Mrs Meyer, Mrs Candee and others propelled the boat some three or four miles, in a hopeless effort to overtake the light that twinkled on the horizon most of the night.

Mrs Walter Douglas handled the tiller of boat 2. Boxhall, who was in charge, pulled an oar and helped to fire the green flares. Mrs J. Stuart White didn’t help to row No. 8, but she appointed herself a sort of signalman. She had a cane with a built-in electric light, and during most of the night she waved it fiercely about, alternately helping and confusing everyone.

In No. 8, Marie Young, Gladys Cherry, Mrs F. Joel Swift and others pulled at the oars. Mrs William R. Bucknell noted with pride that as she rowed next to the Countess of Rothes, further down the boat her maid was rowing next to the countess’s maid. Most of the night the countess handled the tiller. Seaman Jones, in charge, later explained to the Sphere why he put her there: ‘There was a woman in my boat as was a woman … When I saw the way she was carrying herself and heard the quiet determined way she spoke to the others, I knew she was more of a man than any we had on board.’ At the American investigation, perhaps lacking the guidance of the Press, Jones phrased it a little less elegantly: ‘She had a lot to say, so I put her to steering the boat.’

But there was no doubt how he felt. After the rescue Jones removed the numeral ‘8’ from the lifeboat, had it framed, and sent it to the countess to show his admiration.

As the night wore on, the early composure began to give way. In No. 3, Mrs Charles Hays hailed the boats that came near, searching for her husband. ‘Charles Hays, are you there?’ she would call over and over again. In No. 8 Señora de Satode Penasco screamed for her husband Victor, until the Countess of Rothes couldn’t stand it any longer. Turning the tiller over to her cousin Gladys Cherry, she slipped down beside the señora and spent the rest of the night rowing beside her, trying to cheer her up. In No. 6, Madame de Villiers constantly called for her son, who wasn’t even on the Titanic.

Gradually a good deal of squabbling broke out. The women in No. 3 bickered about trifles, while their husbands sat in embarrassed silence. Mrs Washington Dodge – who wanted to row back against the wishes of nearly everyone else in No. 5 – grew so bitter that when No. 7 came by, she switched boats in mid-ocean. Maud Slocombe, the Titanic’s irrepressible masseuse, helped to bawl out a woman who kept setting off, of all things, an alarm clock in No. 11. Seaman Diamond, a tough ex-boxer in charge of No. 15, swore oaths that turned the night air even bluer.