Unfortunately, I had only that one long afternoon’s meeting with Mrs. Raymond, who passed away later that same year.
What we do know is: who survived, and who did not, and-despite the tumult of that terrible night-we have at least some idea of the circumstances surrounding those who lost their lives so tragically and, almost invariably, heroically.
For the record, at approximately 11:40 P.M., the Titanic-at a speed approaching twenty-three knots-side-swiped an iceberg, despite the ship’s captain and crew having received numerous warnings of ice in the area. With too few lifeboats aboard and a slowly dawning realization by crew and passengers of the extent of the damage to the ship, a disaster worsened into tragedy. By 2:20 A.M., the Titanic was gone, taking many of her passengers and crew with her, putting more than fifteen hundred people either in or under the icy waters.
Archie Butt and Frank Millet, with several other passengers, aided in the loading of women and children onto lifeboats; when all of the lifeboats had been dispatched, the gentlemen returned to their card game in the Smoking Room until the slant of the table no longer allowed. Stories of Major Butt on deck fighting off swarthy steerage “rabble” with a walking stick or even a firearm appear to be one of the many yellow-journalistic inventions that pervaded early coverage of the disaster.
Archie Butt was last seen standing solemnly to one side on the boat deck, stoically awaiting his fate like the good soldier he was. He was apparently in the company of his friend Francis Millet; both men died in the sinking, Millet’s body recovered by the crew of the MacKay Bennett, whose grim task it was to salvage as many Titanic corpses as possible from the icy Atlantic.
Captain Smith’s fate remains clouded, as do conflicting reports of his demeanor on deck. The press of the day made him out a hero, but considering the source, the reports that he fell into a dazed, near-catatonic state are more credible; still, witnesses recalled seeing him with a megaphone, directing lifeboats to return to pick up more passengers (an order ignored). One story has him committing suicide with a pistol, but more credible is the eyewitness account of a steward who saw his captain walk onto the bridge, shortly before the forward superstructure went under, presumably to be washed away-a suicide of sorts, at that.
Another crew member reported seeing Captain Smith in the freezing water, holding a baby in his arms, moments before his ship made her final slide into the sea. Legend has it that the captain swam to a lifeboat, handed the child over, and swam off to go down after, if not with, his ship. The last reliable reports of Smith have him, in the water, cheering the attempts of crew members to struggle onto the top of an overturned lifeboat, calling, “Good lads! Good lads!” An oar offered to Smith was out of the captain’s reach, as a swell carried him away.
Some of the most famous stories of that night-the ones sounding most like legend-are true.
Isidor Straus, offered a seat on lifeboat number eight in consideration of his age, refused to go when other, younger men were staying; and Ida Straus refused to leave her husband’s side.
“I will not be separated from my husband,” she said. “As we have lived, so will we die together.”
And they did; in one final indignity, however, the ocean took Mrs. Straus’s body, while her husband’s was recovered, to be buried in Beth-El Cemetery, Brooklyn. Forty thousand attended the memorial service for the couple, with a eulogy read by Andrew Carnegie.
Benjamin Guggenheim, at first protesting the discomfort of a life belt, later abandoned it for his finest evening wear. With his valet, he awaited death in style, announcing, “We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” Oddly, his final thoughts-or at least his final thoughts of how he might like to be remembered-had to do with his long-suffering wife, writing the following note: If anything should happen to me, tell my wife I’ve done my best in doing my duty.
This may have been small solace to Mrs. Guggenheim, after Madame Aubert-rescued with the others in lifeboats by the ship Carpathia-came ashore announced as “Mrs. Benjamin Guggenheim.” As a further indignity, Guggenheim’s business affairs were in disorder, his steampump company doing poorly at the time of his death, leaving his children to make do with trust funds of only half a million or so, each.
Thomas Andrews, one of the first to understand that his ship was doomed, circulated through the Titanic dispensing various stories to various passengers, depending on how well he felt they might bear up under the truth. He worked manfully to see to it that as many women and children as possible were gotten into the lifeboats; but despair, finally, overtook him.
Andrews was last seen in the Smoking Room, staring at a serene nautical painting, his life belt nearby, flung carelessly across a green-topped table. His arms were folded, his shoulders slumped. When a steward, moving quickly through the room, asked him, “Aren’t you even going to have a try for it, Mr. Andrews?”, the shipbuilder did not even acknowledge the question.
William T. Stead was also seen in the Smoking Room, seemingly absorbed in the book he was reading, unconcerned about the brouhaha (he had taken a break from his book and was one of the few on deck at the time of the collision with the iceberg). He continued this until near the end, when he was spotted standing calmly at the rail. He had never mentioned to his fellow passengers that he had premonitions of drowning, and that he had-like Morgan Robertson, the author of Futility-written a story about an ocean liner striking an iceberg, with lives lost because too few lifeboats had been aboard.
“This is exactly what might take place,” he had predicted in 1886, “and what will take place, if liners are sent to sea short of boats.”
His body was not recovered.
Third-Class passenger Alfred Davies lost his life in the disaster; so did his uncle and two brothers. Their father described them, at the memorial service, as “fine big lads” and “the best of sons.”
In lifeboat number six, Maggie Brown, by standing up to an obnoxious crew member who’d taken charge, found her place in history as the “Unsinkable Mrs. Brown.” Never reconciling with her husband, over whose money she and her children battled for years, Maggie reveled in her celebrity until her death by a stroke in 1932. A Broadway musical loosely based on her life spawned a 1964 MGM motion picture starring Debbie Reynolds, who looked not much like Maggie (who somehow, after her death, became “Molly”); but then neither had Maggie wielded a handgun on a White Star lifeboat.
First-Class passengers Emil Brandeis and John Baumann were lost in the sinking; the body of the former was recovered, the latter’s was not.
J. Bruce Ismay worked bravely and hard, seeing that women and children were shuttled onto lifeboats; but he carved himself a place in history as a coward by stepping into one of the last lifeboats, collapsible C, and choosing not to go down with his ship-not even watching the great ship slip under, turning his back to the sight, much as the world would turn its back to him. By June 1913, he had “retired” from White Star, and was vilified throughout the remainder of a life that has been described as reclusive; his wife said the Titanic “ruined” him. Ismay’s charitable acts-and there were a number of these-included establishing a fund to benefit the widows of lost seamen. He died in 1937.
Charles Lightoller performed professionally, even heroically, going down with the ship, but swimming to capsized collapsible B, and scrambling on top. He was a company man at the two official inquiries, protecting both the late Smith and the very much alive Ismay; but nonetheless fell prey to the White Star Line’s unofficial policy of sabotaging the careers of surviving Titanic officers. He did become a commander in the Royal Navy during World War I, and provided heroic volunteer duty at Dunkirk in World War II. He died in 1952, not living to see himself portrayed as the hero of the film of Walter Lord’s epic version of the Titanic’s story, A Night to Remember.