Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters Part 8

"'I think there is grave doubt that the men will get off safely. I am willing to remain and play the man's game, if there are not enough boats for more than the women and children. I won't die here like a beast.

I'll meet my end as man.'

"There was a pause and then Mr. Guggenheim continued:

"'Tell my wife, Johnson, if it should happen that my secretary and I both go down and you are saved, tell her I played the game out straight and to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this s.h.i.+p because Ben Guggenheim was a coward.

"'Tell her that my last thoughts will be of her and of our girls, but that my duty now is to these unfortunate women and children on this s.h.i.+p. Tell her I will meet whatever fate is in store for me, knowing she will approve of what I do.'"

In telling the story the room steward said the last he saw of Mr.

Guggenheim was when he stood fully dressed upon the upper deck talking calmly with Colonel Astor and Major b.u.t.t.

Before the last of the boats got away, according to some of the pa.s.sengers' narratives, there were more than fifty shots fired upon the decks by officers or others in the effort to maintain the discipline that until then had been well preserved.

THE SINKING VESSEL

Richard Norris Williams, Jr., one of the survivors of the t.i.tanic, saw his father killed by being crushed by one of the tremendous funnels of the sinking vessel.

"We stood on deck watching the life-boats of the t.i.tanic being filled and lowered into the water," said Mr. Williams. "The water was nearly up to our waists and the s.h.i.+p was about at her last. Suddenly one of the great funnels fell. I sprang aside, endeavoring to pull father with me.

A moment later the funnel was swept overboard and the body of father went with it.

"I sprang overboard and swam through the ice to a life-raft, and was pulled aboard. There were five men and one woman on the raft.

Occasionally we were swept off into the sea, but always managed to crawl back.

"A sailor lighted a cigarette and flung the match carelessly among the women. Several screamed, fearing they would be set on fire. The sailor replied: 'We are going to h.e.l.l anyway and we might as well be cremated now as then.'"

A huge cake of ice was the means of aiding Emile Portaleppi, of Italy, in his hairbreadth escape from death when the t.i.tanic went down.

Portaleppi, a second cla.s.s pa.s.senger, was awakened by the explosion of one of the bulkheads of the s.h.i.+p. He hurried to the deck, strapped a life-preserver around him and leaped into the sea. With the aid of the preserver and by holding to a cake of ice he managed to keep afloat until one of the life-boats picked him up. There were thirty-five other people in the boat, he said, when he was hauled aboard.

THE COWARD

Somewhere in the shadow of the appalling t.i.tanic disaster slinks--still living by the inexplicable grace of G.o.d--a cur in human shape, to-day the most despicable human being in all the world.

In that grim midnight hour, already great in history, he found himself hemmed in by the band of heroes whose watchword and countersign rang out across the deep--"Women and children first!"

What did he do? He scuttled to the stateroom deck, put on a woman's skirt, a woman's hat and a woman's veil, and picking his crafty way back among the brave and chivalric men who guarded the rail of the doomed s.h.i.+p, he filched a seat in one of the life-boats and saved his skin.

His name is on that list of branded rescued men who were neither picked up from the sea when the s.h.i.+p went down nor were in the boats under orders to help get them safe away. His ident.i.ty is not yet known, though it will be in good time. So foul an act as that will out like murder.

The eyes of strong men who have read this crowded record of golden deeds, who have read and re-read that deathless roll of honor of the dead, are still wet with tears of pity and of pride. This man still lives. Surely he was born and saved to set for men a new standard by which to measure infamy and shame.

It is well that there was sufficient heroism on board the t.i.tanic to neutralize the horrors of the cowardice. When the first order was given for the men to stand back, there were a dozen or more who pushed forward and said that men would be needed to row the life-boats and that they would volunteer for the work.

The officers tried to pick out the ones that volunteered merely for service and to eliminate those who volunteered merely to save their own lives. This elimination process however, was not wholly successful.

THE DOOMED MEN

As the s.h.i.+p began to settle to starboard, heeling at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, those who had believed it was all right to stick by the s.h.i.+p began to have doubts, and a few jumped into the sea. They were followed immediately by others, and in a few minutes there were scores swimming around. Nearly all of them wore life-preservers. One man, who had a Pomeranian dog, leaped overboard with it and striking a piece of wreckage was badly stunned. He recovered after a few minutes and swam toward one of the life-boats and was taken aboard.

Said one survivor, speaking of the men who remained on the s.h.i.+p. "There they stood--Major b.u.t.t, Colonel Astor waving a farewell to his wife, Mr. Thayer, Mr. Case, Mr. Clarence Moore, Mr. Widener, all multimillionaires, and hundreds of other men, bravely smiling at us all.

Never have I seen such chivalry and fort.i.tude. Such courage in the face of fate horrible to contemplate filled us even then with wonder and admiration."

Why were men saved? ask: others who seek to make the occasional male survivor a hissing scorn; and yet the testimony makes it clear that for a long time during that ordeal the more frightful position seemed to many to be in the frail boats in the vast relentless sea, and that some men had to be tumbled into the boats under orders from the officers.

Others express the deepest indignation that 210 sailors were rescued, the testimony shows that most of these sailors were in the welter of ice and water into which they had been thrown from the s.h.i.+p's deck when she sank; they were human beings and so were picked up and saved.

"WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST"

The one alleviating circ.u.mstance in the otherwise immitigable tragedy is the fact that so many of the men stood aside really with out the necessity for the order, "Women and children first," and insisted that the weaker s.e.x should first have places in the boats.

There were men whose word of command swayed boards of directors, governed inst.i.tutions, disposed of millions. They were accustomed merely to p.r.o.nounce a wish to have it gratified. Thousands "posted at their bidding"; the complexion of the market altered hue when they nodded; they bought what they wanted, and for one of the humblest fis.h.i.+ng smacks or a dory they could have given the price that was paid to build and launch the s.h.i.+p that has become the most imposing mausoleum that ever housed the bones of men since the Pyramids rose from the desert sands.

But these men stood aside--one can see them!--and gave place not merely to the delicate and the refined, but to the scared Czech woman from the steerage, with her baby at her breast; the Croatian with a toddler by her side, coming through the very gate of Death and out of the mouth of h.e.l.l to the imagined Eden of America.

To many of those who went it was harder to go than to stay there on the vessel gaping with its mortal wounds and ready to go down. It meant that tossing on the waters they must wait in suspense, hour after hour even after the lights of the s.h.i.+p were engulfed in appalling darkness, hoping against hope for the miracle of a rescue dearer to them than their own lives.

It was the tradition of Anglo-Saxon heroism that was fulfilled in the frozen seas during the black hours of Sunday night. The heroism was that of the women who went, as well as of the men who remained!

CHAPTER VII. LEFT TO THEIR FATE

COOLNESS AND HEROISM OF THOSE LEFT TO PERISH--SUICIDE OF MURDOCK--CAPTAIN SMITH'S END--THE s.h.i.+P'S BAND PLAYS A n.o.bLE HYMN AS THE VESSEL GOES DOWN

THE general feeling aboard the s.h.i.+p after the boats had left her sides was that she would not survive her wound, but the pa.s.sengers who remained aboard displayed the utmost heroism.

William T. Stead, the famous English journalist, was so litt{l}e alarmed that he calmly discussed with one of the pa.s.sengers the probable height of the iceberg after the t.i.tanic had shot into it.

Confidence in the ability of the t.i.tanic to remain afloat doubtlessly led many of the pa.s.sengers to death. The theory that the great s.h.i.+p was unsinkable remained with hundreds who had entrusted themselves to the gigantic hulk, long after the officers knew that the vessel could not survive.

The captain and officers behaved with superb gallantry, and there was perfect order and discipline among those who were aboard, even after all hope had been abandoned for the salvation of the s.h.i.+p.

Many women went down, steerage women who were unable to get to the upper decks where the boats were launched, maids who were overlooked in the confusion, cabin pa.s.sengers who refused to desert their husbands or who reached the decks after the last of the life-boats was gone and the s.h.i.+p was settling for her final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Narratives of survivors do not bear out the supposition that the final hours upon the vessel's decks were pa.s.sed in darkness. They say the electric lighting plant held out until the last, and that even as they watched the s.h.i.+p sink, from their places in the floating life-boats, her lights were gleaming in long rows as she plunged under by the head. Just before she sank, some of the refugees say, the s.h.i.+p broke in two abaft the engine room after the bulkhead explosions had occurred.

COLONEL ASTOR'S DEATH

To Colonel Astor's death Philip Mock bears this testimony.

"Many men were hanging on to rafts in the sea. William T. Stead and Colonel Astor were among them. Their feet and hands froze and they had to let go. Both were drowned."

The last man among the survivors to speak to Colonel Astor was K.

Whiteman, the s.h.i.+p's barber.

"I shaved Colonel Astor Sunday afternoon," said Whiteman. "He was a pleasant, affable man, and that awful night when I found myself standing beside him on the pa.s.senger deck, helping to put the women into the boats, I spoke to him.