A Night to Remember

At this moment Quartermaster George Thomas Rowe was standing watch on the after bridge. For him too, it had been an uneventful night – just the sea, the stars, the biting cold. As he paced the deck, he noticed what he and his mates called ‘whiskers ’round the light’ – tiny splinters of ice in the air, fine as dust, that gave off myriads of bright colours whenever caught in the glow of the deck lights.

Then suddenly he felt a curious motion break the steady rhythm of the engines. It was a little like coming alongside a dock wall rather heavily. He glanced forward – and stared again. A windjammer, sails set, seemed to be passing along the starboard side. Then he realized it was an iceberg, towering perhaps a hundred feet above the water. The next instant it was gone, drifting astern into the dark.

Meanwhile, down below in the first-class dining-saloon on D deck, four other members of the Titanic’s crew were sitting round one of the tables. The last diner had long since departed, and now the big white Jacobean room was empty except for this single group. They were dining-saloon stewards, indulging in the time-honoured pastime of all stewards off duty – they were gossiping about their passengers.

Then, as they sat there talking, a faint grinding jar seemed to come from somewhere deep inside the ship. It was not much, but enough to break the conversation and rattle the silver that was set for breakfast next morning.

Steward James Johnson felt he knew just what it was. He recognized the kind of shudder a ship gives when she drops a propeller blade, and he knew this sort of mishap meant a trip back to the Harland & Wolff shipyard at Belfast – with plenty of free time to enjoy the hospitality of the port. Somebody near him agreed and sang out cheerfully, ‘Another Belfast trip!’

In the galley just to the stern, chief night baker Walter Belford was making rolls for the following day. (The honour of baking fancy pastry was reserved for the day shift.) When the jolt came, it impressed Belford more strongly than steward Johnson – perhaps because a pan of new rolls clattered off the top of the oven and scattered about the floor.

The passengers in their cabins felt the jar too, and tried to connect it with something familiar. Marguerite Frolicher, a young Swiss girl accompanying her father on a business trip, woke up with a start. Half-asleep, she could think only of the little white lake ferries at Zurich making a sloppy landing. Softly she said to herself, ‘Isn’t it funny … we’re landing!’

Major Arthur Godfrey Peuchen, starting to undress for the night, thought it was like a heavy wave striking the ship. Mrs J. Stuart White was sitting on the edge of her bed, just reaching to turn out the light, when the ship seemed to roll over ‘a thousand marbles’. To Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon, waking up from the jolt, it seemed ‘as though somebody had drawn a giant finger along the side of the ship’. Mrs John Jacob Astor thought it was some mishap in the kitchen.

It seemed stronger to some than to others. Mrs Albert Caldwell pictured a large dog that had a baby kitten in its mouth and was shaking it. Mrs Walter B. Stephenson recalled the first ominous jolt when she was in the San Francisco earthquake – then decided this wasn’t that bad. Mrs E. D. Appleton felt hardly any shock at all, but she noticed an unpleasant ripping sound … like someone tearing a long, long strip of calico.

The jar meant more to J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, who, in a festive mood, was going along for a ride on the Titanic’s first trip. Ismay woke up with a start in his de luxe suite on B deck – he felt sure the ship had struck something, but he didn’t know what.

Some of the passengers already knew the answer. Mr and Mrs George A. Harder, a young honeymoon couple down in cabin E-50, were still awake when they heard a dull thump. Then they felt the ship quiver, and there was ‘a sort of rumbling, scraping noise’ along the ship’s side. Mr Harder hopped out of bed and ran to the porthole. As he looked through the glass, he saw a wall of ice glide by.

The same thing happened to James B. McGough, a Gimbels buyer from Philadelphia, except his experience was more disturbing. His porthole was open, and as the berg brushed by, chunks of ice fell into the cabin.

Like Mr McGough, most of the Titanic’s passengers were in bed when the jar came. On this quiet, cold Sunday night a snug bunk seemed about the best place to be. But a few shipboard diehards were still up. As usual, most were in the first-class smoking-room on A deck.