7 " "ARTLETT IS A WRITER AND 4)4!.)# )T WAS TWENTY MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT ON HISTORIAN (E IS THE AUTHOR OF 7KHKXPDQVWRU\RIWKHGLVDVWHUUDWKHU 3UNDAY !PRIL WHEN *ACK 4HAYER FELT THE NINE HISTORY BOOKS INCLUDING WKDQDKLVWRU\RIWKHVKLSLWVHOI 4ITANIC LURCH TO PORT A MOTION FOLLOWED BY 4HE -ONGOLS &ROM 'ENGHIS 7 " "!24,%44 THE SLIGHTEST OF SHOCKS 3EVEN YEAR OLD %VA (ART BARELY NOTICED ANYTHING WAS WRONG &OR +HAN4O 4AMERLANE AND )SLAMS 3TOKER &RED "ARRETT SHOVELLING COAL DOWN 7AR !GAINST THE #RUSADERS (E BELOW IT WAS SOMEWHAT DIFFERENT THE SIDE OF LIVES IN "OURNEMOUTH THE SHIP WHERE HE WAS WORKING CAVED IN #OVER ILLUSTRATIONS &RONT SPINE ! DRAWING OF THE &OR THE NEXT NINE HOURS *ACK %VA AND &RED 4ITANIC SINKING BY (ENRY 2EUTERDAHL PREPARED FROM MATERIAL SUPPLIED BY SURVIVORS OF THE WRECK ¥ 7" FACED DEATH AND SURVIVED 4HEY LIVED ALONG "ARTLETT "ACK COVER 0HOTOGRAPH TAKEN BEFORE THE WITH JUST OVER OTHERS PICKED UP BY @ORPHANS OF THE 4ITANIC WERE CORRECTLY IDENTIlED AND RETURNED TO THEIR MOTHER4HE BOYS ARE &RENCH THE NEXT MORNING/VER PEOPLE DID NOT BROTHERS -ICHEL AGE AND %DMOND .AVRATIL AGE 4O BOARD THE SHIP THEIR FATHER ASSUMED THE NAME 4HIS IS THE STORY TOLD THROUGH THE EYES OF ,OUIS (OFFMAN AND USED THEIR NICKNAMES ,OLO AND *ACK %VA &RED AND OVER A HUNDRED OTHERS OF -OMON4HEIR FATHER DIED IN THE DISASTER "ACK mAP 4ITANIC LIFEBOAT ALONGSIDE THE #ARPATHIA ¥ * # 4)4!.)# THOSE WHO SURVIVED AND EITHER WROTE THEIR -C#UTCHEON #OLLECTION EXPERIENCES DOWN OR APPEARED BEFORE THE +RXUVWR+HOOWKH6XUYLYRUV·6WRU\ MAJOR INQUIRIES HELD SUBSEQUENTLY $RAWING EXTENSIVELY ON THEIR COLLECTIVE EVIDENCE THIS BOOK RECOUNTS THE EVENTS THAT OCCURRED IN THOSE NINE FATEFUL HOURS 4HE STORIES OF SOME ARE DISCUSSED IN DETAIL SUCH AS #OLONEL 'RACIE A lRST CLASS SURVIVOR AND ,AWRENCE "EESLEY A SCHOOLTEACHER WHO BOTH WROTE LENGTHY ACCOUNTS OF THEIR EXPERIENCES .O LESS FASCINATING ARE THE ACCOUNTS OF THOSE WHO GAVE GRIPPING EVIDENCE TO THE INQUIRIES PEOPLE LIKE THE CONTROVERSIAL ,ADY ,UCILLE $UFF 'ORDON STEWARD *OHN (ART WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR SAVING THE LIVES OF THE MAJORITY OF THE THIRD CLASS PASSENGERS WHO 7 LIVED OR #HARLES *OUGHIN THE BAKER WHO OWED HIS SURVIVAL TO WHISKY 4HIS IS THEIR STORY AND THOSE OF A FATEFUL NIGHT WHEN THE LARGEST SHIP EVER BUILT SANK WITHOUT " COMPLETING ONE SUCCESSFUL VOYAGE "!24,%44 $PEHUOH\3XEOLVKLQJ &LUHQFHVWHU5RDG 6WURXG*/3(8. $PEHUOH\3XEOLVKLQJ,QF 6LUHV6WUHHW WWWAMBERLEYBOOKSCOM a &KDUOHVWRQ6&86$ %$57/(777,7$1,&&95LQGG TITANIC Dedicated to my brother Darren TITANIC 9 Hours to Hell, the Survivors’ Story W.B. BARTLETT First published 2010 Amberley Publishing Cirencester Road, Chalford, Stroud, Gloucestershire, gl6 8pe www.amberley-books.com Copyright © W.B. Bartlett 2010 The right of W.B. Bartlett to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978 1 84868 422 5 Typesetting and origination by Printed in Great Britain Contents Acknowledgements 6 Prologue 7 1. Arrival: 18 April 1912, New York & Washington 13 2. Three Ships: Titanic, Carpathia & Californian 23 3. The Players: Captains & Crews 41 4. An Ominous Beginning: 10 April 1912, Southampton 56 5. Outward Bound: 10–13 April 1912, Cherbourg, 71 Queenstown & the North Atlantic 6. Into the Ice Zone: 14 April 1912, North Atlantic 87 7. Collision: 23.40, 14 April 1912, North Atlantic 49 Degrees 103 57 Minutes West, 41 Degrees 44 Minutes North 8. A Troubled Silence: 23.41–24.00, 14 April 1912 113 9. Uncovering the Boats: 00.01–00.30, 15 April 1912 123 10. Lower Away: 00.31–01.00, 15 April 1912 134 11. The Looming Crisis: 01.01–01.30, 15 April 1912 154 12. Nowhere to Go: 01.31–02.00, 15 April 1912 171 13. Waiting for Oblivion: 02.01–02.17, 15 April 1912 186 14. Descent into Hell: 02.18–02.20, 15 April 1912 197 15. The Survival Lottery: 02.21–04.00, 15 April 1912 222 16. Deliverance: 04.01–08.30, 15 April 1912 240 17. The World Waits: 15–18 April 1912, USA, 256 Great Britain & Elsewhere 18. Honouring the Dead: April – May 1912, 270 North Atlantic & its Periphery 19. Searching for the Truth: April – May 1912, 282 New York & Washington 20. The British Perspective: May – June 1912, London 302 21. Post Mortem: The World After the Titanic 323 Select Bibliography 334 List of Illustrations 337 Index 342 Acknowledgements My sincere thanks to all who have helped with this book, especially Jonathan Reeve and the team at Amberley. Thanks too to family and friends who have lived with the Titanic for so long. Prologue And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the iceberg too THOMAS HARDY — The Convergence of the Twain The impact of the Titanic story appears to show no sign of diminishing as time marches on. Some time in the next century the rusting hulk of the once- great ship will fade away to nothingness and will be no more than a geological anomaly, a lump of rogue iron with no shape or form, just a deposit, on the seabed. However, it is probable that the story itself will live on far longer than the ship because it is a classic tale of hubris, of fate, of pathos and of tragedy. In the Middle Ages, the Titanic story might have been made up as a moral tale, a warning to rich and powerful mortals that however indestructible they might think themselves, there was something greater out there, a reminder of the old maxim that ‘pride comes before a fall’. Back then they would have called it God but now, in a more secular world, we might name it Fate or even Nature. Whatever it is, it is more powerful than man. Hundreds of publications have appeared on the great ship and this might prompt the question as to why another one should be written. The problem is that almost too much has been written about the Titanic, most books coming at the story from a particular angle in an attempt to be different. So much detail has been gone into that various Titanic sub-plots have become major stories in their own right, in particular the role of the nearby ship the Californian in the disaster. Conspiracy theories too have made their inevitable appearance, such as the one that the Titanic was not the Titanic at all but her sister, the Olympic, damaged in a collision previously and sunk as part of an insurance scam. Highly convenient one might think that there happened to be an iceberg in the right place at the right time but a somewhat harsh judgement that 1,500 people had been condemned to death as a result. The great danger of the level of detail available to researchers is that the simple story at the heart of it all can get lost. This book attempts to strip the story back to its basic level and to do so by relying in the main on the stories of eye-witnesses who saw everything close up. There is a wealth of 8 Titanic such information around. Some survivors committed their stories to print. Over 100 witnesses were also interviewed in extensive Inquiries in the USA and Great Britain and the transcripts of these give hugely detailed records of the disaster and are in the main the sources of the material in this book. In an attempt to give this account a narrative flow, I have deliberately avoided the use of footnotes. This is done out of a desire not to break up the storyline in any way. I have attempted to make it obvious in the text where quotations come from, or at least the individual they emanated from. There is in the storyline something of the quality of a saga and in my view this benefits from being told in a logical and sequenced way without the need for the reader to constantly cross-refer to footnotes. Those who were there are the main sources used to describe these awe- inspiring events, with the aim of weaving their accounts together into a consistent narrative which tells the story in as straightforward a manner as possible. At the same time, it would be wrong to ignore the extra evidence that has come to light since the wreck itself was discovered in 1985, as this gives additional insights into some of the incidents of 14/15 April 1912. This too will be referred to at the appropriate places in the book. The sequence followed in the book is broadly chronological. This is so that the reader might try and put themselves in the shoes of those who were present during the disaster, individuals who in the main had little idea when the iceberg was struck that the ship they were on was sinking and that it did not have enough lifeboats for over half of them. It is easy to think that the disaster must have been horrific looking back with our knowledge that the ship went down. How much worse then must the disaster have been when those involved in it only realized gradually that she was going to sink and that they were probably going to die, as if in slow motion? It is important to note that the timings quoted in this book must of necessity be subject to some margin of error.