Other distinguished Englishmen on the Titanic were Norman C. Craig, M.P., Thomas Andrews, a representative of the firm of Harland & Wolff, of Belfast, the ship’s builders, and J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line.
Mr. Ismay is president and one of the founders of the International Mercantile Marine. He has made it a custom to be a passenger on the maiden voyage of every new ship built by the White Star Line. It was Mr. Ismay who, with J. P. Morgan, consolidated the British steamship lines under the International Mercantile Marine’s control; and it is largely due to his imagination that such gigantic ships as the Titanic and Olympic were made possible
Jacques Futrelle was an author of short stories, some of which have appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, and of many novels of the same general type as “The Thinking Machine,” with which he first gained a wide popularity. Newspaper work, chiefly in Richmond, Va., engaged his attention from 1890 to 1909, in which year he entered the theatrical business as a manager. In 1904 he returned to his journalistic career.
Henry B. Harris, the theater manager, had been manager of May Irwin, Peter Dailey, Lily Langtry, Amelia Bingham, and launched Robert Edeson as star. He became the manager of the Hudson Theater in 1903 and the Hackett Theater in 1906. Among his best known productions are “The Lion and the Mouse,” “The Traveling Salesman” and “The Third Degree.” He was president of the Henry B. Harris Company controlling the Harris Theater.
Young Harris had a liking for the theatrical business from a boy. Twelve years ago Mr. Harris married Miss Rene Wallach of Washington. He was said to have a fortune of between $1,000,000 and $3,000,000. He owned outright the Hudson and the Harris theaters and had an interest in two other show houses in New York. He owned three theaters in Chicago, one in Syracuse and one in Philadelphia.
Henry Sleeper Harper, who was among the survivors, is a grandson of John Wesley Harper, one of the founders of the Harper publishing business. H. Sleeper Harper was himself an incorporator of Harper & Brothers when the firm became a corporation in 1896. He had a desk in the offices of the publishers, but his hand of late years in the management of the business has been very slight. He has been active in the work of keeping the Adirondack forests free from aggression. He was in the habit of spending about half of his time in foreign travel. His friends in New York recalled that he had a narrow escape about ten years ago when a ship in which he was traveling ran into an iceberg on the Grand Banks.
Millet was one of the best-known American painters and many of his canvasses are found in the leading galleries of the world. He served as a drummer boy with the Sixtieth Massachusetts volunteers in the Civil War, and from early manhood took a prominent part in public affairs. He was director of the decorations for the Chicago Exposition and was, at the time of the disaster, secretary of the American Academy in Rome. He was a wide traveler and the author of many books, besides translations of Tolstoi.
Another person of prominence was Charles Melville Hays, president of the Grand Trunk and the Grand Trunk Pacific railways. He was described by Sir Wilfrid Laurier at a dinner of the Canadian Club of New York, at the Hotel Astor last year, as “beyond question the greatest railroad genius in Canada, as an executive genius ranking second only to the late Edward H. Harriman.” He was returning aboard the Titanic with his wife and son-in-law and daughter; Mr. and Mrs. Thornton Davidson, of Montreal.
CHAPTER V. THE TITANIC STRIKES AN ICEBERG!
SUNDAY night the magnificent ocean liner was plunging through a comparatively placid sea, on the surface of which there was much mushy ice and here and there a number of comparatively harmless-looking floes. The night was clear and stars visible. First Officer William T. Murdock was in charge of the bridge The first intimation of the presence of the iceberg that he received was from the lookout in the crow’s nest.
Three warnings were transmitted from the crow’s nest of the Titanic to the officer on the doomed steamship’s bridge 15 minutes before she struck, according to Thomas Whiteley, a first saloon steward.
Whiteley, who was whipped overboard from the ship by a rope while helping to lower a life-boat, finally reported on the Carpathia aboard one of the boats that contained, he said, both the crow’s nest lookouts. He heard a conversation between them, he asserted, in which they discussed the warnings given to the Titanic’s bridge of the presence of the iceberg.
Whiteley did not know the names of either of the lookout men and believed that they returned to England with the majority of the surviving members of the crew.
{illust. caption = A GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION OF THE FORCE WITH WHICH A VESSEL STRIKES AN ICEBERG}
“I heard one of them say that at 11.15 o’clock, 15 minutes before the Titanic struck, he had reported to First Officer Murdock, on the bridge, that he fancied he saw an iceberg!” said Whiteley. “Twice after that, the lookout said, he warned Murdock that a berg was ahead. They were very indignant that no attention was paid to their warnings.”
Murdock’s tardy answering of a telephone call from the crow’s nest is assigned by Whiteley as the cause of the disaster.
When Murdock answered the call he received the information that the iceberg was due ahead. This information was imparted just a few seconds before the crash, and had the officer promptly answered the ring of the bell it is probable that the accident could have been avoided, or at least, been reduced by the lowered speed.
The lookout saw a towering “blue berg” looming up in the sea path of the Titanic, and called the bridge on the ship’s telephone. When, after the passing of those two or three fateful minutes an officer on the bridge lifted the telephone receiver from its hook to answer the lookout, it was too late. The speeding liner, cleaving a calm sea under a star-studded sky, had reached the floating mountain of ice, which the theoretically “unsinkable” ship struck a crashing, if glancing, blow with her starboard bow.
Had Murdock, according to the account of the tragedy given by two of the Titanic’s seamen, known how imperative was that call from the lookout man, the men at the wheel of the liner might have swerved the great ship sufficiently to avoid the berg altogether. At the worst the vessel would probably have struck the mass of ice with her stern.
Murdock, if the tale of the Titanic sailor be true, expiated his negligence by shooting himself within sight of all alleged victims huddled in life-boats or struggling in the icy seas.
When at last the danger was realized, the great ship was so close upon the berg that it was practically impossible to avoid collision with it.
{illust. caption = THE LOCATION OF THE DISASTER}
The first officer did what other startled and alert commanders would have done under similar circumstances, that is he made an effort by going full speed ahead on the starboard propeller and reversing his port propeller, simultaneously throwing his helm over, to make a rapid turn and clear the berg. The maneuver was not successful. He succeeded in saving his bows from crashing into the ice-cliff, but nearly the entire length of the underbody of the great ship on the starboard side was ripped. The speed of the Titanic, estimated to be at least twenty-one knots, was so terrific that the knife-like edge of the iceberg’s spur protruding under the sea cut through her like a can-opener.