Titanic Read online

  Titanic had avoided a head-on strike, but it had still run into the iceberg. The sharp ice sliced through the side of the ship. The hull had been damaged, but just how badly, no one yet knew.

  Captain Smith, who was in his cabin, raced onto the bridge a moment after the ship struck the iceberg. Murdoch quickly told him what had happened. Captain Smith and the ship’s designer, Thomas Andrews, rushed down to the lower levels to look at the damage. They stared in horror. The iceberg had punched deep gashes in the ship’s steel-plated hull over an area about three hundred feet long. Icy water was rushing into the ship’s watertight compartments. There was no way to seal the holes and stop the water, and it was coming in faster than it could be pumped out. Smith and Andrews knew the unthinkable was about to happen. The ship was going to sink.

  An hour and a half. That’s how much time Andrews estimated the ship had before she was underwater. The passengers had to get off the ship—and fast. Smith swung into action. He sent a message to the telegraph room to put out a distress call. Titanic needed help. Another ship must come to her rescue. It was the only hope for the 2,208 people on board.

  The stewards told passengers to report to the decks with their life jackets on. Few people seemed worried. Many thought it was just a precaution and that they’d be allowed to go back to their rooms shortly. The ship’s band played lively tunes as passengers waited for instruction. But those who were below deck began to notice strange things. Third-class passenger Carl Jonsson was dressing in his room, preparing to go up to the deck as instructed, when he saw water creeping under his door.

  Just after midnight, Captain Smith ordered the lifeboats launched. People were calm and quiet as they filed on deck. First-class passengers stood with their white life jackets strapped around fur coats. The first lifeboats were slowly lowered down the side of the enormous ship. But they were only half-full. The crew was worried that the lifeboats might crack or buckle under the weight of all the people as they were lowered down to the sea. Many people did not want to get into the boats. The sea was cold and dark, and the ship didn’t seem to be sinking. They still believed that Titanic would not sink—or that if she did, they would surely be rescued by another ship. Perhaps that’s why the crew launched the first lifeboats only half-filled.

  In the telegraph room, Operator Phillips sent out distress calls for help—over and over. The ship Carpathia said she was on her way, coming as fast as she could. How far away? Captain Smith asked. Fifty-eight miles, Phillips told him. This was bad news and Captain Smith knew it. Carpathia would take four hours to reach them. Titanic would not stay afloat that long. There were not enough lifeboats for everyone—not nearly enough. Captain Smith knew that a lot of people were going to die. He knew that he would be one of them. As captain, it was his job to stay with his ship, no matter what.

  Fffoom! The quartermaster began firing distress rockets into the sky every five minutes. He hoped a nearby ship might see them and come to help. The rockets finally jolted the passengers into believing that the disaster was real. Some began to pray. Some panicked. The crew began to restrict the lifeboats to women and children only. Men were no longer allowed. Families were separated as husbands and fathers loaded wives, daughters, and sons onto the boats.

  Marjorie Collyer clung to her father, Harvey. Her mother, Charlotte, hung on to both. A crew member tore Marjorie from her father’s arms and nearly threw her into one of the boats. They pulled Marjorie’s mother in behind her. Harvey stood calmly on the deck, watching, as the boat with his family was lowered into the sea. It was the last time Marjorie and Charlotte would see him.

  Ida Straus refused to be separated from her husband. “We have been living together for many years,” she told Isidor when he tried to put her in a lifeboat. “And where you go, I go.” That was that. The couple sat down in deck chairs and waited together.

  Charlotte Collyer with her daughter, Marjorie, after the sinking of Titanic

  John Jacob Astor helped his young, pregnant wife into a lifeboat. He quietly asked if he might get in as well. He was refused and stepped away. Madeleine and her unborn baby survived. Astor did not.

  This morning, April 17, the headline in the New York News is staring me in the face: “Only 868 Alive of 2,200 on Sunken Liner Titanic. Death Toll of 1,300. No Hope Left of Any Boatloads Being Picked Up.” My mouth goes dry as I stare down helplessly at the paper, not wanting to believe it. Bridget and Jenny aren’t down to breakfast yet and I’m glad. I don’t want them to see this—just for a few more minutes. Then a hand reaches out and covers my own. I look up into Uncle Gard’s face. His eyes are filled with tears and my heart aches. He clears his throat. “I haven’t forgotten your parents, you know, Sam,” he says gently. My father and mother—she was Uncle Gard’s sister—both died in a boating accident when I was five. It was a terrible time for our whole family. I try to speak but choke and squeeze his hand instead. I know we have to be strong for Bridget and Jenny—and for each other.

  Passengers began rushing the lifeboats, scrambling to save themselves. Captain Smith and some officers opened the weapons cabinet. An officer fired above the crowd to keep men from trying to board the boats while women were still on deck. A huge man jumped into a lifeboat as it was being lowered and knocked a woman unconscious. One lifeboat was almost lowered on top of another. Only quick thinking by crew members saved the people in the lower boat from being crushed.

  Down in steerage, Anna Sjöblom and her three friends ran through the maze of hallways and passages, determined to get to the lifeboats. They stumbled toward a doorway leading to the upper decks, then stopped, staring at one another in horror. Metal grates had been pulled across the doorway openings and locked. The crew was keeping steerage passengers from getting to the lifeboats! Anna and her friends—everyone in third class—were trapped. Anna made up her mind that she was not going to be drowned. She found a hard object and smashed a window. She climbed out into the frigid ocean air and up and over the outside of the ship to the upper decks. Anna made it into a lifeboat. Her friends did not.

  Maria Touma loved playing in the vacant cabins on the ship. On the night of the sinking, her mother looked everywhere for her and couldn’t find her. She brought Maria’s brother to the boat deck and returned to search frantically for Maria. She finally found her asleep in a vacant third-class cabin. Maria, her mother, and her brother boarded a lifeboat and were lowered off Titanic.

  The two young Navratil boys, whose father had kidnapped them, were wrapped in blankets and given to a woman in a lifeboat. Michel and Edmond’s father never made it off the ship. The toddlers were the only children without guardians who survived.

  As the huge ship filled with water, she began leaning to the left. The front part, the bow, was starting to tilt underwater. At 1:15 a.m., the bow went under. Even though the ship was partially submerged, the lights still blazed brightly. To some passengers in the lifeboats, it still seemed unimaginable that the “unsinkable” ship was going underwater.

  On the upper deck, the band continued to play cheerily. Some people were having drinks in the smoking room. Some passengers were even working out on the gym equipment, helped by the instructor. They may have been in shock. They may have accepted that they were going to die. Or perhaps they still didn’t believe that the ship was sinking, even though part of it was now underwater.

  As the bow of the ship slid farther under the water, the last lifeboats were loaded.

  Down in the bowels of the ship, the firemen were risking their lives to keep the boilers going so that the ship’s lights and telegraph system could keep working. Operators Phillips and Bride stayed at their posts, transmitting distress messages. At 2:05 a.m., Captain Smith told them to leave their posts and save themselves.

  Fifteen hundred people were still on board. One group huddled in a great circle, praying. Some jumped off the side of the ship. At 2:10 a.m., the bow of the ship was underwater, and the stern, or the back of the ship, tilted sharply upward. From the lifeboats out on
the ocean, survivors watched the surreal sight of the brilliantly lit ship rising up into the air. The masses of people on board scrambled desperately toward the high end of the ship, but it was steeply tilted. Crossing to the other end of the deck was like climbing up a slippery slide. People tried to hold on by clinging to deck rails or ropes, but many fell, screaming, into the sea.

  The stern rose higher into the air. The band played one last tune. Then, seven minutes later, at 2:17 a.m., the stern of the ship rose straight up out of the water, exposing the huge propellers. Titanic’s bow had filled with water and was going down. Survivors remember a massive screeching, crashing groan as everything in the ship, from china cups to grand pianos, slid down from one end of the ship to the other. Titanic’s lights went out. Now the whole forward half of the ship was completely underwater. The ship was breaking apart, into two pieces. The stern was still upright, almost vertical, above the water. As the ship broke apart, the stern slowly settled back into the water. It floated for a few seconds, then rose up straight in the water, bobbing like a cork. Survivors remember the stern floating upright for anywhere from thirty seconds to three minutes. The last few passengers clinging to the ship were screaming and wailing. Then the stern slipped underwater. Titanic was gone.

  Hundreds of people had fallen into the water, and they were struggling to stay alive. They were wearing life jackets, so most of them did not die from drowning. They froze to death in the icy waters, screaming, moaning, and begging for help. Passengers in the lifeboats floated just out of reach. Some of the lifeboats were only half-filled and had room for more survivors, but the people in the lifeboats didn’t go back.

  Titanic survivors on lifeboats

  They were afraid that the people in the water would overload the small boats and capsize them. As they waited for a ship to rescue them, the survivors listened to the sounds of people dying all around them. Gradually, the sounds faded away, replaced only with silence. Those in the water were dead.

  In the end, only one crew member took a lifeboat and went back into the mass of dead to look for survivors. With his flashlight piercing the black night, Fifth Officer Lowe searched through the frozen bodies. He found only four people alive. One man died just after he was pulled into the lifeboat.

  This morning, the newspaper headlines said that only 705 survivors were on board. The paper is full of articles about the survivors, many of whom are rich and famous. We care nothing for the rich and famous in this house—we think only of our beloved Nellie, Cornelia, and William! Uncle Gard is trying to stay hopeful for me and the girls. Bridget and Jenny are, too. “Maybe they’re on the Carpathia, wrapped in blankets,” Bridget said at breakfast. “Maybe they’re sipping hot tea right now,” I chimed in. Then we couldn’t keep it up anymore. The silence surrounded us once more. Jenny began to cry, her sobs the only sound in the room.

  Rescue arrived at dawn—for those who were left to receive it. The ship Carpathia steamed into view. Survivors—wet, frozen, hypothermic, and traumatized—were hauled on board in slings, in bags, and up rope ladders. They were treated as kindly as possible—given warm blankets, dry clothes, hot food and coffee, and as much medical attention as the ship could offer. The deck was crowded with bundled-up survivors sitting numbly in deck chairs, still stunned, or wandering around, looking for family who were not there.

  Carpathia, which had been headed for Europe, set a new course for New York. The three-day journey was slow and sad, with many icebergs and rough seas. The news was broadcast over the telegraph wires. “A World Waiting” read one newspaper headline on April 18.

  Newspapers wrote of the Titanic disaster daily and in great detail, partly because of the high number of famous and wealthy people on board. The US government, and later the British government, held an inquiry into the disaster. Charities were set up so people could donate money for the survivors. For weeks after the sinking, many of the bodies of the dead, still floating in their life jackets, were pulled from the ocean’s surface and buried. As for the survivors, they tried to put their lives back together again.

  Robert Douglas Spedden was alive. He had made it into a lifeboat along with both his parents and his nurse. Wrapped in a blanket, Robert slept all through the sinking of the ship, waking only at dawn. He told his nurse that they were at the North Pole, but there was no Santa Claus to be seen.

  Front page of The Chicago Daily Tribune for Tuesday, April 16, 1912

  Edith Brown had made it off Titanic as well. Her father had put her and her mother into a lifeboat, then stood on the deck, smoking a cigar and sipping a glass of brandy as the lifeboat was lowered down the side of the sinking ship. All through that long, cold night, Edith listened to the screams of the freezing, dying people in the water. It was a sound she was never to forget for the rest of her life.

  No one knew how to identify the two kidnapped toddlers, Michel and Edmond Navratil. Their father had given a fake name to the ship company, and now he was dead. But Michel and Edmond’s mother recognized her babies from their picture in the newspaper. She sailed to America and was reunited with her sons in New York. They returned to France soon after, where the boys grew up. Anna Sjöblom married an American and had a family. Sadly, Charlotte Collyer and little Marjorie returned to England, where Charlotte died two years later, leaving Marjorie an orphan. Madeleine Astor remained in New York and had her baby. Her son, John Jacob VI, inherited some of his family’s fortune. But he grew up never knowing his father.

  There’s a knock at the front door. I bolt up in my chair, my heart hammering, as the maid opens the library door. “Telegram, sir.” She hands Uncle Gard a small yellow envelope. He fumbles with the flap. His face is white. We press in around him. I can hardly bear to look at the typed words—yet I can’t bear not to. “We are all safe on Carpathia. To dock at New York harbor 3:00 p.m. Love Cornelia.”

  They’re safe, they’re all safe! Tears stream down my cheeks as I grab Jenny and Bridget in my arms.Uncle Gard kisses the telegram and presses it against his chest. “Thank God, thank God!” is all we can say. The pressure that has built inside me for the last five days releases as if someone has opened up a valve in my heart, and I sob with relief.

  We quickly dress to go meet the ship at the dock. With trembling hands, I pin on my hat and wrap my shawl around my shoulders. Out on the street, we dodge automobiles and coal wagons as we walk swiftly toward the docks. As we draw nearer, more and more people seem to be heading in the same direction. Then I see her—the massive steamship pulled up at harbor. CARPATHIA, read the big white letters on the side of her hull.

  “Look!” Jenny points. As the crew lowers the gangplank, we can see the survivors, wrapped in blankets and shawls, crowding the ship’s railings and then streaming down the gangplank to the docks. People are waving and crying out as they see their loved ones. Where are Nellie and Cornelia? Where is William? Why aren’t they here? Silently we scan the ship, Bridget and Jenny standing on their tiptoes. Has something happened during the last hours of the journey?

  Then—“Samantha!” Nellie throws herself against me and Jenny and Bridget. Aunt Cornelia is right behind her, tightly holding William’s hand. All three of them look pale and tired. Their clothing is wrinkled, and William holds a rough gray blanket around his shoulders. But they’re here, safe and sound.

  I kneel down and take William’s hand. “Are you hungry?” I ask him gently. I look up at Nellie. Her eyes sparkle with tears but her smile is the warm, gentle smile I’ve always known.

  William nods. There are circles under his eyes. “Can we go home?” His voice is so little. I squeeze his hand in mine and then stand and hug him close against my side. I wrap my other arm around Nellie. I’m never going to let them go—ever.

  A few days later, I step out onto the street with Bridget and Jenny. There is something important we want to do. We have been so very lucky—our family is safe. But many, many families have not been so fortunate. Relief funds have been set up for the hundreds of widows and orphans.
Many are very poor now that they’ve lost their husbands and fathers who provided for them.

  The offices of the Titanic Relief Fund are only a few blocks away, and we’re going to find a way to help. Sorting the food donations, counting and recording the money donations—I know there’s something we can do.

  Here it is—300 Fourth Avenue, just like the newspaper said. A big white sign in the window reads TITANIC RELIEF FUND OFFICES—INQUIRE WITHIN. I push open the glass-and-oak door. Inside, a young woman sits at a desk, writing. She looks up.

  “I’m Samantha Parkington,” I say as I approach the desk. “These are my sisters. We’re here to help.”

  Titanic lay silent on the seabed for more than seventy years. The wreck was so deep that the water pressure would crush any divers who tried to reach it. In addition, for years no one knew exactly where Titanic had come to rest.

  In 1985, an underwater robot called Argo descended to the ocean floor, 12,000 feet down. Argo was controlled by a French-American team, led by Robert Ballard, in a ship above. Argo found Titanic resting in two pieces on the ocean floor, one-third of a mile apart. The front piece, the bow, was mostly intact. Some of the light fixtures still hung from the ceiling. The stern, the back part that bobbed in the water and sank last, was a twisted wreck. In between the two pieces lay scattered wreckage: wine bottles, pieces of coal, dolls, bedsprings, leather shoes.

  Rusted bow of Titanic, found in the North Atlantic Ocean

  The bodies of the people who had sunk with the ship had long ago been consumed by ocean life. Marine organisms were slowly eating away at the metal of the ship as well. Pictures were taken, and the wreck was studied and mapped. Artifacts such as dishes, buttons, lamps, and eyeglasses were brought to the surface. But the ship itself can never be raised. The material is far too delicate to survive a journey to the surface. Titanic will remain as scraps of rust and metal on the sea floor.