A Night to Remember

  10 April 1912      12 noon   Leaves Southampton dock; narrowly escapes collision with American liner New York .  7.00 p.m.   Stops at Cherbourg for passengers.   9.00 p.m.   Leaves Cherbourg for Queenstown.    11 April 1912      12.30 p.m.   Stops at Queenstown for passengers and mail. One crewman deserts.   2.00 p.m.   Leaves Queenstown for New York, carrying 1,316 passengers and 891 crew.    14 April 1912      9.00 a.m.   Caronia  reports ice Latitude 42º N from Longitude 49º to 51º W.  1.42 p.m.   Baltic  reports ice Latitude 41º 51´ N, Longitude 40º 52´ W.  1.45 p.m.   Amerika  reports ice Latitude 41º 27´ N, Longitude 50º 8´ W.  7.00 p.m.   Temperature 43º.   7.30 p.m.   Temperature 39º.   7.30 p.m.   Californian  reports ice Latitude 42º 3´ N, Longitude 49º 9´ W.  9.00 p.m.   Temperature 33º.   9.30 p.m.   Second Officer Lightoller warns carpenter and engine room to watch fresh water supply – may freeze up; warns crow’s-nest to watch for ice.   9.40 p.m.   Mesaba  reports ice Latitude 42º N to 41º 25´ N, Longitude 49º to 50º 30´ W.  10.00 p.m.   Temperature 32º.   10.30 p.m.   Temperature of sea down to 31º.   11.00 p.m.   Californian  warns of ice, but cut off before she gives location.  11.40 p.m.   Collides with iceberg Latitude 41º 46´ N, Longitude 50º 14´ W.    15 April 1912      12.05 a.m.   Orders are given to uncover the boats, muster the crew and passengers.   12.15 a.m.   First wireless call for help.   12.45 a.m.   First rocket fired. First boat, No. 7, lowered.   1.40 a.m.   Last rocket fired.   2.05 a.m.   Last boat, collapsible D, lowered.   2.10 a.m.   Last wireless signals sent.   2.18 a.m.   Lights fail.   2.20 a.m.   Ship founders.   3.30 a.m.   Carpathia ’s rockets sighted by boats.  4.10 a.m.   First boat, No. 2, picked up by Carpathia .  8.30 a.m.   Last boat, No. 12, picked up.   8.50 a.m.   Carpathia  heads for New York with 705 survivors.

So much for the basic facts. Beyond these, much is a mystery. Probably nothing will ever equal the Titanic for the number of unanswered questions she left behind. For instance:

How many lives were lost? Some sources say 1,635 … the American Inquiry, 1,517 … the British Board of Trade, 1,503 … the British Inquiry, 1,490. The British Board of Trade figure seems most convincing, less fireman J. Coffy, who deserted at Queenstown.

How did various people leave the ship? Nearly every woman survivor who was asked replied firmly, ‘in the last boat’. Obviously, all these women didn’t go in the same boat, yet to question the point is like questioning a lady’s age – one simply doesn’t do it. Careful sifting of the testimony at the British and American hearings shows pretty clearly how the ship was abandoned, but even here there’s conflicting evidence. At the British Inquiry each witness was asked how many people were lowered in his lifeboat. The minimum estimates were then added. The results show a good deal of wishful thinking:

     Lowered in the boats according to minimum estimates of survivors    Lowered in the boats according to actual figures of those saved   Crew   107   139   Men passengers   43   119   Women and children   704   393    Total   854   651

In short, about seventy per cent more men and forty-five per cent fewer women went in the boats than even the most conservative survivors estimated. Plus the fact that the boats pulled away with twenty-five per cent fewer people than estimated.

What time did various incidents happen? Everyone agrees that the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11.40 p.m. and sank at 2.20 a.m. – but there’s disagreement on nearly everything that happened in between. The times given in this book are the honest estimates of people intimately involved, but they are far from foolproof. There was simply too much pressure. Mrs Louis M. Ogden, passenger on the Carpathia, offers a good example. At one point, while helping some survivors get settled, she paused long enough to ask her husband the time. Mr Ogden’s watch had stopped, but he guessed it was 4.30 p.m. Actually, it was only 9.30 in the morning. They were both so engrossed, they had lost all track of time.

What did different people say? There are no reconstructed conversations in this book. The words quoted are given exactly as people remembered them being spoken. Yet there is margin for error. The same conversations are often reported with slight variations. For instance, there are at least four versions of the exchange between Captain Rostron and Fourth Officer Boxhall as boat 2 edged alongside the Carpathia. The gist is always the same, but the words vary slightly.