Ray was specifically addressing the mystery of why granulated cork was found drifting on the sea surface the day after the Titanic foundered and why three bodies recovered from the sea had their mouths filled with cork. More significant, Ray’s account memorializes a quick and evidently unsuccessful fix, meant to correct a tendency toward stateroom overheating that was already known—a problem that would have existed even without the additional heating of E deck’s floor plates by a coal bunker fire. Tragically, a significant number of portholes were left open as a means of air conditioning—at the worst possible moment and location (just above and often in front of the boilers, in the descending bow).
A secondary surge of impact effects and evidence of damage below the floor plates of boiler room number 4 were reported by George Cavel, British Inquiry, May 9, 1912, pp. 106–107.
George Kemish’s record of conditions farther back, in boiler room number 2, appears in a letter to Lord, June 19, 1955, p. 2, L/P file, pp. 545–546. Impact conditions behind the boiler rooms at the steam engines were reported by Patrick Dillon to the British Inquiry, May 9, 1912, p. 98, and by F. Scott, May 10, 1912, pp. 130–131. Regarding additional openings to the sea, assistant purser Frank Prentice reported leaving his porthole open in his E-deck cabin in front of the engine room bulkhead and Charles Joughin’s cabin: F. Prentice, undated interview transcript with Walter Lord, p. 2, L/P File, p. 649; Ken Marschall, personal communication, June 2010, L/P file, p. 129B.
Along Frank Prentice’s deck, one of those closest to the waterline, the portholes were designed to close automatically unless physically held open, propped open, or swung upward and hooked open at approximately ninety degrees with a latch. However, if allowed to close while unlatched in the closed position, water pressure from the outside could push through these ports indoors. Wrote Marschall, L/P file, p. 129B, “If one opened it momentarily to look outside and didn’t [latch] it closed again, it would swing back into an apparently closed attitude and would appear ‘closed’ today from the outside. So [short of an experiment to push on a random sample of E- and F-deck portholes with a robot arm to see if it pushes inward and is unlatched], we’ll never know how many of the E- and F-deck portholes are un[latch]ed.”
Madeline Mellinger recorded her experiences in several letters to Lord, beginning Jan. 13, 1962, L/P file, pp. 580, 592, 594, 596–597, 603–604. Madeline’s thoughts about C. C. Jones at her table were mentioned in a letter dated Feb. 24, 1969, p. 9, L/P file, p. 596. Madeline’s hope that Jones planned to become her stepfather: personal communication with Walter Lord, L/P file, p. 596. On the location of the Mellinger cabin on the same deck as the open Thayer and Chambers portholes: Mellinger letter, Feb. 24, 1969, part 2, p. 4, L/P file, p. 600.
Masabumi Hosono’s case was featured in M. Findlay, “A Matter of Honor,” Voyage 27, Winter 1998, p. 122, in which Hosono also records the extreme poverty he witnessed in Russia. George Tulloch (and Lord) addressed the Hosono and Laroche cases and examples of Harold Lowe’s overt racism in a personal communication, 1996, during a pre–Expedition Titanic VIII conference. Colonel Archibald Gracie, in Jack Winocour, ed., The Story of the Titanic as Told by Its Survivors (New York: Dover, 1960), 194, 195, cited George Crowe’s testimony to the American inquiry (American Inquiry, p. 615) as well as Charlotte Collier on Lowe’s initial refusal to rescue an Asian man from the water until a woman and a child of boat 14 protested his behavior.
The little-known presence of an interracial couple aboard the Titanic (Joseph and Juliette Laroche) was reported by Oliver Mendez, “Mademoiselle Louise Laroche: A Titanic Survivor,” Titanic Commutator 19, no. 2 (Aug. 1995): 40–47; Georges Michael, Titanic Commutator 24, no. 149 (Nov. 2000): 48; and Judith Geller, Titanic: Women and Children First (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 95.
Spencer Silverthorne’s impression of the iceberg rising higher above the boat deck as it moved back was corroborated by George Rowe on the after-bridge. Silverthorne’s account is transcribed from an interview with Lord, July 14, 1955, p. 1, L/P file, p. 202. Rowe’s observations appear in the American Inquiry, Apr. 25, 1912, p. 519, and in a letter to Lord, 1955, p. 1, L/P file, p. 317.
An estimated impact force equivalent to lifting the mass of fourteen Washington Monuments in a second was provided by J. Knapp to the American Inquiry, May 18, 1912, p. 1116. The total aggregate of punctures measuring twelve square feet was based on Edward Wilding’s study of flooding rates in the Titanic’s pierced compartments during the first ten minutes (before open portholes reached the sea and became contributing factors), as reported to the British Inquiry, June 7, 1912, p. 520.
The effect of the Titanic regarding the iceberg’s side of the story: personal communication and brainstorming sessions with Robert Ballard (1985–1986), Tom Dettweiler (WHOI, 1986), James Powell (1986–1997), George Tulloch and William Garske (1996), Roy Cullimore (1996), and James Cameron (1996–present). Parks Stephenson (2005 and attachments to 2001 expedition log), along with Don Lynch and Ken Marschall (1996–2010) have emphasized possible “grounding” effects.
Damage consistent with the hole (in a probably dented plate) observed by Barrett in the empty coal bunker was examined at the center of a “dished-in” steel plate of the Regent Sea after it struck a small iceberg, called a “growler,” in May 1993. Parks Stephenson, personal communication, Dec. 23, 2010, has expressed skepticism about ice itself being able to penetrate the Titanic’s inch-thick steel plates by point-source impact. Stephenson also raises a valid argument that the observations of Silverthorne and Rowe at the aft end of the Titanic suggest that William Murdoch was able to order and execute final corrective maneuvers.
Advising that I must not miss this larger point, Stephenson wrote, “The ice impacted at the narrow [part of the] bow and if we understand the geometry of the collision correctly, the collision vector should have resulted in more damage where the ship [broadened] to its maximum width at the beam. However, it didn’t—which means that, in A. B. Scarrott’s words [description of impact, British Inquiry, May 3, 1912, p. 23], ‘her stern was slewing off the iceberg.’ This means, then, that Murdoch didn’t just turn to port, but that he also reversed the rudder in order to save the beam and the stern (where the engineering spaces were) from being forced by the momentum of the ship hard into the berg.”
2. FAR FROM OKAY
Location of stern section and high-mass debris at latitude 41 degrees 43 minutes north and longitude 49 degrees 56 minutes west: archaeological maps, 1996 and 2001 expeditions.
Warnings to the Titanic of ice at latitude 41 degrees 50 minutes north were produced at the American Inquiry, pp. 1114–1115. Witnesses to the report from the Baltic: J. Booth and S. Coughlan, eds., Signals of Disaster (compilation of Marconigrams received regarding the Titanic) (London: White Star, 1993), 14.
Parks Stephenson pointed to passages in the American Inquiry, Apr. 19, 1912, p. 68, and to the British Inquiry, May 20, 1912, p. 304, “About lunchtime on Apr. 14th—9 hours before the disaster—Captain Smith briefed his officers on the existence of ice ahead, in the Titanic’s path, based on information stitched together from a number of ice warnings received earlier that morning. As soon as the Titanic crossed the 49th parallel [it] would effectively be in the vicinity of ice. Lightoller had 6th Officer Moody calculate when that would be. [The answer is 11 p.m.] The region of ice described by those acknowledged telegrams included the spot where the Titanic would later hit the iceberg.”