A Night to Remember

These thoughts were yet to come, as the Carpathia turned towards New York in the bright morning sunshine of 15 April. At this point the survivors still slumped exhausted in deck chairs or sipped coffee in the dining-saloon or absently wondered what they would wear.

The Carpathia’s passengers pitched in gallantly – digging out extra toothbrushes, lending clothes, sewing smocks for the children out of steamer blankets brought along in the lifeboats. A Macy’s wine buyer bound for Portugal became a sort of guardian angel for the three rescued Gimbels buyers. Mrs Louis Ogden took cups of coffee to two women in gay coats and scarves sitting alone in a corner. ‘Go away,’ they said, ‘we have just seen our husbands drown.’

For some of the survivors life began again – Lawrence Beesley busily scribbled off a wireless message that he was safe. For others it took longer. Colonel Gracie lay under a pile of blankets on a sofa in the dining-saloon while his clothes dried in the bake oven. Bruce Ismay sat trembling in the surgeon’s cabin, shot full of opiates. Harold Bride came to lying in somebody’s stateroom; a woman was bending over him, and he felt her hand brushing back his hair and rubbing his face.

Jack Thayer was in another cabin nearby. A kindly man had lent him pyjamas and a bunk. Now Thayer was getting into bed, just as he had started to do ten hours before. He climbed between the cool sheets, and it occurred to him that a cup of brandy he just swallowed was his first drink of hard liquor. He must indeed be growing up.

Far below, the Carpathia’s engines hummed with a swift, soothing rhythm. Far above, the wind whistled through the rigging. Ahead lay New York, and home in Philadelphia. Behind, the sun caught the bright red-and-white stripes of the pole from the Titanic’s barber shop, as it bobbed in the empty sea. But Jack Thayer no longer knew or cared. The brandy had done its work. He was fast asleep.

Facts about the Titanic

‘There will never be another like her,’ says baker Charles Burgess, who ought to know. In forty-three years on the Atlantic run he has seen them all – Olympic … Majestic … Mauretania … and so on. Today, as carver in the kitchen of the Queen Elizabeth, Burgess is probably the last Titanic crewman on active service.

‘Like the Olympic, yes, but so much more elaborate,’ he reflects. ‘Take the dining-saloon. The Olympic didn’t even have a carpet, but the Titanic – ah, you sank in it up to your knees. Then there’s the furniture: so heavy you could hardly lift it. And that panelling …

‘They can make them bigger and faster, but it was the care and effort that went into her. She was a beautiful, wonderful ship.’

Burgess’s reflections are typical. The Titanic has cast a spell on all who built and sailed her. So much so that, as the years go by, she grows ever more fabulous. Many survivors now insist she was ‘twice as big as the Olympic’ – actually they were sister ships, with the Titanic just 1,004 tons larger. Others recall golf courses, regulation tennis courts, a herd of dairy cows and other little touches that exceeded even the White Star Line’s penchant for luxury.

The Titanic was impressive enough without embellishment. Her weight – 46,328 gross tons … 66,000 tons displacement. Her dimensions – 882.5 feet long … 92.5 feet wide … 60.5 feet from waterline to boat deck, or 175 feet from keel to the top of her four huge funnels. She was, in short, eleven storeys high and a sixth of a mile long.

Triple screw, the Titanic had two sets of four-cylinder reciprocating engines, each driving a wing propeller, and a turbine driving the centre propeller. This combination gave her 50,000 registered horsepower, but she could easily develop at least 55,000 horsepower. At full speed she could make 24 to 25 knots.

Perhaps her most arresting feature was her watertight construction. She had a double bottom and was divided into sixteen watertight compartments. These were formed by fifteen watertight bulkheads running clear across the ship. Curiously, they didn’t extend very far up. The first two and the last five went only as high as D deck, while the middle eight were carried only up to E deck. Nevertheless, she could float with any two compartments flooded, and since no one could imagine anything worse than a collision at the conjuncture of two compartments, she was labelled ‘unsinkable’.

The ‘unsinkable’ Titanic was launched at the Belfast shipyards of Harland & Wolff on 31 May 1911. The next ten months were spent in fitting her out. She completed her trials on 2 April 1912, and arrived in Southampton on 3 April. A week later she sailed for New York. Here is a reconstructed log of the main events of her maiden voyage: