The Night Lives On: The Untold Stories and Secrets Behind the Sinking of the "Unsinkable" Ship - Titanic!

Unsinkable Subject

Just 20 minutes short of midnight, April 14, 1912, the great new White Star Liner Titanic, making her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, had a rendezvous with ice in the calm, dark waters of the North Atlantic. She brushed the berg so gently that many on board didn't notice it, but so lethally that she was instantly doomed.

By midnight Captain Edward J. Smith knew the worst, and ordered the lifeboats filled and lowered. There were distressingly few of these, enough for only a third of the ship's company. The rule was, of course, "Women and children first." At 12:15 A.M. the Titanic sent her first distress call. At 12:45 she began firing rockets, for there was a light on the horizon, tantalizingly near. The light remained motionless.

On the Titanic, the ship's bellboys--lads of 14 or 15--brought up loaves of bread for the lifeboats, now dropping one after another into the sea. Far below, the engineers kept the lights burning; topside, the band played cheerful music on the Boat Deck. The ship was noticeably down at the bow.

At 1:10, as Boat 1 pulled away, the water lapped the portholes just under the ship's name. Thirty minutes later, as Collapsible C rowed off, the name had vanished into the sea, and the forward well deck was awash. The lights still burned, and the band still played.

By 2:05 the last boat had been launched, leaving 1,600 people stranded on the sloping decks. Richard N. Williams 11, a 19-year-old First Class passenger, wandered into the main companionway on A Deck and idly watched the water creeping up the grand staircase. On the paneled wall nearby hung a handsomely framed chart, pins still in place, marking theTitanic's daily progress across the Atlantic. The lights still burned, now with a reddish glow. The band probably played on, but no one is sure.

At 2:17 the Titanic slowly, almost majestically, stood on end. The lights blinked once and went out forever. Then came a thundering roar, as everything movable within the ship broke loose and plunged downward. The great hull itself sagged as though finally defeated. At 2:20 she settled back slightly and slipped beneath the sea. Over 1,500 people were lost in this, the greatest maritime disaster in history.

Understandably, the sinking of the Titanic was a sensation at the time. The morning after the rescue ship Carpathia reached New York with her pitiful load of 705 survivors, The New York Times devoted its first 12 pages to the story. But a single letter in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress gives a more vivid picture of the universal shock and grief than any number of newspaper pages. The letter is from a young naval officer, Alexander Macomb, to his mother. It is dated April 16, 1912, and describes what happened as he emerged from a pleasant evening at the theater....

The terrible news about the Titanic reached New York about 11 o'clock last night, and the scene on Broadway was awful. Crowds of people were coming out of the theaters, cafes were going full tilt, when the newsboys began to cry, "Extra! Extra! Titanic sunk with 1800 aboard!" You can't imagine the effect of those words on the crowd. Nobody could realize what had happened, and when they did begin to understand, the excitement was almost enough to cause a panic in the theaters. Women began to faint and weep, and scores of people in evening clothes jumped into cabs and taxis and rushed to the offices of the White Star Line, where they remained all night waiting for news....

Copyright ) 1986, 1987 by Walter Lord