Category: About the Ship

Open post

“Honor and Glory Crowning Time”: The Grand Staircase

"Honor and Glory Crowning Time": The Grand Staircase

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one cannot think of Titanic without seeing, in the mind’s eye, the Grand Staircase.

And for good reason. The Grand Staircase was installed in all three Olympic-class vessels, and was the opulent centerpiece of each ship. 

Titanic’s Grand Staircase, in particular, has achieved an almost otherworldly status, though, because it’s so often recreated in media.

Despite the impression this often gives, the Grand Staircase was, of course, designed to do what any proper staircase does: functionally connect floors.

The Grand Staircase reached from Boat Deck all the way to E Deck. Elevators were also located just forward of the Staircase from A through E Decks.

First-Class elevators on RMS Olympic, circa 1911.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The Grand Staircase was constructed from Irish oak in the William & Mary style.

And at its top was an astonishing and elaborate dome made from glass and wrong iron, from the center of which hung a gilted crystal chandelier.

“It was an object of great splendour,” proclaimed the White Star Line. “A fitting crown as it were these the largest and finest steamers in all the world.”

The glass dome was backlit during the evening hours thanks to a protective box that was installed around it, to protect it from the worst of the sea elements.

On A Deck, the floor of the landing was comprised of linoleum tiles, which were milk-colored and interspersed with onyx medallions.  Blue sofas and armchairs, as well as potted palms, decorated this landing, as well as each subsequent level of the Grand Staircase.

There was also a piano on the Boat Deck level, so the band could entertain in the stairwell.

At the base of the Grand Staircase on A Deck was a bronze cherub holding a torch; replicas are thought to have decorated the bases of B and C Decks. On D Deck, the base of the Staircase boasted an electrically lit gilt candelabra.

Color illustration of Grand Staircase from White Star Brochure, circa 1911.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

White Star released a promotional brochure in 1911 for both Olympic and Titanic, and did they love them some Grand Staircase.

We leave the deck and pass through one of the doors which admit us to the interior of the vessel, and, as if by magic, we at once lose feeling that we are on board a ship, and seem instead to be entering the hall of some great house on shore. Dignified and simple oak panelling covers the walls, enriched in a few places by a bit of elaborate carved work... 

In the middle of the hall rises a gracefully curving staircase, its balustrade supported by light scrollwork of iron with occasional touches of bronze, in the form of flowers and foliage. Above all a great dome of iron and glass throws a flood of light down the stairway...

Looking over the balustrade, we see the stairs descending to many floors below, and on turning aside we find we may be spared the labour of mounting or descending by entering one of the smoothly-gliding elevators which bear us quickly to any other of the numerous floors of the ship we may wish to visit.

As written in the White Star promotional brochure "Olympic" / & "Titanic" / Largest Steamers in the World," 1911.

The portion of the Staircase that you’re probably envisioning right now—with the glass dome and the famous clock—was A Deck, which was considered dual-level.

The interior balcony with the ornate arched windows and potted ferns (that looked down onto A Deck with the dome directly overhead) was Boat Deck.

Grand Staircase, Boat Deck Level, on RMS Olympic. Taken by William Herman Rau.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The Grand Staircase was accessible exclusively to First-Class passengers. It functioned as the point of entry to First-Class public rooms and staterooms; the rooms that could be accessed from each deck were as follows.

Boat Deck: opposing corridors granted access to the Officers Quarters and the Marconi Room. The entrance to the First-Class Gymnasium was next door to the Starboard entrance to the Grand Staircase.

A Deck: access to the Reading & Writing Room, as well as the Lounge, which were entered through revolving doors. Also granted entrance to the Promenade Deck, and First-Class staterooms.

B Deck: Both of the “Millionaires’ Suites” were accessible from B Deck, as well as the most lavish of the First-Class staterooms.

C Deck: The Purser’s office, as well as the Enquiries office, were immediately off the Staircase to the Starboard side. More First-Class staterooms were also accessible via companionways.

D Deck: Opened directly onto the Reception Room, and the Dining Saloon was adjacent to that. First-Class staterooms were once again accessible behind the staircase.

E Deck: Only cabins were accessible via E Deck. From here, a modest staircase could be taken down to F Deck to get to certain athletics facilities that were located on F Deck, such as the swimming pool and the Turkish baths.

The well-known ornate clock on A Deck, which was located directly below the glass dome, actually had a name, so to speak. It was called “Honour and Glory crowning Time.” 

The clock was carved from solid oak, and its design was inspired by a "monumental" chimney that had been designed for none other than Napoleon Bonaparte.

That chimney was illustrated in the publication “Recueil de decorations interieures” in 1812; it was made of white marble and gilt bronze, and was installed in 1810. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in a fire in 1871.

Plate of "monumental" chimney, designed for Napoleon Bonaparte by Percier and Fontaine, 1812.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

“Honour and Glory crowning Time” was a so-called slave clock.

This meant that it, along with 24 other clocks within the ship, were beholden to a master clock located in the wheel house that all worked in synchronity. There were two master clocks on Titanic, each of which controlled 25 slave clocks.

A man by the name of Charles Wilson carved the central portion of the clock.

Mr. Wilson recalled that when Titanic departed from Belfast on April 3, 1912, the timepiece was not ready. A circular mirror, therefore, was installed as a holdover until the clock face was ready.

Charles Wilson, therefore, reasoned that the completion of clock had to have occurred while Titanic was docked in Southampton, between April 3, 1912, and her departure on April 10.

Grand Staircase of RMS Olympic, first published in "The Shipbuilder" in 1911.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

While A Deck had the allegorical clock, Decks B through E had oil paintings installed on their landings. 

There was also an Aft Grand Staircase located between the third and fourth funnels; unlike its counterpart, it only reached only from A Deck to C Deck. From the Aft Grand Staircase, passengers could reach the Smoking Room and Lounge, as well as the A La Carte Restaurant the Cafe Parisien. 

The Grand Staircase does not exist within the wreck. It is thought that each segment of the Staircase broke apart and floating out during the sinking, or was shattered by the hydraulic blast caused by the bow’s impact with the seabed. Otherwise, it simply rotted away prior to the discovery of the wreck in 1985. 

Where the Grand Staircase once was, is a deep and lightless well. But this has allowed for quite convenient ROV entry into Decks A through D.

Recognizable elements of the foyers that surrounded the Grand Staircase are still visible and intact, such as ceiling fixtures and a few carved pillars, as well as oak beams.

The Aft Grand Staircase was summarily decimated, because it was located where Titanic ruptured and broke. 

It should be noted that all of the photos included herein are of Titanic's elder sister, the RMS Olympic. No photos of Titanic's Grand Staircase are known to exist.

Open post

Two New Pennies: Touring Titanic

Two New Pennies: Touring Titanic & the Story of Thomas Millar

The weather was pleasant enough on Wednesday, April 10, 1912.

The region had “a clear night with dry spells; [and] the morning dawned fine with some good spells of sunshine.” Hardly unforeseen in the early springtime, it was still a touch chilly, even in the sunlight.

Titanic had been scheduled to depart at noon. 

Over 900 passengers boarded Titanic that morning, and a skeleton crew had been on board since late March, in preparation for her sea trials. 

This roster included all seven officers—save the newly installed Chief Officer Henry Tingle Wilde, and including the newly former Second Officer David Blair, who had been ousted from the crew to make room for Wilde and had disembarked upon Titanic's docking in Southampton.

But neither the crew nor the passengers were the first to step foot within Titanic.

The ship’s debut had gone all sorts of awry.

Titanic’s maiden voyage had unfortunately already been delayed from its original date of March 20th, owing to her older sister Olympic having sustained damage to her portside propeller shaft in a collision with the H.M.S. Hawke in September of 1911.

Titanic's new departure date of April 10th then found itself in the immediate wake of a prolonged coal miners’ strike, which had begun in February and ended over a month later on April 6, just four days shy of Titanic at last setting sail. 

Furthermore, British transit lines were still severely impacted by the miners’ strike, and along with that came significant shipping delays. 

Titanic had, therefore, not been properly polished on schedule, so to speak, and so her fittings were not complete when they should have been. As Titanic sat docked in Southampton, therefore, she was still in fact receiving her so-called final touches: carpets were still being laid, furniture and potted ferns were still being situated, and in many areas she was still being painted.

Fresh flowers were reportedly brought aboard to mask the pungent scent of the paint and varnish, but it did not seem to help much. For example, Second-Class passenger Winnifred Quick, who was 8 years old when she survived the sinking, recalled that the smell of fresh paint nauseated her so much that on the night of April 14th, her mother had left the door to their room ajar to vent the fumes.

Owing to this delayed work, White Star refrained from the usual publicity-driven grand “Open Day” that it had held for previous vessels, wherein visitors would pay admission to tour the most impressive parts of the new ship, such as the Grand Staircase.

Titanic’s older sister, the RMS Olympic, had successfully hosted such a day back on May 27, 1911, shortly before her sea trials got under way.

Titanic’s crew, however, had done their best.

On Thursday, April 4th, the docked ship was “dressed” in flags and pennants as a “salute” to the people of Southampton in the absence of the tradition Open Day: a veritable "rainbow," wrote Sixth Officer James Moody, that consisted of 220 flags, each of which were set 9 feet apart.

The pageantry remained in place through April 5th, which also happened to be Good Friday.

Titanic had also been unofficially toured by various visitors in both Southampton and its hometown of Belfast, where it had been constructed.

Some of these tourists were illustrious—such as artist Norman Wilkinson, whose painting was hung in the First-Class Smoking Lounge and who Captain Smith was simply too busy to chaperone—and many were unnamed or otherwise covert. 

Per the Belfast News-letter edition dated April 1, 1912, White Star allowed guests of “special invitation” to take a look around the ship on March 30th, shortly before she undertook her sea trials on April 2nd.

“Guests… had the opportunity of inspecting the liner on Saturday last… and naturally this privilege was highly appreciated. The visitors were afforded every possible facility in their tour through the huge vessel.”

Citation Courtesy of the British Newspaper Archive.

Amongst these may have been the children of Thomas Millar.

Thomas Millar was 33 years old in April 1912, and he had labored on both Olympic and Titanic. He’d completed his apprenticeship with Harland & Wolff, and as of the 1911 census, he was noted as a fitter. He reportedly worked to build Titanic’s engines.

Thomas was also a new widower. Three months prior in January 1912, his wife Jennie had died at only 32 years old from pulmonary tuberculosis. Thomas was bereft, and his two young boys were without a mother.

After Jennie passed away, Thomas decided to take to the sea in order to reconstruct life for himself and his sons, named Thomas Jr. And William. He planned to work in New York, or maybe Canada, and carry on with the White Star Line. His sons would be taken care of by their aunt, and sent over in a few months’ time, once Thomas was settled.

So Thomas Millar signed onto Titanic on April 6, 1912, as an assistant deck engineer. It was only his second sea voyage, with the first being a stint on the SS Gothland, which at the time was chartered to the Red Star Line.

And on April 2, 1912, Thomas brought his sons to the dock where Titanic awaited its departure from Belfast.

There, as a special gift, he gave Thomas Jr. and William both two shiny new pennies, and asked them to make a promise: to keep them, until they were reunited. “They are this year’s”, he is reported to have told his boys. “Don’t spend them until I come back. I kept them out of my last wages specially for each of you.”

Later that day, little William Millar watched Titanic pull away from the beach at Boneybefore.

And less than two weeks later, as he played with a paper boat on that same beach, that he saw his older cousin Ella approaching, bearing tragic news.

Thomas Millar died in the sinking. His body, if ever identified, went unrecovered.

The Millar boys, who had only just lost their mother, were now orphaned and impoverished. Thomas Jr. was 11 years old; William was only 5.

They stayed in the custody of their aunt until each were aged 16, supported only by a “pittance” from the funds provided to the surviving families of victims. 

But they, much like their late father, carried on. And neither ever spent their father’s pennies.

Thomas Jr. grew up to work for Harland & Wolff. William, who went by his middle name of Ruddick, became a notable writer and playwright. He died in 1952.

The pennies that Ruddick refused to spend, even as he grew up poor and parentless, now belong to his granddaughter, Susie Millar.

Open post

“We Must Get Them Into the Boats”: Colonel Archibald Gracie IV

"We Must Get Them Into the Boats": Colonel Archibald Gracie IV

Archibald Gracie IV was the All-American sort of American.

He was born in Mobile, Alabama, in January of 1858. At the onset of the American Civil War, his father defied his Unionist family and in 1862, he became a general in the Confederate Army. He was killed while he was looking through a spyglass at Petersburg in 1864, when an artillery shell exploded in front of him.

The young Gracie wasn’t yet 6 years old when his father died, and that same year, was sent to boarding school in New Hampshire. Gracie IV grew up to attend (but not graduate) from West Point and become a colonel in the 7th New York Regiment.

Archibald Gracie IV.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Colonel Gracie ended up on Titanic after a solo trip to Europe to decompress; he had spent 7 years writing a book about the Battle of Chickamauga, which his late father had been in.

Gracie spent his time as one would expect a dapper gentleman of stature to, and we know a great deal about how he occupied himself thanks to his account of the sinking, written shortly after the disaster in 1912.

And did he enjoy himself.

During the first days of the voyage, from Wednesday to Saturday… I had devoted my time to social enjoyment and to the reading of books taken from the ship’s well-supplied library. I enjoyed myself as if I were in a summer place on the sea shore, surrounded with every comfort—there was nothing to indicate or suggest that we were on the stormy Atlantic ocean.

Excerpt from "Titanic: A Survivor's Story," by Archibald Gracie, 1912 (reprinted by Sutton Publishing, 2008.)

During his time on “this floating palace,” Colonel Gracie offered his services to a group of women traveling alone. This was a common practice at the time, to escort unaccompanied ladies to ensure their safety and well-being.

Colonel Gracie also spent a great deal of time with Isidor and Ida Straus, whose story of tragic devotion is easily the most famous of all the couples on board Titanic.

Colonel Gracie and Isidor were both armchair historians, and they made a hobby out of discussing the American Civil War, as they had both been affiliated to the Confederate cause. Gracie lent Isidor a book about Chickamauga—his own book, naturally.

Isidor returned it with gratitude to the Colonel on Sunday, April 14, 1912.

Isidor Straus, taken on February 6, 1906. From the George Grantham Bain Collection, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Gracie was also an esteemed member of an impromptu and exclusive club called “Our Coterie,” a group of seven writers, including Hugh Woolner and Edward Austin Kent, who met every day. It was essentially Titanic’s Finer Things Club.

On Sunday morning, Colonel Gracie spent a concentrated amount of time exercising, and made a point to take advantage of Titanic’s many athletic facilities, including the gymnasium, the racquetball court, and the heated swimming bath. The latter activity clearly caused him some mental anguish as he thought back on the sinking.

When Sunday morning came, I considered it high time to begin my customary exercises… I was up early before breakfast and met the profession racquet player in a half hour’s warming up, preparatory for a swim in the six-foot deep tank of salt water, heated to a refreshing temperature. In no swiming [sic] bath had I ever enjoyed such pleasure before. How curtailed that enjoyment would have been had the presentiment come to me telling how near it was to being my last plunge, and that before dawn of another day I would be swimming for my life in mid-ocean, under water and on the surface, in a temperature of 28 degrees Fahrenheit!

…Such was my morning preparation for the unforeseen physical exertions I was compelled to put forth for dear life at midnight, a few hours later. Could any better training for the terrible ordeal have been planned?

Excerpt from "Titanic: A Survivor's Story," by Archibald Gracie, 1912 (reprinted by Sutton Publishing, 2008.)

This was hardly Colonel Gracie’s only moment of irony within his written narrative. He also wrote of returning a book to the First-Class library, and remarked, "How little I thought that in the next few hours I should be a witness and a party to a scene to which this book could furnish no counterpart."

Gracie was awoken by the collision with the iceberg. He testified to hearing the ship’s steam sound off. He also felt the engines cease, though it was only “slight.”

All through the voyage the machinery did not manifest itself at all from my position in my stateroom, so perfect was the boat. I looked out of the door of my stateroom, glanced up and down the passageway to see if there was any commotion, and I did not see anybody nor hear anybody moving at all; but I did not like the sound of it, so I thought I would partially dress myself, which I did, and went on deck.

I went on what they call the A deck. Presently some passengers gathered around. We looked over the sides of the ship to see whether there was any indication of what had caused this noise. I soon learned from friends around that an iceberg had struck us.

Presently along came a gentleman… who had ice in his hands. Some of this ice was handed to us with the statement that we had better take this home for souvenirs. Nobody had any fear at that time at all.

Colonel Gracie went about assisting people into boats—including the ladies that he had made his special charges—and was witness to some of Titanic's most noted partings, including those of the John Jacob Astor and his pregnant young wife. Gracie was also one of those who tried to persuade Mrs. Straus to part with Isidor and get into a lifeboat, but she refused.

I had heard them discussing that if they were going to die they would die together. We tried to persuade Mrs. Straus to go alone, without her husband, and she said no. Then we wanted to make an exception of the husband, too, because he was an elderly man, and he said no, he would share his fate with the rest of the men, and that he would not go beyond. So I left them there.

Unsurprisingly, Colonel Gracie did not take to a lifeboat.

He spent most the sinking assisting Second Officer Charles Lightoller in filling lifeboats and providing those passengers with blankets.

Gracie was also vital to the launch of the so-called "collapsible" lifeboats, handing over his penknife to help cut the boats free from the roof of the officers quarters. They successfully loosed Collapsibles A, C, and D.

But as they worked frantically on Collapsible B, the bridge dipped; Gracie and his friend, who he had been with for most of the ordeal, moved toward the stern. Caught in the crowd of passengers, the water rushed up to meet them.

Colonel Gracie jumped with the wave and grabbed for the bottom rung of a ladder, and pulled himself onto the roof.

So the ship went down.

And Gracie with it.

Down, down I went: it seemed a great distance. There was a very noticeable pressure upon my ears…

Just at the moment I thought that for lack of breath I would have to give in, I seemed to have been provided a second wind, and it was just then that the thought that this was my last moment came upon me. I wanted to convey the news of how I died to my loved ones at home. As I swam beneath the surface of the ocean, I prayed that my spirit could go to them and say, ‘Goodbye, until we meet again in heaven.’

Finally I noticed by the increase of light that I was drawing near the surface. Though it was not daylight, the clear star-lit night made a noticeable difference in the degree of light immediately below the surface of the water... Looking about me, I could see no Titanic in sight. She had entirely disappeared...

What impressed me at the time that my eyes beheld the horrible scene was a thin light-gray smoking vapor that hung like pall a few feet about the broad expanse of sea that was covered with a mass of tangled wreckage.

Excerpt from "Titanic: A Survivor's Story," by Archibald Gracie, 1912 (reprinted by Sutton Publishing, 2008.)

Gracie grabbed a hold of a wooden crate and found his way to--of all lifeboats--Collapsible B, which had floated away upside down when Titanic's deck was submerged.

By Gracie's estimates, there were approximately a dozen men on top of the capsized boat when he managed to pull himself aboard, and about a dozen followed him. All in all, Gracie guessed there were about 30 on Collapsible B.

The boat was kept afloat by an air pocket that inevitably diminished as their weight bore down and the night wore on; multiple survivors speak of the water washing over them.

No one could move. And it was this precarious situation, as the lifeboat sank deeper, that caused the survivors on Collapsible B to deny other survivors who swam near.

Colonel Gracie turned his head away, lest he be begged and made to refuse. There are reports of men being beaten away with oars. And a report, supported by Gracie and another survivor, that a man who was told off replied with, "All right, boys; good luck, and God bless you."

With the morning came the swell of the sea, and the air pocket within leaked. Second Officer Lightoller, the ad hoc leader of Collapsible B and the highest-ranked officer to survive, arranged for the men to stand and shift their weights to counteract the swells.

By the time they were rescued, the water was up to their knees, and multiple men had died.

The recovery of Collapsible B by the crew of the Mackay-Bennett.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Colonel Gracie had to drag himself into Lifeboat 12 when they pulled up alongside Collapsible B. Per his account, there was a dead man in the boat, whose identity has never been determined. Gracie said that he tried desperately to revive him, but it was in vain.

On board Carpathia under a pile of blankets, Colonel Gracie found his body and legs had been cut; he had, it turned out, also sustained a wound to his head.

He was graciously nursed by other survivors, including Frederic and Daisy Spedden, as well as their son’s nursemaid Elizabeth Burns, who provided him with warm drinks. He made a point of thanking them in his manuscript.

Colonel Gracie testified in the resulting Senate Inquiry and set immediately to write a book about the sinking. It is, as you have seen, extraordinarily detailed. He spent a considerable amount of time performing research, curating peer survivor accounts, and determining who was in each lifeboat.

But however bombastic he seems in his writing, the truth is that Colonel Gracie’s vitality, if not his life, was lost to Titanic. He was a diabetic, and the hypothermia he suffered took a severe toll on his health.

At only 54 years old, Colonel Archibald Gracie died on December 4, 1912.

…The members of his family and his physicians felt that the real cause was the shock he suffered last April when he went down with the ship and was rescued later after long hours on a half-submerged raft. The events of the night of the wreck were constantly on his mind. The manuscript of his work on the subject had finally been completed and sent to the printers when his last illness came. In his last hours the memories of the disaster did not leave him. Rather they crowded thicker

His final request was that he be interred in the same clothes he had worn when Titanic sank.

Colonel Gracie's funeral was widely reported. Multiple Titanic survivors were in mournful attendance, including Jack Thayer, a seventeen-year-old who had also survived the night on the back of Collapsible B.

Col. Archibald Gracie's final wish that he be buried in the clothes he wore
when rescued from the sinking Titanic was carried out when he was laid to
rest in Woodlawn cemetery, New York city [sic], yesterday.

The obsequies were held in Calvary church and among those present to pay the
last tribute were many of his fellow survivors from the doomed liner,
including Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Mrs. Edward W. Appleton, Mrs. J. B. Thayer,
and her son, J. B. Thayer, and Mrs. J. J. Brown.

Colonel Gracie’s last words were, “We must get them into the boats. We must get them all into the boats.”

SOURCE MATERIAL

Open post

“Here, There, and Everywhere”: Chief Designer Thomas Andrews

"Here, There, and Everywhere": Chief Designer Thomas Andrews

As a child, Thomas Andrews, Jr., was fond of horses and beekeeping. He was a competitive cricket player.

And of course, he really enjoyed boats.

Thomas Andrews. Taken on July 7, 1911.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Thomas, who often was called “Tommie”, was 16 years old when he was granted a privileged apprenticeship at Harland & Wolff in 1889. This was convenient, since his uncle was none other than Lord William Pirrie, partner of the firm.

Though Thomas's parents were still, of course, required to pay for the opportunity.

Lord William Pirrie's office at Harland & Wolff, where Thomas Andrews undoubtedly spent time. Taken by Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

During this five-year apprenticeship, Thomas’s daytime hours were spent working in various departments, including the cabinetmakers and draughting office, throughout the firm. And at night, he attended technical college.

In late 1894, he took a proper job at the shipyard; in 1907, he became the managing director of the Draughting Office. Good news, that, as he was engaged to be married.

At the time, Thomas was engaged to Helen Reilly Barbour, who he called Nellie. Apparently, he had proposed to her rather abruptly back in 1906, according to a remorseful letter he sent to her on March 25 of that year. "My dear Nellie," he wrote, "I cannot tell you how much it grieves me to feel that I frightened or gave you any annoyance last night."

Nellie clearly forgave him for his impulsivity, though, and they married in 1908. They had a daughter, nicknamed Elba because of her initials, in 1910.

Thomas with his wife Nellie and daughter Elba. Taken November 29, 1910.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

So it was in 1907, after having been promoted, that Thomas began a new project: a line of triplet luxury liners for the White Star Line, beginning with the R.M.S. Olympic.

The draughting office. Taken by Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Now by the time of this well-earned promotion, "Tommie" was an extremely popular guy in the yard.

Vera Morrison, who is Nellie's daughter from her second marriage, recounted a story her mother had told her of Thomas’s popularity at Harland & Wolff.

He told Nellie when they were driving out of the shipyard one day together that all the workers who were coming out were his mates. He was so very popular and dearly loved, I think, by so many people.

This anecdote goes hand-in-hand with a biography of Thomas Andrews by Shan Bullock, which was published in 1912.

He would share his lunch with a mate, toil half the night in relief of a fellow-apprentice who had been overcome by sickness, or would plunge gallantly into a flooded hold to stop a leakage. “It seemed his delight,” writes a foreman, “to make those around him happy. His was ever the friendly greeting and the warm handshake and kind disposition.” Such testimony is worth pages of outside eulogy, and testimony of its kind, from all sorts and conditions, exists in abundance.

Despite his esteem, tenure, and status at the shipyard, some of Thomas’s suggestions for the White Star superliners—including a minimum of 46 lifeboats and watertight bulkheads reaching up to B Deck—went unheeded.

Deck plans of the R.M.S. Titanic, as used for reference in the Senate Inquiry.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Thomas had been on the maiden voyages of the Adriatic, Oceanic, and Olympic, so the choice to sail on Titanic was routine--so much so that Chief Baker Charles Joughin had a customary loaf of bread made especially for him at the start of each journey.

None of this is to say that Thomas wasn’t enthused about his newest ship. He wrote the following to Nellie while in Southampton.

The Titanic is now about complete and will I think do the old Firm credit tomorrow when we sail.

Henry Etches, a steward who had also worked on Olympic, attended to Thomas’s needs on board, taking him “some fruit and tea” and helping him to dress in his evening wear every night.

“That would be about a quarter or 20 minutes to 7, as a rule,” Etches said. “He was rather late in dressing.”

By all accounts, Thomas spent his time roaming all about the gargantuan ship looking for improvements to be made. He always took down the minutest of details in his notebook, such as an excess of screws in the stateroom hat hooks and the color of the red tiling on the promenade deck being just a touch too dark.

Etches testified to as much at the American inquiry. When asked by Senator Smith if Mr. Andrews had been busy and worked nights, Etches replied as follows.

He was busy the whole time… He had charts rolled up by the side of his bed, and he had papers of all descriptions on his table during the day… He was working all the time, sir. He was making notes of improvements; any improvements that could be made… during the day I met him in all parts, with workmen, going about. I mentioned several things to him, and he was with workmen having them attended to. The whole of the day he was working from one part of the ship to the other… I happened to meet him at different parts of Deck E more often than anywhere else.

According to Etches, he also knew that Thomas visited the boiler rooms, as he saw the suit that he wore when visiting the boilers discarded on Thomas’s bed.

Thomas’s perfectionism and meticulous attention to detail, however, should not be taken as an implication that he was not pleased with Titanic on the whole. He is reported to have said to first-class survivor Albert Dick, whom Thomas had befriended on board, “I believe her to be nearly as perfect as human brains can make her.”

Thomas routinely worked into the late hours, and is reported to have been awake and working at the time of the collision with the iceberg. Immediately thereafter, he was witnessed taking emergency tours of the ship. Per survivor Albert Dick, as reported in Shan Bullock’s biography of Thomas Andrews:

He was on hand at once and said that he was going below to investigate. We begged him not to go, but he insisted, saying that he knew the ship as no one else did and that he might be able to allay the fears of the passengers. He went.

Steward James Johnstone reported that while he was in the dining saloon, he saw Mr. Andrews run down toward the Boiler Room, followed by Captain Smith.

Johnstone said that while he was stuffing four oranges in his pockets, Thomas resurfaced. Johnstone followed him down to E-Deck, where he watched him descend further still to the mail rooms.

When he peered after Thomas running down the stairwell, he saw water flooding in.

Thomas, who was without a hat and had an insufficient coat for the ocean night-chill, was also witnessed personally seeing to getting passengers to wear their lifebelts and enter lifeboats throughout the entire sinking.

Jack Thayer wrote in his account that he and his parents were directly approached by Thomas.

We saw, as they passed, Mr. Ismay, Mr. Andrews and some of the ship’s officers. Mr. Andrews told us he did not give the ship much over an hour to live. We could hardly believe it, and yet if he said so, it must be true. No one was better qualified to know.

Excerpt from "The Sinking of the S.S. Titanic" by Jack Thayer.

Jack's encounter is hardly unique. Given Thomas’s famed congeniality and his apparent omnipresence on the ship, he was highly esteemed by many passengers and was often stopped for a comforting word or further information about what was really going on. He makes appearances in many survivor accounts.

The testimony of Mr. Etches at the Senate Inquiry sheds light on Thomas’s calm but urgent direction to the stewards, as well as attests to his overwhelming concern for the passengers.

[I saw Mr. Andrews at] 20 minutes past 12. He stopped me. I was going along B Deck, and he asked had I waked all my passengers… Mr. Andrews then told me to come down on C Deck with him, and we went down the pantry staircase together. Going down he told me to be sure and make the passengers open their doors, and to tell them the lifebelts were on top of the wardrobes and on top of the racks, and to assist them in every way I could to get them on, which I endeavored to do.

We walked along C Deck together. The purser was standing outside of his office, in a large group of ladies. The purser was asking them to do as he asked them, and to go back in their rooms and not to frighten themselves, but, as a preliminary caution, to put the lifebelts on, and the stewards would give them every attention. Mr. Andrews said: "That is exactly what I have been trying to get them to do," and, with that, he walked down the staircase to go on lower D Deck. That is the last I saw of Mr. Andrews.

Stewardess Mary Sloan likewise was awed by Thomas’s calm and determined selflessness, despite the fact that his face “had a look as though he were heart-broken”.

She said, “He was here, there, and everywhere, looking after everybody… thinking of everybody but himself.”

Stwardess Annie Robinson’s report likewise speaks to Thomas’s drive to protect those on board. After asking her to open up all the unoccupied rooms and distribute their lifebelts and blankets, as well as to make sure all the ladies had left their rooms, he gently chided her for not wearing her own lifebelt. Per the biography of Thomas Andrews written by Shan Bullock, their exchange went like this.

“Did I not tell you to put on your life-belt. Surely you have one?”

She answered, “Yes, but I thought it mean to wear it.”

“Never mind that,” said he. “Now, if you value your life, put on your coat and belt, then walk round the deck and let the passengers see you.”

“He left me then,” writes the stewardess, “and that was the last I saw of what I consider a true hero and one of whom his country has cause to be proud.”

All of his bravery and pro-activity is belied by perhaps the most famous of all Titanic’s oft-called Last Sightings: that of Thomas Andrews, standing mute, dazed, and lifebelt-less at the fireplace of the First-Class Smoking Room.

Starboard view of the First-Class Smoking Room on Olympic. Thomas Andrews was encountered by the fireplace in Titanic's identical room.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

This comes from First-Class Steward John Stewart, who was one of two stewards charged with the Verandah Café. Per the Bullock biography, Stewart’s encounter went thusly.

[Stewart] saw him standing along in the smoking room, his arms folded over his breast and the belt lying on a table near him, "Aren't you going to have a try for it, Mr. Andrews?"

He never answered or moved. "Just looked like one stunned."

Thing is, this wasn’t the last sighting of Thomas Andrews.

And it was never purported to be.

While Thomas was indeed seen in the Smoking Room, the timeline for this particular Last Sighting is just plain off. Stewart stated that he saw Mr. Andrews only minutes before he took to Lifeboat 15, which left the ship at 1:40a.m. The ship did not sink until 2:20a.m.

It’s a heartbreaking moment for sure, but it was never set forth as Thomas’s last moments alive.

In truth, Bullock states directly thereafter that Thomas was seen on deck during Titanic' final few minutes; he was throwing deck chairs and anything else to hand overboard before being washed off the deck. And as per Mess Steward William Fitzpatrick and disclosed by the authors of “On a Sea of Glass,” he was last witnessed being washed off the bridge alongside or nearby Captain Smith.

Thomas's body was never recovered.

On April 19, 1912, the Andrews family in Belfast received the telegram they’d dreaded.

Interview Titanic’s officers. All unanimous Andrews heroic until death, thinking only safety others. Extend heartfelt sympathy to all.

He was 39 years old.

Open post

“When Picked Up Out of the Sea”: First-Class Barber Augustus Weikman

"When Picked Up Out of the Sea": First-Class Barber Augustus Weikman

Augustus Henry Weikman was Philadelphia-born in 1860, and aged 52 when he boarded the RMS Titanic. He and his wife, Mary, had wed in 1884. They had four living children.

Augustus worked as a barber for First-Class passengers, and signed on to work on Titanic directly from his same position on the Olympic. He was evidently very glad for his luck in being assigned to the maiden voyage, as he stated in a telegram to his wife from Southampton.

Augustus Weikman.

PUBLIC DOMAIN (photo taken prior to 1923)

Augustus had been working for the White Star Line since 1892, and he had the distinction of being the oft-reported sole American White Star employee on Titanic.

Mr. Weikman's seniority and skill had distinguished him among the elite passengers of First Class. He reportedly had an excellent rapport with his regular clients, and enjoyed talking about the stock market with Philadelphia millionaire George D. Widener, and even J.P. Morgan. It was reported by the Cleveland Plain Dealer in its April 19, 1912, issue that old J.P. would let no other man attend to him whilst traveling at sea.

J.P. Morgan, circa 1910.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The First-Class barbershop was located only a little ways off the after Grand Staircase, on C-Deck.

It was a pretty nice setup for its specialized services: installed with two swivel chairs and matching sinks, as well as a leather waiting bend and a marble counter. For a shilling, the dapperest of passengers would get a shave, a shampoo, and hairdressing. That shilling, along with any tips paid by happy customers, made for a nice paycheck for Augustus.

The Aft Grand Staircase on R.M.S. Olympic.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The barbershops on Titanic—plural, because there was Second-Class counterpart to the first—also served as little souvenir shops.

It was here that passengers could purchase postcards, tobacco, pens, flags, wallets, chocolates, as well as necessary items such as collars and combs, and a whole array of bric-a-brac, all boasting the White Star logo.

Strung from the ceiling were plenty of little trinkets, including hats, dolls, and penknives.

It’s been speculated that teddy bears might have also been available, as they were quite popular at the time and peer liners such as the rescue ship Carpathia had them available for sale.

Since there was no “stock list,” so to speak, of which sundries were kept in these shops, it’s a lot of reasonable speculation.

The Second-Class barbershop on R.M.S. Olympic. Taken for the White Star Line in the late 1910s.

PUBLIC DOMAIN (Taken prior to 1923)

Very few souvenirs from Titanic’s First-Class barbershop exist, but those that have survived include few engraved spoons, a hat ribbon with “R.M.S. Titanic” on it, and a pin cushion that Fr. Francis Browne bought for his niece while on board from Southampton to Queenstown.

It is a lifebuoy with the Union Jack, the American Flag, and "Titanic" on the ring. In the letter that accompanied it, Fr. Browne wrote that the little gift was “not beautiful, but it may be useful.”

Oh, painful irony.

Match tin souvenir from the R.M.S. Olympic, circa 1911. Courtesy of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The First-Class barbershop was only open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., but Augustus was evidently a night owl, because he testified in his affidavit to the Senate on April 24, 1912, that he was chilling in the barbershop upon Titanic’s collision with the iceberg at 11:40 p.m.

For note, this affidavit is contrasted by Augustus’s report to the North American on April 20, 1912, in which he spun a much more dramatic yarn.

“I had closed my shop," he continued, "and was taking a turn on the promenade. Looking through the windows I could see the passengers in the main saloon playing cards and reading. Suddenly, I was startled to hear the hoarse voice of a lookout command “Port your helm!"

There was a dead silence for a moment and then I felt the vessel lurch slightly and heard the side plates of the ship wrench and scrape. The bell in the engine room then clanged out the signal for reversing the engine, and I knew that we had struck something.

Augustus said that it was only a “slight shock,” but he never the less immediately made his way to A-Deck.

He met Thomas Andrews along the way. When Augustus asked what the damage report was, Thomas is reported to have replied, “My God, it’s serious.”

Augustus made his way to the First-Class gymnasium and found John Jacob Astor and George Widener standing at leisure together, watching men hit at a punching bag. When Augustus suggested to Mr. Widener that he should put on a lifevest, Mr. Widener laughed at him.

"What sense is there in that?" Widener is claimed to have replied. "This boat isn't going to sink."

Augustus later saw the same two men standing together on the deck after they had bid farewell to their wives. This is the last known sighting of either Astor or Widener.

John Jacob Astor, circa 1909.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Augustus spent the sinking assisting women and children into lifeboats, reportedly alongside White Star Chairman J. Bruce Ismay, whose conduct during the sinking--id est, saving himself--Augustus later defended with vehemence.

Because, according to Augustus, "the lifeboats offered no opportunity for the savings of a humble barber," he at some point took the time to go change his clothes and grab a pair of gloves. He said he didn't want to ruin his new uniform.

Augustus appears to have recounted the details of his own rescue a little differently in every contemporary journalistic retelling, but the basics go something like this: he seems to have been washed off his feet by the vertical rising of the deck, and was submerged—possibly against the railing alongside a dozen deckchairs all tethered together.

The Camden Post Telegram reported the following in its May 15, 1912, issue.

The crisis came while I was aiding in getting loose the last collapsible boat," said [Weikman]. "All at once the bow of the Titanic dipped down into the ocean about 500 feet and the stern reared itself in the air about 350 feet. No person under deck at this time had a possible chance to escape, and all on deck were hurled into a jumble in the center of the boat. I was covered with ropes, timbers and chains and while endeavoring to extricate myself could hear the shrieks, yells and moans of the dying. Finally I got loose except for a rope fastened about my foot. This gave me considerable trouble, but I finally got free and began to swim away from the ship.

I had not gone more than fifteen feet when there was an explosion on the boat and I was hurled about 100 feet away from her with a lot of the ship's appliances falling about me. In the wreckage were a dozen or so deck chairs tied together. This fell near me and saved my life.

 

When Augustus resurfaced, he climbed on board the nearby deckchairs and used them as a raft. He stated that if he had hauled himself entirely aboard that the entire thing would have been submerged, so his feet and legs were dangling off of it.

Augustus stated that, while the deck chairs were literal life-savers, that they had struck him when he was thrown into the air. He believed that the blunt force he sustained from them did some damage to his spine.

He saw a lifeboat in the near distance and paddled his way to it with only his hands and his bottom half dragging in the water, because he realized that he would be more likely to be saved the closer he was to it.

As he got closer, it’s reported that someone aboard called out, “Gus, is that you?”

The lifeboat had looked crowded from afar, but when he finally approached, he was surprised to find the opposite. Augustus realized that the crowd had thinned because the lifeboat was several inches underwater and barely floating, so every time the craft lurched, people were thrown into the water and lost to hypothermia.

There were a number of people clinging to ropes on the side as well; when Augustus expressed his surprise that they did not try to pull themselves up and aboard, he found out that they were frozen dead.

There is little discoverable information about which lifeboat this was, but its submersion has led many Titanicophiles to conclude that it had to be Collapsible A, which had been washed off the deck before its side could be pulled up.

Collapsible A was finally approached by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe in Lifeboat 14, and its few survivors suffered from extensive damage to their legs and feet, which Weikman likewise sustained.

Because of the extent of his injuries, the severe cold, and a friendly hit of brandy, Augustus is reported to have passed out and brought up onto Carpathia barely conscious.

Titanic survivors waiting to board Carpathia. From the George Grantham Bain Collection, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

And according to his grandchildren, he was so deeply unconscious and his pulse so faint that he was mistaken for dead.

They say that Augustus's effects, including his watch, were stripped from him, and he woke up in a body bag in the makeshift morgue on board Carpathia. As the story goes, he literally kicked and screamed his way out until someone came to his aid.

While I cannot find any primary source for this story, it is never the less borne out by the fact that Augustus was originally not listed among Titanic survivors.

In fact, his wife was reportedly in the midst of being consoled by neighbors on April 17, 1912, when the miraculous telegram arrived: Augustus Weikman was, against all odds, alive.

Per the Trenton Evening Times, which published an interview with Augustus taken when the Carpathia docked in New York City, “Weikman showed the effects of the terrible experiences through which he had just passed, and at time his talk was almost incoherent.”

Augustus Weikman took quite some time to recover from his injuries; he was confined to a wheelchair, and it was feared he might lose his feet. But he made a full recovery, and his great-grandson has stated that, according to family lore, Augustus used a poultice of chicken manure to regain circulation in his legs.

When Augustus returned to his home in Palmyra, New Jersey, he was celebrated as a hero; his neighbors are reported to have lined the street just to shake his hand as he was wheeled inside his house.

August kept some invaluable mementos of the sinking, including a one-dollar bill that he’d found in his pocket once rescued. He inscribed it thusly.

“This note was in my pocket when picked up out of the sea by ‘S.S. Carpathia’ from the wreck of ‘S.S. Titanic’ April 15th, 1912/A.H. Weikman, Palmyra, N.J.”

As inscribed by Augustus Weikman on the dollar bill he found in his pocket after surviving the sinking of Titanic.

In July of 1912, upon hearing of fundraising for a Titanic memorial by Mrs. John Hays Hammond, Augustus Weikman sent the inscribed dollar bill, enclosed in a letter recounting his experience.

Augustus also treasured his pocket watch, almost lost when he was given up for dead on board the rescue ship, if not for the fact that it was engraved with his initials.

It was stopped forever, as he said, on 1:50 a.m.

Weikman had sworn off the sea in April, but by August of 1912, he was offered the position of Admiral's Barber on Titanic's elder sister Olympic once he had recovered from his injuries. He chose instead to sign on to the Lusitania, which was reported by the New York Times on August 6, 1912.

[Augustus Weikman] is unable to content himself ashore. Mr. Weikman said after his experiences that he would never go to sea again, but he has arranged to resume his old position as chief barber, and will sail from New York on the Lusitania to-morrow.

Mr. Weikman has been traversing the ocean for a number of years, and says that when on land he is like a fish out of water, and it is impossible for him to be content except on the ocean.

"After all,' he said to-night, "an accident like the Titanic's may never occur again, and I think I will risk it, anyway."

Augustus Weikman died on November 7, 1924, in Pennsylvania.

Open post

“In Discouraging Games of Chance”: The First-Class Smoking Room

"In Discouraging Games of Chance": The First-Class Smoking Room

Titanic’s First-Class Smoking Room was a Georgian-style masterwork: all wooden paneling in luscious dark mahogany, every breadth of which was ornately hand-carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. The ceiling was molded with elaborate plaster medallions, and the floors were tiled in an alternating pattern of blue and red. This color scheme has been confirmed via tiles that have been salvaged from the wreck site.

It was designed with an old-school gentleman’s club in mind, because it was exclusively available to men in possession of a first-class ticket. In the warmth of Titanic’s only coal-burning fireplace, Very Important Men could imbibe, gossip, gamble, read—and smoke, of course.

Starboard view of the fireplace in the First-Class Smoking Room on board R.M.S. Olympic, Titanic's elder sister, circa 1912. Taken by Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

From their seats in the upholstered, round club chairs—Titanicophiles speculate this furniture may have been green leather (because Olympic’s were), but more probably burgundy (to better suit the décor)—these fancy men sat around square tables with raised edges, lest drink spillage ruin their evening wear.

And all around, in every periphery and all through the day and evening, large stained-glass windows glowed. These windows, set in impedimented niches, were backlit by electrical lighting.

Alternate view the First-Class Smoking Room on board R.M.S. Olympic, Titanic's elder sister, circa 1911. Taken by William Herman Rau for Harland & Wolff, courtesy of the Library of Congress.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

A drink and good cigar could be ordered in the Smoking Room from a steward working the bar, which according to deck plans, was adjacent to the Smoking Room, behind the white-marble fireplace. The bar closed at half-past 11 p.m., and the Smoking Room itself shuttered at midnight.

A specially commissioned work by Norman Wilkinson called “Plymouth Harbor” was hung above the fireplace, although it’s often been mis-reported that the painting was Wilkinson’s “Approach to the New World,” which was actually housed on the Olympic.

In 1996, Wilkinson’s son created a faithful reproduction of “Plymouth Harbor,” presumably from his father’s notes and/or sketches.

And if the menfolk fancied a change of scenery, a revolving door to the right of the fireplace led into the smoking section of the Verandah Café, also called the Palm Court: a sunlit room with ivy trellises, potted ferns, and wicker furniture, where they could meet their wives or mistresses to take refreshment.

The Palm Court on the R.M.S. Olympic.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The First-Class Smoking Room was also the setting of one of Titanic’s most famous, though misreported, farewells: that of Chief Shipbuilder Thomas Andrews.

Generally speaking, it was a frequently occupied space, by both groups and individual men.  Spencer Silverthorne, for instance, attested to reading in the Smoking Room when Titanic struck the iceberg.

But the Smoking Room was a popular place for more nefarious reasons than reading: it was the haunt of some hardcore card-sharps.

This wasn’t a Titanic-specific phenomenon. In fact, transatlantic liners were plagued with professional gamblers. Bearing this in mind, the following warning was issued alongside Titanic’s passenger manifest.

SPECIAL NOTICE

The attention of the Managers has been called to the fact that certain persons, believed to be Professional Gamblers, are in the habit of travelling to and fro in Atlantic Steamships.

In bringing this to the knowledge of Travelers the Managers, while not wishing in the slightest degree to interfere with the freedom of action of Patrons of the White Star Line, desire to invite their assistance in discouraging Games of Chance, as being likely to afford these individuals special opportunities for taking unfair advantage of others.

The warning was not without merit. Titanic had at least three confirmed conmen on board, all of whom survived. They included Charles Romaine—C. Rolmane on this particular voyage, thanks—who, according the Chicago Tribune on April 19, 1912, was enjoying a highball in the Smoking Room when Titanic struck the iceberg.

I had been standing on the deck. I had become chilled and went inside for a warming drink before going to bed. Suddenly there came the shock, and my first thought was that we had struck a larger cake of ice than usual.

The boat suddenly tilted, so sharply that my highball slid from the table. Then came a cry: ‘We’re sinking,’ and the lights grew dimmer and dimmer and finally went out.

Charles is believed to have survived in Lifeboat 9.

There was also George Brereton, who boarded under the alias “George Brayton” and was staking out his next target in the Smoking Room when the collision happened.

The other confirmed card-sharp on board was Harry “Kid” Homer, who boarded Titanic as a first-class passenger under the alias “E. Haven”. Harry was a pretty notorious criminal by 1912, starting with an arrest in New York back in 1901 “as a dangerous and suspicious character,” when he “was given twenty-four hours to leave that city.”

Later that same year, Harry was arrested in Cincinnati. Then arrested in 1905 in Cleveland, and 1906 in Arkansas. Then in 1908, he appeared in New Orleans.

Per the Time Democrat issued November 24, 1908, “Homer is said to have had his picture in the local rogue's gallery, and has been arrested in various cities in connection with wire-tapping, pocket-picking and other alleged crooked work” at which point Harry insisted that “he had stopped off [in New Orleans] only a few hours while en route to San Antonio, Texas.”

Harry, damn.

Anyway. Harry never divulged details about how he survived the sinking, other than his occupancy in Lifeboat 15.

On May 11, 1912, The Witney Gazette published an article stating that Harry, another conman by the name of Doc Owens, and a third unnamed man were playing cards in the Smoking Room when the collision occurred; thereafter, Doc Owens called on a steward that he’s previously bribed to keep hush about their identities.

[Doc then snuck him] a roll of bank notes, got him to furnish women’s clothing and hats. Dressed in these clothes, the three men hurried to the deck and leaped into a lifeboat filled with women just as it was being lowered.

Afterwards they stripped themselves of the women’s clothes, which they threw overboard. The boat they were in was filled with immigrant women and children, and did not have enough men to work the oars. Accordingly, their assistance was welcomed.

Despite the inclination to vilify petty criminals, this report is contested. Specifically, The New York Times reported on April 18, 1912, that Doc Owens’s presence in the city had been confirmed and that he was not a passenger. According to this same report, neither were other conmen Jimmie Bell and Ernest “Peaches” Jefferys.

Except that Ernest Jefferys was not a criminal at all. And he had, in fact, been on Titanic.

He was socializing with his brother Clifford and brother-in-law Peter when Titanic struck the iceberg, and had died in the sinking. His sister survived, and threatened to sue the Times for their error.

Another criminal, Jay Yates, was reported as having gone down with the Titanic… because he was attempting to fake his own death, being wanted by the police for stealing two grand in postal money orders.

Yates reportedly hired a woman to pose as a survivor and deliver his heartfelt goodbye note to a newspaper office with the following note, as per the Chicago Inter Ocean on April 21, 1912, which reported that  “Jay Yates, gambler, confidence man and fugitive from justice” had gone down with the ship.

You will find note that was handed to me as I was leaving the Titanic.
Am stranger to this man, but think he was a card player. He helped me
Aboard a lifeboat and I saw him help others. Before we were lowered I saw
Him jump into the sea. If picked up, I did not recognize him on the Carpathia.
I do not think he was registered on the ship under his right name.

Jay Yates was arrested in June of 1912 in Baltimore, MD.

The First-Class Smoking Room was decimated in the sinking, being aft of the break and susceptible to complete destruction as the stern spun toward the ocean floor.

Although there are photos of the First-Class Smoking Room on the nearly identical RMS Olympic, no photos of Titanic's Smoking Room are known to exist.

Open post

“Titanic Behaved Splendidly”: Titanic’s Sea Trials

"Titanic Behaved Splendidly": Titanic's Sea Trials

Titanic’s sea trials—when the ship’s many safety features were tested in real time—were scheduled to begin on Sunday, April 1, 1912, but poor weather conditions and a detrimental northwesterly wind caused the trials to be postponed to Monday morning.

Aboard were just over 40 crewmembers. They were compensated an extra five shillings for the delay.

Captain Edward J. Smith.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The roster of officers reporting to Captain Smith for sea trials were as follows.

Chief Officer William McMaster Murdoch

First Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller

Second Officer David Blair

Third Officer Herbert John Pitman

Fourth Officer Joseph Groves Boxhall

Fifth Officer Harold Godfrey Lowe

Sixth Officer James Pell Moody

The four junior officers received telegrams from the White Star marine superintendent to report to the Liverpool offices at 9am on March 26th, to pick up their trains tickets for their trip to Belfast.

They arrived around noon the next day on March 27th and reported on board to Chief Officer Murdoch. Notably, in his deposition later, Fifth Officer Harold Lowe attested to a March 29th arrival.

Fifth Officer Lowe and Sixth Officer Moody were instructed to inspect the totality of starboard-side lifeboats, including the collapsibles. Together, they conducted an inventory of life-saving materials such as oars, sail riggings, and tarp; he also recalled that he noted one empty "bread tank" in each of the lifeboats but none in the collapsible boats, nor emergency lanterns in any of the boats at all.

Captain Edward J. Smith boarded on April 1st, and with him came an officer arrangement that upended the ship's commanding hierarchy. At the last minute, he announced his intention to bring on Henry Tingle Wilde as Chief Officer.

So William Murdoch and Charles Lightoller were both demoted to First and Second Officers, respectively.David Blair was dismissed from command altogether, which safeguarded the remaining junior officers from a reshuffle themselves.

Titanic Chief Officer Henry Tingle Wilde in Royal Naval dress.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

When Former-Second Officer Blair disembarked in Southampton, he disembarked with his keys... including the key to the locker for the Crow’s Nest. This secure cabinet is where implements were housed for the lookouts.

Including binoculars.

George Hogg, a surviving lookout on Titanic, testified to the Senate regarding David Blair's actions as he was set to depart at Southampton, having been dismissed from his duties.

Mr. Blair was in the crow's-nest and gave me his glasses, and told me to lock them up in his cabin and to return him the keys... I locked [the binoculars] up... There were none when we left Southampton.

It is sometimes implied that Blair did this nefariously as some Shakespearean act of revenge due to his dismissal, but in reality, it was industry practice to lock up the binoculars when a ship was docked.

Other accounts state that David Blair took the binoculars with him because they were his own personal pair.

Regardless, Now-Second Officer Lightoller could not provide the lookouts with binoculars. He didn’t think too much of it, as there were other glasses on board somewhere and the lookouts could spot without them, being at such a height as the lookouts were, so he promised to pick up a new pair in New York City.

And that was that.

Charles H. Lightoller, who was demoted to Second Officer on Titanic.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Titanic was the second sibling in a set of triplets; her elder sister, Olympic, underwent her sea trials beginning on May 29, 1911, and ran for two days. They were not without difficulties.

According to Tom McCluskie, a historian for Harland & Wolff, “The extensive sea trials found that there was a number of problems. Chief architect Thomas Andrews himself wrote in his design notebook that Olympic’s hull was observed to “pant.”

As McCluskie describes it, “[Panting] means the hull—instead of being rigidly straight—is going in and out. Now it’s not a vast movement, it’s not going out three, four feet and coming in; it’s a matter only of inches. But really, it shouldn’t do that on a calm sea.”

This discovery led architect Thomas Andrews to implement changes to his nearly identical work-in-progress, Titanic. Per McCluskie, Andrews “made reference to it on the shell drawing which he modified for Titanic to include extra stiffening.”

Sister ships Olympic (close to dock) and Titanic. Taken by Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Despite these changes and the flaws in Olympic that incited them, Titanic only undertook a single day of sea trials.

J. Bruce Ismay, White Star’s chairman, could not attend, nor could Lord William Pirrie owing to a bout of pneumonia. So he sent his nephew, Thomas Andrews—conveniently the ship’s lead designer—in his stead.

Around 6 a.m., Harland & Wolff’s own tug boat, called Hercules because he was mighty strong, arrived and cast the first line aboard Titanic as it slept in its berth. The four tugs assisting Hercules, which were owned by the Alexandra Towing Co.—and named Huskisson, Horby, Herald, and Herculaneum—moved into their positions, and at Hercules’s whistle, the H-Team pulled Titanic to the center of the River Lagan.

Titanic on her way to sea trials accompanied by her fleet of tugs. Courtesy of U.S. N.A.R.A.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The behemoth liner eased her way down the river toward Belfast Lough, escorted by the five tugs. Around noontime, and about two miles off Carrickfergus, the herd of vessels slowed to a stop, and the tugs all dropped their ropes and pulled away.

Boilers were lit one by one, and smoke began to bloom from Titanic’s three functional funnels (the fourth was false, for aesthetical purpose).

Captain Smith ordered the blue-and-white burgee, which is more commonly recognized as a triangular mariner’s flag. This type of burgee, known as Signal Flag A, announced that its ship was undergoing sea trials.

As the water churned at her stern and her dapper burgee clapped above her, Captain Smith ordered a three-blast sounding of Titanic’s horn and her trial-run officially began. As Titanic took its first metaphorical steps, the officials and officers on-board took lunch in the First Class Dining Room to compare notes.

Rear view of Titanic being pulled toward Belfast Lough. Taken by Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Titanic was revved up to nearly 20 knots, then drifted to a stop. Isolated turn maneuvers, such as rudder-only and propeller-only, were performed. The ship’s wheel was ordered “hard over” while Titanic was traversing a straight path, creating a circular path with a diameter of approximately 3,850 yards.

More stopping tests followed, including running right toward a buoy at full speed.

She then traveled about 40 miles toward the Irish Sea, turned about to head back to Belfast Lough, and performed some twisty-turns to port and starboard along the way, and got back home in the evening time.

One more test was then advised by Francis Carruthers, the ship surveyor sent by the British Board of Trade: Anchor up, and anchor down.

Carruthers found Titanic’s performance satisfactory and issued the mandatory certificate to Thomas Andrew and his deputy, Edward Wilding. The ship was officially good for one year to the day.

With the sea trials done and dusted, the crew on board resumed their daily operations. Fifth Officer Harold Lowe set aside some time to write back to his wife, Nellie. He helped himself to a spare menu card from the day, April 2nd, and scrawled on its back along the bottom edge: "first meal ever served on board" and posted it to Nellie.

R.M.S. "Titanic."

April 2, 1912.

Hors D'Ouvre Varies

 

Consomme Mirrette

Cream of Chicken

Salmon

Sweetbreads

Roast Chicken

Spring Lamb, Mint Sauce

Braised Ham & Spinach

Green Peas                                Cauliflower

Bovin & Boiled Potatoes

Golden Plover on Toast

Salad

Pudding Sans Souci

Peaches Imperial

Pastry

Dessert                          Coffee

Later, sworn under oath before the American inquiry of Titanic's sinking, Harold Lowe testified that Titanic did not even reach her full potential for speed during the sea trials. He stated that he believed that she could "easily do 24 or 25 knots,” instead of the 20 knots achieved that day.

Furthermore, in his deposition sworn before the British Consulate General in May of 1912, Harold Lowe attested that "on the trials the Titanic behaved splendidly and manoeuvred very well."

Titanic being pulled toward Belfast Lough. Taken by Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Titanic departed Belfast for Southampton at approximately 8:00pm that evening. She encountered fog in the wee hours of April 3rd, though it dissipated by noon.

And shortly after midnight, on April 4th, another tugboat gang of classical gods and guys—this time Hercules, Neptune, Ajax, Hector, and Vulcan of the Red Funnel line—drew Titanic into Berth 44 at Southampton, where she was "docked by moonlight," per Sixth Officer James Moody.

Titanic would spend the Easter weekend there, waiting for her maiden voyage to begin. James Moody wrote to his older sister Margaret that, at 8:00am on the morning of April 4th, Titanic's crew “hoisted a huge rainbow of flags right over the ship, 220 flags [altogether and] 9 feet apart” to salute the Southampton

There was less than a week to go.

Open post

Launch Day

Launch Day

No, not April 10, 1912.

May 31, 1911, when liner-in-progress SS401 took its first bath.

It seemed that all of Belfast came to witness Titanic's so-called baptism in the River Lagan; some estimate up to 100,000 in the crowd, elbowing for space wherever it could be found. Recall from last year's post about the Harland & Wolff shipyard that the building of any ship, but especially the White Star liners, required the masterwork of thousands of citizens over a period of years. It forged a deeply personal connection, and was an accomplishment for the entire community. It bound them in elation and, less than a year later, in unbridled grief.

It's a challenge to underestimate just much the Titanic meant to Belfast.

As the design and dimensions of the Titanic and the Olympic are practically identical it is not now necessary to say much on this point, seeing that a detailed description of the latter - which would apply equally to her sister ship - has already been published in our columns. The vessels mark a new epoch in naval architecture. In size, construction, and equipment they represent the last word in this science...

Every detail had to be judged with mathematical accuracy if accidents had to be averted, and the preparations had therefore to be made with great care and caution. Over the bows of the vessel the White Star Company's flag floated, and there was displayed a code signal which spelled the word "success". If the circumstances under which the launch took place can be accepted as an augury of the future, the Titanic should be a huge success.

The ceremony was lost on at least one unnamed shipyard worker, though, who was reported to have said of the launch, "We just builds 'em, then shove 'em in."

Admission was sold with a ticket--the proceeds were reportedly donated to two local children's local hospitals, so: right on, Harland & Wolff. Select tickets to the launch survive today. As evidenced by the creases, the tickets all spent some time in their owners' pockets.

Titanic was not complete by any means--just its hull. It had none of its iconic four funnels, and the opulence that we associate with the ship was not yet installed. This was the day that Belfast would see if its newest baby could float.

An inch-thick coat of soft soap, tallow (id est, animal fat), and train engine oil slicked the tracks to allow the Titanic to slide down Slipway 3 into the waters at Belfast Lough, amounting to 23 tons of what must have been truly putrid grease. A daunting 80 tons of cable and multiple anchors were used to moderate the speed.

White Star was not the break-a-champagne bottle-on-the-hull sort of company. But it still knew how to get its pomp on. At least 90 members of the press were in attendance. Shipyard workers were given holiday without pay--unless they were assisting the launch.

Lord Pirrie (left) and J. Bruce Ismay on May 31, 1911, prior to Titanic's launch. Taken by Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

By all accounts, the launch of Titanic could not have been scheduled for a more perfect day, though it was a bit hot for those who couldn't find shade.

Ladies formed a considerable proportion of the aggregate attendance, and even if their picturesque frocks appeared a trifle incongruous when contrasted with the surroundings of the shipyard itself they were unmistakably in harmony with the glow of the soft turquoise sky, from which the piercing rays of the sun descended, making the heat exceedingly trying for those who witnessed the launch.

Company dignitaries and those shipyard workers with ticketed admission took to stands that were built above the crowd. Lord William Pirrie, the Harland & Wolff chairman who was also celebrating a shared birthday with his wife that day, returned from inspecting the hydraulic rams shortly after noontime. At approximately 12:05 p.m., a pair of rockets were fired to warn other crafts in the vicinity. After ascending the stands with White Star chairman J. Bruce Ismay and financier J.P. Morgan, Lord Pirrie finally gave the signal at 12:13 p.m.

Another red rocket was set off.

And as little white flags bearing "Good Luck" shuddered en masse, an exclamation of "There she goes!" echoed in the crowd.

It took a total of 62 seconds for the bow to take the water as the crowd chased its descent, after which the empty hull floated serenely to the other side of the Lagan. From there, five tugboats dragged what would become Titanic to the deep water berth where it would be fitted for its maiden voyage next year.

Titanic launching from the dry dock. By Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

And in the chaos of all this, yes, someone did die.

James Dobbin was what was called an 'old hand'--an established and well-known shipwright about the Yard. On Launch Day, he was assigned to knocking out the wooden support beams as the ship groaned forward. He was cross-sawing one of these shoring timbers when it collapsed and crushed him.

Dobbin was extricated by his colleagues and sent to the Royal Victoria Hospital--and in the company car, no less--where after surgery, he died from his injuries on June 2, 1911, two days following the launch of Titanic. His cause of death was listed by the coroner as "Accidentally crushed under a piece of timber... Shock and haemorrhage following fracture of pelvis."

Jimmy Dobbin was 43, and married. It's reasonably speculated that his wife Rachel and their only child, 17-year-old James, were most likely there that day, witnessing the launch alongside all the rest of Belfast... with no concept of what was happening to Jimmy as Titanic slid away.

And hardly did anyone else. Not Lord Pirrie, who hosted Ismay and Morgan at a private lunch afterward. Not any of the jollymakers celebrating through the day and into the evening. And all the while Titanic bobbed and whispered in its berth, awaiting its engines, its fittings, its crew and its passengers.

From the George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

In 2014, a family photo album containing over 100 before-unknown photos of Titanic and Olympic were auctioned by the family of John Kempster, who was a director and senior engineer at Harland & Wolff; thirteen of those photographs were taken May 31, 1911. On that day, Kempster was acting as the master of ceremonies at one of the celebratory luncheons hosted by Harland & Wolff at Belfast's Grand Central Hotel.

A haunting handwritten caption of the newly discovered photos reads 'Going, going, gone.'

Open post

“It’s a CQD, Old Man”: Distress Signals

"It's a CQD, Old Man": Distress Signals

It's been my experience that those who aren't obsessed feel like Titanic sank passively, in spite of logically understanding that they were, of course, calling for help.

Titanic, like any vessel, was equipped with emergency gear. According to the report issued following the sinking, Titanic carried 36 distress rockets. Second-Class passenger Lawrence Beesley wrote of them in his account of the sinking.

"Up it went, higher and higher, with a sea of faces upturned to watch it, and then an explosion that seemed to split the silent night in two, and a shower of stars sank slowly down and went out one by one. And with a gasping sigh one word escaped the lips of the crowd: 'Rockets!'"

Except from "The Loss of the S.S. Titanic" by Lawrence Beesley.

Rockets meant disaster. As one man testified: "A ship isn't going to fire rockets at sea for nothing." The passengers waiting for lifeboats began to panic.

Although, just for fun, here's Lightoller correcting the British Inquiry (and us).

INQUIRY: Now, then, about signals from your boat. You have rockets on board, have you not? Were they fired?
LIGHTOLLER: You quite understand they are termed rockets, but they are actually distress signals; they do not leave a trail of fire.
INQUIRY: Distress signals?
LIGHTOLLER: Yes. I just mention that, not to confuse them with the old rockets, which leave a trail of fire.

Whatever, Lights.

The color of these DISTRESS SIGNALS is sometimes debated--most say white, some say multicolors. I think the latter is probably just a mis-perception from the falling starburst.

Fourth Officer Boxhall set off the distress signals, at intervals of a few minutes each, next to Lifeboat 1 on the starboard side. He said he didn't count how many--most historians accept eight to ten, maybe a dozen. Fifth Officer Lowe said he was "nearly deafened by them" and though he didn't know at the time who was watching alongside him, he was standing next to White Star Chairman Bruce Ismay.

Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall, who fired Titanic's distress signals.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

No one answered the distress signals. But someone saw them.

James Gibson, apprentice on the Californian, testified to the following.

 I then got the binoculars and had just got them focused on the vessel when I observed a white flash apparently on her deck, followed by a faint streak towards the sky which then burst into white stars.

Yes. There was a ship within miles of Titanic--so close that Captain Smith ordered some lifeboats to row for its lights. And it did nothing.

The Californian should and one day might be its own post, but suffice it to say that everything from hypothetical cold-air mirages to the Californian's passive, overly cautious captain prevented it from rescuing Titanic.

The ships each used Morse lights to try to communicate with each other as the sinking progressed, but results on each end were unclear. The captain's reaction to the aforementioned distress signals was that they were probably frivolous "company signals," and to continue trying to reach the ship with the Morse lights. Because of the aforementioned conditions, each message flickered out by one, appeared un-replied to by the other.

But one rescue component is absent from the Californian's efforts to reach Titanic as she sank: the wireless.

And that was because a) the Californian's captain never ordered that it reach out to the mysterious "large liner" via wireless and b) the wireless operator, Cyril Evans, TURNED HIS FREAKING RADIO OFF and went to bed only minutes before Titanic struck the iceberg.

And yet, the Californian crew was aware Titanic was nearby, because earlier in the night (pre-iceberg), the captain had ordered Evans to send a warning to Titanic, once the Californian itself was stopped by ice for the night.

So Evans did send that warning, his second to Titanic over the course of the evening. But he sent it rather unprofessionally, using language that was reserved for casual chats between operators. Meanwhile, the Senior Marconi Operator on Titanic, Jack Phillips, was overtired and working through an enormous backlog of messages that all had to be sent now that the ship was in range of Newfoundland.

Because of this, Evans was "famously rebuked" by Phillips--a moment that I consider to be chronically misrepresented in a sensationalist attempt to assign blame. But I digress.

So after Jack told Cyril to stop interrupting his work, he just listened in on Titanic's transmissions until about 11:25pm. And then he went to sleep until approximately 3:30 a.m.

Titanic, meanwhile, had struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m.

Junior Marconi Operator Harold Bride, circa 1912.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Jack and Junior Marconi Operator Harold Bride were desperately calling to any ship in proverbial earshot, using the universal distress call "CQD", as well as "SOS". The latter, which was brand new and is so familiar to us today, was not first used by Titanic, despite many rumors. Harold Bride did, however, advised Jack Phillips to use it, joking that it might be their only opportunity to use the newfangled call.

The ships that received and replied to the distress signals included Titanic's sister, Olympic, the Mount Temple, the Frankfurt, the Baltic, the Asian, the Celtic, the Caronia, the Virginian, the Cincinnati, and, of course, the Carpathia.

Illustration of Titanic's wireless and the ships that responded. Originally published on April 17, 1912. Image courtesy of The Atlantic, from The Day Books of Chicago.

PUBLIC DOMAIN (published prior to 1923)

The following are a mere selection of the distress messages sent by Jack Phillips, assisted by Harold Bride. Even in clipped Morse, you can feel the mounting desperation and frustration. As one article recently put it, "It was like trying to organize a rescue by Twitter."

12:17 a.m. CQD CQD SOS Titanic Position 41.44 N 50.24 W. Require immediate assistance. Come at once. We struck an iceberg. Sinking

12:20 a.m. Come at once. We have struck a berg. It's a CQD, old man. Position 41.46 N 50.14 W

12:26 a.m. Yes, come quick!

12:40 a.m. SOS Titanic sinking by the head. We are about all down. Sinking. . .

1:10 a.m. We are in collision with berg. Sinking Head down. 41.46 N. 50.14 W. Come soon as possible

1:10 a.m. Captain says, “Get your boats ready. What is your position?”

1:27 a.m., when Olympic asked, "Are you steering southerly to meet us?" We are putting the women off in the boats

1:30 a.m. We are putting passengers off in small boats

1:30 a.m. Women and children in boats, can not last much longer

1:35 a.m Engine room getting flooded

1:45 a.m. Come as quickly as possible old man: our engine-room is filling up to the boilers

1:50 a.m., when Frankfurt asked, "What is the matter with u?" You are a fool, stdbi - stdbi - stdbi and keep out

Sometime between 2:15 a.m. and 2:20 a.m., this last message is caught SOS SOS CQD CQD Titanic. We are sinking fast. Passengers are being put into boats. Titanic

© Caption.

Calls from Titanic were crackled and broken as power was diminished and inevitably lost, but Phillips kept at it. Phillips and Bride remained at their posts until water was flooding the wheelhouse nearby--yes, the last possible second, and well after Captain Smith had ordered them to abandon their posts.

Distress signal to S.S. Birma.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Even when the two Marconi operators knew--better than anyone else--that there was NO hope of a ship reaching Titanic in time, it was reported by a station officer that there was "never a tremor" in Phillips' Morse transmissions as Titanic went down.

Harold Bride survived the sinking. Jack Phillips did not.

Jack Phillips, Senior Marconi Operator on Titanic.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

It was the sudden silence of Titanic's wireless radio that clued in New York Times editor Carr Van Anda that something was gravely wrong. While other papers hedged, the New York Times headline on April 15, 1912, announced what no one wanted to: Titanic was gone.

New York Times dated April 15, 1912.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Open post

First-Class Athletic Facilities

FOR THE ATHLETICALLY INCLINED: First-Class Gym Facilities

Titanic's gymnasium was accessible from the boat desk, adjacent to the second funnel. It was outfitted with elaborate equipment, especially during an era in which exercise was more of a hobby, or a quaint way to pass some time.

It would seem that prior to sail, it was open for exploration by both genders and other classes of passengers. But once Titanic departed Queenstown, it was a first-class exclusive, and was used separately by ladies and gentlemen.

The gym was the domain of Thomas McCawley, a spry moustache master always seen at his post, and always wearing his white flannels and plimsolls (canvas athletic shoes), the primmest and dapperest Edwardian fitness instructor you could ever imagine.

Colorized version of photo of Titanic's gymnasium, taken by Robert John Welch for Harland & Wolff.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The gym was available for a shilling a ticket, which would be paid, of course, to Chief Purser Hugh McElroy prior to use, and would be good for one session.

The gym was exclusive to the ladies from 9am to noon, children 1pm to 3pm, and the men 2pm to 6pm. Tom McCawley was said to be precise to the minute in opening the gym for these scheduled shifts.

The gymnasium was equipped with punching bags, Indian clubs, stationary bicycles with giant red meters for monitoring one's progress, a rowing machine, and mechanical horses. It was also installed with an "electric camel", which mimicked the back-and-forth motion of a camel ride when sat upon, and which was lauded as "good for the liver."

Lawrence Beesley, a second-class passenger, on the stationary bicycles with an unnamed friend. originally published in London Illustrated News, April 20, 1912.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

There was a racquetball court presided over by instructor Frederick Wright on G Deck with an entrance on D Deck, and an observation gallery on F Deck. That would set you back two shillings for one half-hour of play.

Titanic also boasted Turkish baths, which offered massages, shampoos, and electric baths. The central feature was the Cool Room, and it was decorated in a lavish Arabic style--all teak wood, green and blue tiles, a marble fountain, and a scarlet ceiling with guilded beams and hanging lanterns. It was littered with lounges, folding chairs, and Damascus tables.

In 2005, they rediscovered the Cool Room in a remarkably preserved state. Because it had flooded early on, and its location was deeper inside the ship, it was largely protected from damage when the bow crashed into the seabed. And because it's so far within the ship, hungry microorganisms can't really get at it, so the woodwork, stained glass windows, and even the recliners are still recognizable.

Illustration of the Cool Room of the Turkish Baths on R.M.S. Olympic, which was Titanic's elder sister.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

To most people, the most delightfully ironic of Titanic's fitness features was a heated saltwater swimming pool, (or "bath," as they referred to it).

It was 30x14ish feet and was tiled in blue and white. It also had a marble staircase descending into the water; this was because the water was 3 feet below the lip of the pool, to try to prevent water from sloshing out with the motion of the ship. There were shower stalls and changing cubicles along its side.

Swimming pool of the R.M.S. Olympic, which can be discerned from Titanic's due to the presence of a diving board.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The swimming bath was open only to First Class, of course; the use of a swimming suit was included in the fee of a shilling.

It was the second of its kind ever put to sea; the first was that of RMS Olympic, and the only notable difference between it and Titanic's was that Olympic's swimming bath had a diving board, while Titanic's was absent of the same. This was decided upon because the sloshy water made the diving end shallower than it appeared, and it caused a hazard to passengers.

First-Class survivor Colonel Archibald Gracie used the swimming bath to his great enjoyment. He took a refreshing swim on the morning of April 14, 1912--and later mused upon the irony of the same, stating he probably wouldn't have enjoyed it so much if he had known the next swim he was about to take.

Archibald Gracie IV, Titanic survivor who used the swimming bath on April 14, 1912.

PUBLIC DOMAIN

The swimming bath was across the hall from the Turkish baths, but within the wreck, it is blocked by a watertight door. Given the relatively immaculate state of the Turkish baths, it is assumed the pool is in similarly excellent shape.

The gymnasium was a central location during the sinking; many people who rushed to the boat deck found themselves too cold while waiting for lifeboats, and crowded into the gymnasium for warmth.

It was here that John Jacob Astor was witnessed slitting open a life-vest with his penknife, to reassure his young wife about the buoyancy of cork. A few passengers peddled on the stationary bikes to keep warm.

And the entire time, Mr. McCawley manned his post. When asked about a life-vest, he declined to wear one; he insisted it would inhibit his swimming once the ship went down.

Thomas McCawley died in the sinking. He was 36 years old.

SOURCE MATERIAL

[ital]

Posts navigation

1 2 3
Scroll to top