TITANIC REMEMBERED.
Titanic Live: April 15th, 1912, 12.48 AM - Still on watch duty at the stern of Titanic more than an hour after the collision, Quartermaster George Rowe is surprised to look down and see Lifeboat Number 7 in the water, and above what appear to be other boats being swung out on the aft end of the Boat Deck. Though he did witness and feel the iceberg slip by his spot on the deck at 11.40 (comparing the sight to that of a “windjammer” or small sailing vessel) he is quite incredibly still unaware at all that Titanic is in fact going down, and calls the bridge to make sure no mistake has been made.
After identifying himself to the incredulous officers on the bridge and being informed of the impending disaster, he is now asked to retrieve signal rocket detonators from a nearby locker and bring them topside.
George Rowe photographed at his home in Southampton, 1963
Rowe Family Archives/THS
Titanic Live: April 15th, 1912, 1.55 AM - Sometime after seeing his young wife Madeleine into port side Boat 4 through Titanic’s cranked open A-Deck windows, John Jacob Astor is rumored to have gone to the ship’s kennels to free the remaining animals there, though this action has also been attributed to passenger Robert Daniel, and neither story has as yet been completely confirmed as true.
Along with the Astors’ small party aboard Titanic is their Airedale, Kitty, traveling with the newlyweds on their extensive honeymoon. In Egypt recently, Kitty went for a short time missing and though she was eventually found safe, this caused both Madeleine and JJ considerable distress. She has likely spent a good amount of Titanic’s voyage in the Astor cabin.
There are a dozen other dogs aboard, three of whom have already taken their places in lifeboats on the laps of their people - Sun Yat Sen, the Pekingese traveling along with Myra and Henry Sleeper Harper, Bebe, the Pomeranian of Margaret Hays, and another Pomeranian with Elizabeth Rothschild. The others, including Kitty, will sadly not survive.
They are not always remembered alongside a staggering human death toll of 1,496 - and so we’re glad to do so here.
Astor seen here in New York with his beloved Kitty, 1911 via AFP
ON THE 15th APRIL 1912
The British built Titanic luxury ocean liner that had collided earlier with an iceberg on the 14th April, about 400 miles from Newfoundland sank at 2:20 a.m. More than 1,500 people drowned or froze to death in the icy waters. Most of the 700 survivors were women and children.
Shown here as a mark of remembrance are some photos take abroad the Titanic by a Jesuit novitiate named Francis Browne. He sailed with the ship for the first leg of its journey, from Southampton, England, on to Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland.
Browne became one of only eight people who disembarked from Titanic, bringing back to around 1,000 photographs he had taken between the 10th and 12th April 1912.
Titanic Live: April 15th, 1912, 2.08 AM - The heroic effort ends in Titanic’s Marconi Room, as seawater can now be heard lapping outside the door. Several nearby ships report hearing final signals at this time from the vessel, though they are unintelligible due to cutouts of Titanic’s dying electrical system. As they leave the wireless room, Phillips and Bride split up, the former heading aft into the crowd while Bride is washed overboard on the port side.
A fine recreation of Titanic’s final moments by Michael Brady of Ocean Liner Designs terrifyingly demonstrates the confusion and chaos involved as the ship spent her last minutes on the surface. It may be viewed at the link listed here - https://youtu.be/SPUFSJsyoFM?si=qK42L4Zyk3iIQypY
Portrait of Jack Phillips from the collection of the National Archives (UK)
Titanic, 13th April 1912
3rd Day Sailing, Calm Day
2nd Purser, Reginald Barker described the Day as "Somewhat as a Disappointment"
At around 1:30pm, A First Class Passanger, Mrs. Elizabeth Lines, after Lunch, in the First Class Reception Room for a Coffee.
Not long after it, She saw Captain Smith (Or so She guess) and Bruce Ismay sitting there too. She overheard that Ismay said "We'll beat Olympic and arrive at New York at Tuesday". Ismay later rejected this claim.
At around 11:00pm, the Wireless Telegraph is Trouble. Both Phillips and Bride tried to Fix it and only fixed after the next early day, making delayed of Message...
At 11:40 p.m. the lookout signaled the bridge and telephoned the officer of the watch: Iceberg right ahead.
But just as Sixth Officer J. P. Moody—standing behind the quartermaster at the wheel—reported to Officer Murdoch "The helm is hard a-starboard," Titanic struck the ice.
The impact, while not violent enough to disturb the passengers or crew or to arrest the ship's progress, rolled the vessel slightly and tore the steel plating above the turn of the bilge.
A few of the passengers came on deck to find out what the trouble was, but there was no general sense of alarm.
Immediately after the collision, air was heard whistling or hissing from the overflow pipe to the forepeak tank, indicating an escape of air from that tank due to the inrush of water.
Practically at once, the first three compartments in the hold and the forward boiler room, as well as the forepeak tank, filled with water.
Leading Fireman Barrett saw the water rushing into the forward fireroom from a tear about two feet above the stokehold floor plates, and about twenty feet below the waterline—the tear extending two feet into the coal bunker at the forward end of the second fireroom.
Under the added weight of water, the bow sank deeper and deeper as through the open hatch leading from the mail room the water overflowed E deck, below which the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth transverse bulkheads ended, and thus flooded the compartments abaft No. 3 hold.
The Titanic was fitted with fifteen transverse watertight bulkheads, but only one of them extended to the uppermost continuous deck, C. The others extended only to decks D and E.
The bulkheads having their openings through deck E were not actually watertight, as it was subsequently shown that the flooding of that deck contributed largely to the sinking of the ship.
•••
Hard-a-starboard” was the first order given, immediately followed by the opposite order, “Hard-a-port." This ‘porting about’ was a standard maneuver in 1912.
Helm orders were still based on the old sailing-ship tiller movements, so hard-a-starboard meant ‘put the tiller to starboard (right)’, thus turning the rudder, and therefore the ship, to port (left). The first part of First Officer Murdoch’s order therefore swung Titanic’s bow to port (left), but this order alone would have presented her entire starboard side to the iceberg, all the way along to her starboard propeller.
The damage caused by this could have caused Titanic to capsize and sink within minutes. The second part of the order, ‘Hard-a-port’ was therefore intended to swing the ship’s bow back towards the iceberg, in order to swing her stern clear.
Murdoch’s second order, “Hard-a-port”, did succeed in swinging Titanic’s stern clear of the berg, but the first order, “Hard-a-starboard’, had not been given early enough to avoid a collision with the bluff of her bow.
This late avoiding action may also have been compounded by the Titanic’s running over an underwater ice shelf at the base of the iceberg, caused by erosion and melting of the upper part of the iceberg in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, which overran the much cooler waters of the Labrador Current in that part of the Atlantic.
The only evidence of Titanic’s engines being put in reverse comes from Fourth officer Boxhall who did not arrive on Titanic’s bridge until immediately after the collision.
It is most likely that the order Murdoch rang down to the engine room was simply ‘stop’, which would have effected Titanic’s immediate ability to turn. This order was indicated in the boiler rooms by a red light.
We know this from testimony given by Leading Fireman Fred Barratt to Senator Smith in one of Olympic’s boiler rooms, whilst she was berthed in New York.
It’s worth noting that even this order was not received in time to fully act upon before the collision.
Here, the bridge on Olympic.
•••
First Officer William Murdoch, Officer of the Watch since 10:00 pm, sees the iceberg and orders ‘hard a starboard’ on the helm.
Sixth Officer James Moody, who answered the telephone, relays the order to Quartermaster Robert Hichens, who turns the ship’s wheel to port. Moody confirms the helm is ‘hard over’.
The terrified officers turned hard to starboard, and the massive engines were reversed, but the twenty-six seconds they had to change the ships course were not enough, and the iceberg smashed six gashes down her port side.
Here, stills from A Night to Remember.
•••
Titanic's watertight doors were shut immediately upon impact with the iceberg.
Lead fireman Frederick Barrett was in Boiler Room 6—the forward most boiler room and the 5th watertight compartment—talking with Junior Assistant 2nd Engineer Jonathan Shepherd the moment Titanic's starboard side hull began its nearly 300 foot collision with the iceberg at 11:40 PM on the night of April 14, 1912.
As the sea water began cascading in both Barrett and Shepherd escaped to Boiler Room 5 through the watertight door separating the two rooms before they shut.
For a period of time, watertight doors from the engine room extending to Boiler Room No. 5 were reopened to help facilitate the overall assessment of damage and to ascertain if anything could be done to stem the flooding.
Eventually these doors were closed a final time prior to the evacuation of the stokers, trimmers, and engineers stationed in each boiler room.
This was activated either by members of the crew, or would have automatically closed when flooding had activated a float mechanism below the door frame as a fail-safe feature.
The menu itself bears an embossed red White Star Line burgee above gilt lettering OSNC alongside the lettering RMS Titanic. It illustrates the lavish and opulent culinary delights for First Class passengers with a total of over twenty different options for dinner.
The menu has been folded and split horizontally, when Mr Casswell sent it to his wife from Queenstown on April 11th 1912. Mr Casswell perished in the disaster.
Framed and glazed 6¼ins. x 4¼ins. to museum standard.
Originally sold by Henry Aldridge & Son in 2002 by direct descent.
Titanic Live: April 13th, 1912, 3.00 PM (EST) - RMS Olympic departs New York City for Southampton from White Star's Pier 59, vacating the berth necessary for sister Titanic following her own anticipated arrival on the morning of April 17th. It is not far downriver from here that Carpathia sailed two days ago on her own voyage eastbound out of Pier 54. Doubtlessly, many aboard the departing Cunard liner viewed the massive Olympic tied up just over a quarter mile upstream - including Captain Rostron, who is well aware of her newer (and slightly larger) sister Titanic, which at present is steaming more than 1,200 miles from her last port of call at Queenstown.
Despite their near synonymous connection in the years following the disaster, distant views of Olympic in port or at sea are in a way the closest Carpathia will ever come to meeting Titanic herself.
Photo from the archives of the US Library of Congress
Titanic Live: April 15th, 1912, 12.37 AM - Aboard the sleeping Carpathia fifty-eight miles to the south of Titanic, wireless operator Harold Cottam is himself just about to retire for the evening. Like many of the liners fitted with a Marconi set at this time, the Cunarder carries only one radio man, and shifts are long and tedious. As a last courtesy before sleep, Cottam wires Jack Phillips, asking whether he is aware of a back log of passenger messages waiting for him - and receives Titanic's distress call in reply.
After being seemingly brushed off by officers on the bridge, Cottam rushes directly into the cabin of Captain Arthur Rostron, who, not wishing to lose an instant of precious time, orders the ship immediately turned around to the north for the sinking liner's reported position. Only after the order is given does he turn to ask Cottam to confirm whether he is absolutely sure of the report. The answer from the shaken radio man comes in the affirmative.
Carpathia is now on her way.
Portrait of Arthur Rostron published in the New York Times, May 1912
Titanic Live: April 14th, 1912, 8.00 AM - Morning has found Titanic nearly 1,500 miles from the coast of Ireland after her last ever dawn at sea. Sunday services will be performed in all classes, most notably in the First Class Dining Saloon, which will be overseen by Captain Smith himself and will begin at 10.30.
An early morning lifeboat drill has been cancelled, most likely due to unfavorably windy conditions - though several other reasons have been cited in period accounts, including the aforementioned church services aboard. Throughout the liner, passengers and crew begin early preparations for arrival in New York, which include provision for an expected influx of members of the press upon her docking at Hudson River Pier 59 on Wednesday morning.
Among the hymns confirmed sung on Titanic today is the Navy standard “Eternal Father Strong to Save” often referred to colloquially as “For Those In Peril on the Sea” for the last lines of its first stanza. Hear the United States Naval Academy Choir’s gorgeous and moving rendition here:
Portrait of Titanic by Vasilije Ristovic
Five minutes later, at 00:05, Captain Smith orders his crew to prepare the lifeboats and requests that wireless operators Harold Bride and Jack Phillips send the "CQD" distress signal. The message "CQD" is a general call to all vessels, which indicates the vessel sending is in distress and requires immediate assistance.
Later, Bride jokes and says: "Send SOS it's the new call and it may be your last chance to use it." Phillips thereafter began to alternate between the two.
from the video game "Titanic: Honor and Glory"
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