Chapter 4

Sunday came, with nothing to mark it except the morning service in the saloon--a function that by reason of its novelty, attracts some people at sea who do not associate it with the shore. One thing, however, fire or boat muster, which usually marks Sunday at sea, and gives it a little variety, did not for some reason take place. It is one of the few variants of the monotony of shipboard life, where anything in the nature of a spectacle is welcomed; and most travellers are familiar with the stir caused by the sudden hoarse blast of the foghorn and the subsequent patter of feet and appearance from below of all kinds of people whose existence the passenger had hardly suspected. Stewards, sailors, firemen, engineers, nurses, bakers, butchers, cooks, florists, barbers, carpenters, and stewardesses, ranged in two immense lines along the boat deck, answer to their names and are told off, according to their numbers, to take charge of certain boats. This muster did not take place on the _Titanic_; if it had it would have revealed to any observant passenger the fact that the whole crew of nine hundred would have occupied all the available accommodation in the boats hanging on the davits and left no room for any passengers. For the men who designed and built the _Titanic_, who knew the tremendous strength of the girders and cantilevers and bulkheads which took the thrust and pull of every strain that she might undergo, had thought of boats rather as a superfluity, dating from the days when ships were vulnerable, when they sprang leaks and might sink in the high seas. In their pride they had said "the _Titanic_ cannot spring a leak." So there was no boat muster, and the routine occupations of Sunday went on unvaried and undisturbed. Only in the Marconi room was the monotony varied, for something had gone wrong with the delicate electrical apparatus, and the wireless voice was silent; and throughout the morning and afternoon, for seven hours, Phillips and Bride were hard at work testing and searching for the little fault that had cut them off from the world of voices. And at last they found it, and the whining and buzzing began again. But it told them nothing new; only the same story, whispered this time from the _Californian_--the story of ice.

The day wore on, the dusk fell, lights one by one sprang up and shone within the ship; the young moon rose in a cloudless sky spangled with stars. People remarked on the loveliness of the night as they went to dress for dinner, but they remarked also on its coldness. There was an unusual chill in the air, and lightly clad people were glad to draw in to the big fireplaces in smoke-room or drawing-room or library, and to keep within the comfort of the warm and lamplit rooms. The cold was easily accounted for; it was the ice season, and the airs that were blowing down from the north-west carried with them a breath from the ice-fields. It was so cold that the decks were pretty well deserted, and the usual evening concert, instead of being held on the open deck, was held in the warmth, under cover. And gradually people drifted away to bed, leaving only a few late birds sitting up reading in the library, or playing cards in the smoking-rooms, or following a restaurant dinner-party by quiet conversation in the flower-decked lounge.

The ship had settled down for the night; half of her company were peacefully asleep in bed, and many lying down waiting for sleep to come, when something happened. What that something was depended upon what part of the ship you were in. The first thing to attract the attention of most of the first-class passengers was a negative thing--the cessation of that trembling, continuous rhythm which had been the undercurrent of all their waking sensations since the ship left Queenstown. The engines stopped. Some wondered, and put their heads out of their state-room doors, or even threw a wrap about them and went out into the corridors to see what had happened, while others turned over in bed and composed themselves to sleep, deciding to wait until the morning to hear what was the cause of the delay.

Lower down in the ship they heard a little more. The sudden harsh clash of the engine-room telegraph bells would startle those who were near enough to hear it, especially as it was followed almost immediately afterwards by the simultaneous ringing all through the lower part of the ship of the gongs that gave warning of the closing of the water-tight doors. After the engines stopped there was a moment of stillness; and then the vibration began again, more insistently this time, with a certain jumping movement which to the experienced ear meant that the engines were being sent full speed astern; and then they stopped again, and again there was stillness.

Here and there in the long corridors amidships a door opened and some one thrust a head out, asking what was the matter; here and there a man in pyjamas and a dressing-gown came out of his cabin and climbed up the deserted staircase to have a look at what was going on; people sitting in the lighted saloons and smoke-rooms looked at one another and said: "What was that?" gave or received some explanation, and resumed their occupations. A man in his dressing-gown came into one of the smoking-rooms where a party was seated at cards, with a few yawning bystanders looking on before they turned in. The newcomer wanted to know what was the matter, whether they had noticed anything? They had felt a slight jar, they said, and had seen an iceberg going by past the windows; probably the ship had grazed it, but no damage had been done. And they resumed their game of bridge. The man in the dressing-gown left the smoke-room, and never saw any of the players again. So little excitement was there in this part of the ship that the man in the dressing-gown (his name was Mr. Beezley, an English schoolmaster, one of the few who emerges from the crowd with an intact individuality) went back to his cabin and lay down on his bed with a book, waiting for the ship to start again. But the unnatural stillness, the uncanny peace even of this great peaceful ship, must have got a little upon his nerves; and when he heard people moving about in the corridors, he got up again, and found that several people whom the stillness had wakened from their sleep were wandering about inquiring what had happened.

But that was all. The half-hour which followed the stoppage of the ship was a comparatively quiet half-hour, in which a few people came out of their cabins indeed, and collected together in the corridors and staircases gossiping, speculating and asking questions as to what could have happened; but it was not a time of anxiety, or anything like it. Nothing could be safer on this quiet Sunday night than the great ship, warmed and lighted everywhere, with her thick carpets and padded armchairs and cushioned recesses; and if anything could have added to the sense of peace and stability, it was that her driving motion had ceased, and that she lay solid and motionless-like a rock in the sea, the still water scarcely lapping against her sides. And those of her people who had thought it worth while to get out of bed stood about in little knots, and asked foolish questions, and gave foolish answers in the familiar manner of passengers on shipboard when the slightest incident occurs to vary the regular and monotonous routine.

VIII

This was one phase of that first half-hour. Up on the high bridge, isolated from all the indoor life of the passengers, there was another phase. The watches had been relieved at ten o'clock, when the ship had settled down for the quietest and least eventful period of the whole twenty-four hours. The First Officer, Mr. Murdoch, was in command of the bridge, and with him was Mr. Boxhall, the Fourth Officer, and the usual look-out staff. The moon had set, and the night was very cold, clear and starry, except where here and there a slight haze hung on the surface of the water. Captain Smith, to whom the night of the sea was like day, and to whom all the invisible tracks and roads of the Atlantic were as familiar as Fleet Street is to a _Daily Telegraph_ reporter, had been in the chart room behind the bridge to plot out the course for the night, and afterwards had gone to his room to lie down. Two pairs of sharp eyes were peering forward from the crow's nest, another pair from the nose of the ship on the fo'c'stle head, and at least three pairs from the bridge itself, all staring into the dim night, quartering with busy glances the area of the black sea in front of them where the foremast and its wire shrouds and stays were swinging almost imperceptibly across the starry sky.

At twenty minutes to twelve the silence of the night was broken by three sharp strokes on the gong sounding from the crow's nest--a signal for something right ahead; while almost simultaneously came a voice through the telephone from the look-out announcing the presence of ice. There was a kind of haze in front of the ship the colour of the sea, but nothing could be distinguished from the bridge. Mr. Murdoch's hand was on the telegraph immediately, and his voice rapped out the order to the quartermaster to starboard the helm. The wheel spun round, the answering click came up from the startled engine-room; but before anything else could happen there was a slight shock, and a splintering sound from the bows of the ship as she crashed into yielding ice. That was followed by a rubbing, jarring, grinding sensation along her starboard bilge, and a peak of dark-coloured ice glided past close alongside.

As the engines stopped in obedience to the telegraph Mr. Murdoch turned the switches that closed the water-tight doors. Captain Smith came running out of the chart room. "What is it?" he asked. "We have struck ice, Sir." "Close the water-tight doors." "It is already done, Sir." Then the Captain took command. He at once sent a message to the carpenter to sound the ship and come and report; the quartermaster went away with the message, and set the carpenter to work. Captain Smith now gave a glance at the commutator, a dial which shows to what extent the ship is off the perpendicular, and noticed that she carried a 5° list to starboard. Coolly following a routine as exact as that which he would have observed had he been conning the ship into dock, he gave a number of orders in rapid succession, after first consulting with the Chief Engineer. Then, having given instructions that the whole of the available engine-power was to be turned to pumping the ship, he hurried aft along the boat-deck to the Marconi room. Phillips was sitting at his key, toiling through routine business; Bride, who had just got up to relieve him, was sleepily making preparations to take his place. The Captain put his head in at the door.

"We have struck an iceberg," he said, "and I am having an inspection made to tell what it has done for us. Better get ready to send out a call for assistance, but don't send it until I tell you."

He hurried away again; in a few minutes he put his head in at the door again; "Send that call for assistance," he said.

"What call shall I send?" asked Phillips.

"The regulation international call for help, just that," said the Captain, and was gone again.

But in five minutes he came back into the wireless room, this time apparently not in such a hurry. "What call are you sending?" he asked; and when Phillips told him "C.Q.D.," the highly technical and efficient Bride suggested, laughingly, that he should send "S.O.S.," the new international call for assistance which has superseded the C.Q.D. "It is the new call," said Bride, "and it may be your last chance to send it!" And they all three laughed, and then for a moment chatted about what had happened, while Phillips tapped out the three longs, three shorts, and three longs which instantaneously sent a message of appeal flashing out far and wide into the dark night. The Captain, who did not seem seriously worried or concerned, told them that the ship had been struck amidships or a little aft of that.

Whatever may have been happening down below, everything up here was quiet and matter-of-fact. It was a disaster, of course, but everything was working well, everything had been done; the electric switches for operating the bulkhead doors had been used promptly, and had worked beautifully; the powerful wireless plant was talking to the ocean, and in a few hours there would be some other ship alongside of them. It was rough luck, to be sure; they had not thought they would so soon have a chance of proving that the _Titanic_ was unsinkable.

IX

We must now visit in imagination some other parts of the ship, parts isolated from the bridge and the spacious temple of luxury amidships, and try to understand how the events of this half hour appeared to the denizens of the lower quarters of the ship. The impact that had been scarcely noticed in the first-class quarters had had much more effect down below, and especially forward, where some of the third-class passengers and some of the crew were berthed. A ripping, grinding crash startled all but the heaviest sleepers here into wakefulness; but it was over so soon and was succeeded by so peaceful a silence that no doubt any momentary panic it might have caused was soon allayed. One of the firemen describing it said: "I was awakened by a noise, and between sleeping and waking I thought I was dreaming that I was on a train that had run off the lines, and that I was being jolted about." He jumped out and went on deck, where he saw the scattered ice lying about. "Oh, we have struck an iceberg," he said, "that's nothing; I shall go back and turn in," and he actually went back to bed and slept for half an hour, until he was turned out to take his station at the boats.

The steerage passengers, who were berthed right aft, heard nothing and knew nothing until the news that an accident had happened began slowly to filter down to them. But there was no one in authority to give them any official news, and for a time they were left to wonder and speculate as they chose. Forward, however, it became almost immediately apparent to certain people that there was something grievously wrong; firemen on their way through the passage along the ship's bottom leading between their quarters and No. 1 stokehold found water coming in, and rapidly turned back. They were met on their way up the staircase by an officer who asked them what they were doing. They told him. "There's water coming into our place, Sir," they said; and as he thought they were off duty he did not turn them back.

Mr. Andrews, a partner in Harland and Wolff's, and one of the _Titanic's_ designers, had gone quietly down by himself to investigate the damage, and, great as was his belief in the giant he had helped to create, it must have been shaken when he found the water pouring into her at the rate of hundreds of tons a minute. Even his confidence in those mighty steel walls that stretched one behind the other in succession along the whole length of the ship could not have been proof against the knowledge that three or four of them had been pierced by the long rip of the ice-tooth. There was just a chance that she would hold up long enough to allow of relief to arrive in time; but it is certain that from that moment Mr. Andrews devoted himself to warning people, and helping to get them away, so far as he could do so without creating a panic.

Most of the passengers, remember, were still asleep during this half hour. One of the most terrible things possible at sea is a panic, and Captain Smith was particularly anxious that no alarm should be given before or unless it was absolutely necessary. He heard what Mr. Andrews had to say, and consulted with the engineer, and soon found that the whole of the ship's bottom was being flooded. There were other circumstances calculated to make the most sanguine ship-master uneasy. Already, within half an hour, the _Titanic_ was perceptibly down by the head. She would remain stationary for five minutes and then drop six inches or a foot; remain stationary again, and drop another foot--a circumstance ominous to experienced minds, suggesting that some of the smaller compartments forward were one by one being flooded, and letting the water farther and farther into her hull.

Therefore at about twenty-five minutes past midnight the Captain gave orders for the passengers to be called and mustered on the boat deck. All the ship's crew had by this time been summoned to their various stations; and now through all the carpeted corridors, through the companion-ways and up and down staircases, leading to the steerage cabins, an army of three hundred stewards was hurrying, knocking loudly on doors, and shouting up and down the passages, "All passengers on deck with life-belts on!" The summons came to many in their sleep; and to some in the curtained firelight luxury of their deck state-rooms it seemed an order so absurd that they scorned it, and actually went back to bed again. These, however, were rare exceptions; for most people there was no mistaking the urgency of the command, even though they were slow to understand the necessity for it. And hurry is a thing easily communicated; seeing some passengers hastening out with nothing over their night clothes but a blanket or a wrapper, others caught the infection, and hurried too; and struggling with life-belts, clumsily attempting to adjust them over and under a curious assortment of garments, the passengers of the _Titanic_ came crowding up on deck, for the first time fully alarmed.

X

When the people came on deck it was half-past twelve. The first-class passengers came pouring up the two main staircases and out on to the boat deck--some of them indignant, many of them curious, some few of them alarmed. They found there everything as usual except that the long deck was not quite level; it tilted downwards a little towards the bow, and there was a slight list towards the starboard side. The stars were shining in the sky and the sea was perfectly smooth, although dotted about it here and there were lumps of dark-coloured ice, almost invisible against the background of smooth water. A long line of stewards was forming up beside the boats on either side--those solid white boats, stretching far aft in two long lines, that became suddenly invested with practical interest. Officers were shouting orders, seamen were busy clearing up the coils of rope attached to the davit tackles, fitting the iron handles to the winches by which the davits themselves were canted over from the inward position over the deck to the outward position over the ship's side. Almost at the same time a rush of people began from the steerage quarters, swarming up stairways and ladders to reach this high deck hitherto sacred to the first-class passengers. At first they were held back by a cordon of stewards, but some broke through and others were allowed through, so that presently a large proportion of the ship's company was crowding about the boat deck and the one immediately below it.

Then the business of clearing, filling, and lowering the boats was begun--a business quickly described, but occupying a good deal of time in the transaction. Mr. Murdoch, the Chief Officer, ordered the crews to the boats; and with some confusion different parties of stewards and sailors disentangled themselves from the throng and stood in their positions by each of the sixteen boats. Every member of the crew, when he signs on for a voyage in a big passenger ship, is given a number denoting which boat's crew he belongs to. If there has been boat drill, every man knows and remembers his number; if, as in the case of the _Titanic_, there has been no boat drill, some of the men remember their numbers and some do not, the result being a certain amount of confusion. But at last a certain number of men were allotted to each boat, and began the business of hoisting them out.

First of all the covers had to be taken off and the heavy masts and sails lifted out of them. Ship's boats appear very small things when one sees a line of them swinging high up on deck; but, as a matter of fact, they are extremely heavy, each of them the size of a small sailing yacht. Everything on the _Titanic_ having been newly painted, everything was stiff and difficult to move. The lashings of the heavy canvas covers were like wire, and the covers themselves like great boards; the new ropes ran stiffly in the new gear. At last a boat was cleared and the order given, "Women and children first." The officers had revolvers in their hands ready to prevent a rush; but there was no rush. There was a certain amount of laughter. No one wanted to be the first to get into the boat and leave the ship. "Come on," cried the officers. There was a pause, followed by the brief command, "Put them in."

The crew seized the nearest women and pushed or lifted them over the rail into the first boat, which was now hanging over the side level with the deck. But they were very unwilling to go. The boat, which looked big and solid on the deck, now hung dizzily seventy-five feet over the dark water; it seemed a far from attractive prospect to get into it and go out on to the cold sea, especially as everyone was convinced that it was a merely formal precaution which was being taken, and that the people in the boats would merely be rowed off a little way and kept shivering on the cold sea for a time and then brought back to the ship when it was found that the danger was past. For, walking about the deck, people remembered all the things that they had been thinking and saying since first they had seen the _Titanic_; and what was the use of travelling by an unsinkable ship if, at the first alarm of danger, one had to leave her and row out on the icy water? Obviously it was only the old habit of the sea asserting itself, and Captain Smith, who had hitherto been such a favourite, was beginning to be regarded as something of a nuisance with his ridiculous precautions.

The boats swung and swayed in the davits; even the calm sea, now that they looked at it more closely, was seen to be not absolutely like a millpond, but to have a certain movement on its surface which, although utterly helpless to move the huge bulk of the _Titanic_, against whose sides it lapped, as ineffectually as against the walls of a dock, was enough to impart a swinging movement to the small boats. But at last, what with coercion and persuasion, a boat was half filled with women. One of the things they liked least was leaving their husbands; they felt that they were being sacrificed needlessly to over-elaborate precautions, and it was hard to leave the men standing comfortably on the firm deck, sheltered and in a flood of warm yellow light, and in the safety of the great solid ship that lay as still as a rock, while they had to go out, half-clad and shivering, on the icy waters.

But the inexorable movements of the crew continued. The pulleys squealed in the sheaves, the new ropes were paid out; and jerking downwards, a foot or two at a time, the first boat dropped down towards the water, past storey after storey of the great structure, past rows and rows of lighted portholes, until at last, by strange unknown regions of the ship's side, where cataracts and waterfalls were rushing into the sea, it rested on the waves. The blocks were unhooked, the heavy ash oars were shipped, and the boat headed away into the darkness. And then, and not till then, those in the boat realized that something was seriously wrong with the _Titanic_. Instead of the trim level appearance which she presented on the picture postcards or photographs, she had an ungraceful slant downwards to the bows--a heavy helpless appearance like some wounded monster that is being overcome by the waters. And even while they looked, they could see that the bow was sinking lower.