A Night to Remember

The single light grew brighter; then another appeared; then row after row. A big steamer was pounding up, firing rockets to reassure the Titanic’s people that help was on the way. In No. 9, deck hand Paddy McGough suddenly thundered, ‘Let us all pray to God, for there is a ship on the horizon and it’s making for us!’

The men in boat B let out a yelp of joy and started babbling again. Someone lit a newspaper in No. 3 and waved it wildly, then Mrs Davidson’s straw hat – it would burn longer. In Mrs A. S. Jerwan’s boat they dipped handkerchiefs in kerosene and lit them as signals. In No. 13 they twisted a paper torch out of letters. Boxhall burned a last green flare in boat 2. In No. 8, Mrs White swung her electric cane as never before.

Over the water floated cheers and yells of relief. Even nature seemed pleased, as the dreary night gave way to the mauve and coral of a beautiful dawn.

Not everyone saw it. In half-swamped boat A, Olaus Abelseth tried to kindle the will to live in a half-frozen man lying beside him. As day broke, he took the man’s shoulder and raised him up, so that he was sitting on the floorboards. ‘Look!’ pleaded Abelseth, ‘we can see a ship now; brace up!’

He took one of the man’s hands and raised it. Then he shook the man’s shoulder. But the man only said, ‘Who are you?’ And a minute later, ‘Let me be … who are you?’

Abelseth held him up for a while; but it was such a strain, he finally had to use a board as a prop. Half an hour later the sky blazed with thrilling, warm shades of pink and gold, but now it was too late for the man to know.

9. ‘We’re Going North Like Hell’

Mrs Anne Crain puzzled over the cheerful smell of coffee brewing as she lay in her cabin on the Cunarder Carpathia, bound from New York to the Mediterranean. It was nearly 1.00 a.m. on the fourth night out, and by now Mrs Crain knew the quiet little liner well enough to feel that any sign of activity after midnight was unusual, let alone coffee brewing.

Down the corridor Miss Ann Peterson lay awake in her bunk too. She wondered why the lights were turned on all over the ship – normally the poky Carpathia was shut down by now.

Mr Howard M. Chapin was more worried than puzzled. He lay in the upper berth of his cabin on A deck – his face just a few inches below the boat deck above. Some time after midnight a strange sound suddenly woke him up. It was a man kneeling down on the deck, directly over his head. The day before, he had noticed a lifeboat fall tied to a cleat just about there; now he felt sure the man was unfastening the boat and something was wrong.

Nearby, Mrs Louis M. Ogden awoke to a cold cabin and a speeding ship. Hearing loud noises overhead, she too decided something must be wrong. She shook her sleeping husband. His diagnosis didn’t reassure her – the noise was the crew breaking out the chocks from the lifeboats overhead. He opened the stateroom door and saw a line of stewards carrying blankets and mattresses. Not very reassuring either.

Here and there, all over the ship, the light sleepers listened restlessly to muffled commands, tramping feet, creaking davits. Some wondered about the engines – they were pounding so much harder, so much faster than usual. The mattress jiggled wildly … the washstand tumblers rattled loudly in the brackets … the woodwork groaned with the strain. A turn of the tap produced only cold water – a twist on the heater knob brought no results – the engines seemed to be feeding on every ounce of steam.

Strangest of all was the bitter cold. The Carpathia had left New York on 11 April, bound for Gibraltar, Genoa, Naples, Trieste and Fiume. Her 150 first-class passengers were mostly elderly Americans following the sun in this pre-Florida era; her 575 steerage passengers were mostly Italians and Slavs returning to their sunny Mediterranean. All of them welcomed the balmy breeze of the Gulf Stream that Sunday afternoon. Towards five o’clock it grew so warm that Mr Chapin shifted his deck chair to the shade. Now there was an amazing change – the frigid blast that swept through every crack and seam felt like the Arctic.

On the bridge, Captain Arthur H. Rostron wondered whether he had overlooked anything. He had been at sea for twenty-seven years – with Cunard for seventeen – but this was only his second year as a Cunard skipper and only his third month on the Carpathia. The Titanic’s call for help was his first real test.

When the CQD arrived, Rostron had already turned in for the night. Harold Cottam, the Carpathia’s operator, rushed the message to First Officer Dean on the bridge. They both raced down the ladder, through the chart room, and burst into the captain’s cabin. Rostron – a stickler for discipline even when half asleep – wondered what the ship was coming to, with people dashing in in this way. They were meant to knock. But before he could reprimand them, Dean blurted the news.