Mainers on the Titanic

An excerpt selected by author Mac Smith,

Down East Books, Rockland, Maine

…the male passengers of William Sloper’s lifeboat were ordered to get out the oars that were stowed along the sides, and row. Sloper said that he sat beside a sailor in the bow of the boat and helped him to maneuver the small boat away from the sinking ship. He said the three sailors in the boat were concerned about getting away quickly lest they get caught in the suction of the ship if it started to go down fast.

“So for the next half-hour the three sailors, with some help from passengers, clumsily maneuvered the lifeboat for a quarter mile away from the ship . . . for the next hour and a half we just sat there and drifted farther and farther away.” By the time the ship sank, Sloper said the sailors estimated the boat had drifted two miles away.

While they waited for salvation, the boat took ten people from an overcrowded lifeboat that had been launched later than theirs. They distributed a bundle of rugs thrown into the boat by an officer just before it launched. Miss Gibson, dressed in a summer evening dress with only a sweater and polo coat, was feeling the cold. Sloper lent her his heavy woolen winter coat, recently completed by a London tailor. He still had on a heavy Shetland wool V-neck sweater. Sloper said Titanic stayed lit until almost the end.

“Then suddenly, like the house lights in a brilliantly lighted theater just before the curtain goes up, all the lights on the ship dipped simultaneously to just a pale glow. A moment or two later everyone watching in the lifeboats saw silhouetted against the starlit sky the stern of the ship rise perpendicularly into the air from about midship. Then with a prolonged rush and roar, like the sound of ten thousand tons of coal sliding down a metal chute several hundred feet long, the great ship went down out of sight and disappeared beneath the surface of the ocean. Then a great cry arose on the air from the surface of the calm sea where the ship had been: a cry from the throats of 1,600 people who had been thrown into the water from the decks of the ship as she went down,” said Sloper.

Sloper said some of the screams came from what he thought were frightened people afloat on hastily inflated pneumatic life rafts: “[T]heir massed voices would rise and fall in a tremendous wailing crescendo which reverberated off into the starlit darkness of the silent night.”

Henry Harper estimated that there were about forty people in his lifeboat. There was only a little bit of moon in the sky. From the deck of the ship he heard several bursts of cheering, which he figured was the sound of people hearing the news that rescue ships were on the way. The boat’s crew rowed in circles, heading the boat into the side of the ship. Harper barked at them. After about an hour the lights on the ship went out suddenly. Harper knew her end was near. He heard a roar and hissing coming from the ship. “No one in our boat said a word, but I feel sure the seriousness of the situation began to depress everybody,” said Harper.

Slowly the giant black hull began to diminish against the skyline.

“It was a frightful thing to feel that the ship was going, faster and faster, and that we could do nothing for the people on her,” said Harper.

Harper said not a sound came from the ship until the very last, when a sort of wild maniacal chorus, mingling cries and yells, arose from the ship. The crew began to row as hard as they could away from the sinking ship. There was no talking on the boat, just the sound of the oars in the oarlocks.

“These were the most awful moments in the whole experience,” said Harper. “Bravery was shown by the people in every phase of the emergency, but flesh and blood could not withstand that gasping cry of horror as the sea rose to them.”

Dr. Leader’s lifeboat was lowered without mishap. It was 12:30 a.m. when her boat got into the water. By now the lower decks were flooding. There were twenty women in her boat and only two men. The women joined in with the rowing, escaping the stricken liner. She said she saw the iceberg that had struck the ship visible in the starlight.

“It stood high out of [the] water and was a terrible spectacle,” said Dr. Leader.

For the next hour and a half, Dr. Leader and the others in the boat watched the lit ship and heard music from the orchestra. The music eventually faded away and the lights disappeared. They were a mile away when the ship went beneath the waves for the final time. They watched the rockets go up. Dr. Leader described how the ship sank more and more, until she broke in two, the rear half landing back in the water. Dr. Leader recalled that for a few minutes, “[although] it seemed to be an eternity,” loud cries filled the air. They would go silent, and then they heard only the splash of the waves against the side of their small boat.

“No one can realize the agony of those minutes when the screams and cries for succor from those who had been swept from the decks into the sea were borne to our ears by the ice-cold breeze of the night,” said Dr. Leader. “Never, so long as the good God permits me to live, will I ever forget those cries!”

Soon the cries were silent.

“As the prayers and screams for help ceased, we all knew what it meant,” said Dr. Leader. “Death had relieved them of [their] agony and suffering.”

Everyone in her boat said a prayer for those who had gone down with the ship.

During the lowering of Mrs. Astor’s lifeboat, the ropes stuck and the boat tipped. With the Titanic nearly sunk, the trip to the water for the lifeboat was short—only twenty feet, compared to seventy feet for the other lifeboats. It was then Mrs. Ryerson realized how far the ship, now just minutes from going under completely, had already sunk.

The boat pulled away and almost immediately gained water, until it was up to their knees. Mrs. Astor bailed water. They picked up six men, two of whom died immediately after being pulled aboard.

Mrs. Ryerson said there was confusion in the orders, and for that reason they did not make much progress in getting away from the ship. Someone ordered something about a gangway, and the boat started pulling for the ever-rising stern of the ship. “No one seemed to know what to do,” said Mrs. Ryerson. She could see her younger daughter, along with Mrs. Thayer and Mrs. Astor, rowing. She said they all did this clumsily, except for Mrs. Astor.

The lifeboat was caught in a whirlpool. Still near the ship, Mrs. Ryerson realized it was now sinking rapidly. Barrels and chairs were being thrown overboard, threatening the safety of their small craft. “I was in the bow of the boat with my daughter and turned to see the great ship take a plunge toward the bow; the two forward funnels seemed to lean, and then she seemed to break in half as if cut with a knife.”

The lights on the great ship went out, and the stern stood up for several minutes, “black against the stars,” and then plunged down. “[And then began the cries for help of people drowning all around us, which seemed to go on forever. Someone called out, ‘Pull for your lives, or you’ll be sucked under,’ and everyone that could rowed like mad.

The Titanic was pitch-black. After the ship sank, Madeleine Astor thought she heard her husband calling for her. She stood up in the boat and cried that they were coming, but the others in the boat made her stop.

Jack Thayer watched as the last two starboard forward lifeboats were loaded. A large crowd of men was pressing to enter them.

He saw Ismay push his way into one of them. Men jumped from a higher deck into the boats, and officers shot at them with revolvers.

“It was really every man for himself,” said Thayer.

The lifeboats were all gone, including the four collapsibles stored on top of the officers’ quarters on the topmost boat deck.

Passengers from Second and Third Class now clogged the decks, along with the remaining First Class passengers. Crewmen stood and waited for orders. One man emerged on deck with a full bottle of Gordon’s gin, which he put to his mouth and practically drained. This was one of the first men Thayer would see on the Carpathia.

People seemed to be standing as far away from the rails as possible, which were exposed to the sea after the lowering of the lifeboats. Young Thayer would later learn that his father was among a group of men standing near the second funnel, which is close to where he now stood.

At 2:15 a.m., he could see the water coming up the deck, the ship sinking rapidly now. He thought of the times he would never spend with his parents again, or his sisters and brother. “I sincerely pitied myself,” Thayer recalled.

As the water came up the deck, the crowd pushed to get higher, at the end of the ship. “We were a mass of hopeless, dazed humanity, attempting, as the Almighty and Nature made us, to keep our final breath until the last possible moment,” said Thayer.

He stood by the railing just aft of the captain’s bridge. He made up his mind three times to jump but could not do it, afraid of being stunned when he hit the water. The ship started to move forward, moving into the water at an angle of about 15 degrees.

Thayer threw off his overcoat and climbed over the rail, sliding down, facing the ship. Thinking his parents must have gotten off safely, Thayer made a jump for it right before the ship sank. Thayer plunged down into the water, spinning in all directions…

Copyright 2014 by Malcolm Smith.