When the RMS Titanic disappeared beneath the dark waves of the North Atlantic in the wee hours of April 15, 1912, it left many mysteries in its wake. One of the most puzzling, even now, is the behavior of the passengers and the crew. Why did so many people on board act so calmly when more than 1,500 of them would die within hours?
The short answer: No one knew, when they were first summoned to the bridge around midnight on that clear, cloudless night, that the unthinkable would happen: that there were about half the number of lifeboats in rescue needed. Or that the ship visible in the distance would never arrive. Or that the famous monster of a ship would actually sink.
Granted, some panic would ensue in time – especially as lifeboats became scarce, the ship began to noticeably tilt, and anything that wasn’t nailed down became a high-speed projectile. But while popular films and other dramatizations of the disaster played out isolated incidents of chaos and cowardice, most survivors told a different story.
“There was no commotion, no panic, and no one seemed particularly scared,” Passenger First Class Eloise Smith testified at a US Senate hearing into the disaster. “I didn’t have the slightest suspicion of the scarcity of lifeboats, or I should never have left my husband.
“I watched the boats on the starboard side as they filled and lowered successively,” Washington Dodge, a medic, reported. “At no time during this period was there panic, signs of fear or unusual alarms. I saw neither woman nor child cry, nor any evidence of hysteria… ”
Even the survivors who remained on the Titanic after the last lifeboats pulled out and quickly found themselves in the icy water, in awe of what they saw. Charles Lightoller, the most senior crew member to survive, was in charge of loading the lifeboats on the port side. “There was no pushing, pressure or congestion,” he said during a British investigation. “The men have all refrained from asserting their strength and pushing back the women and children. They couldn’t have been quieter if they had been to church.
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Women and children loaded into lifeboats during the great Titanic disaster on April 14, 1912 (Bettmann Archive / Getty Images)
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A disaster in slow motion
The almost leisurely pace with which events unfolded during the final hours of the Titanic may offer a clue to the calm. The Titanic grazed the fatal iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, creating what is now believed to be a series of punctures below the waterline. Many of the passengers were in bed at the time, and few survivors said they noticed anything other than a slight vibration, or even that. When the flight attendants finally came knocking on the door to wake the passengers up and suggest they get dressed and get on deck, that was the first clue most of them had that something was wrong.
It was not until 12:05 p.m. that the crew began to discover the lifeboats, and 40 minutes passed before the first lifeboat descended. At the same time, 12:45 p.m., the crew began firing rockets. Long-time travelers would have recognized this as a serious distress signal, but less experienced ones might not have.
The crew continued to load passengers into lifeboats until the last one descended at 2:05 am. Fifteen minutes later, the Titanic was gone.
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A telegram transmitted from the RMS Titanic to the SS Birma on April 15, 1912, stating: “We hit a rapidly sinking iceberg, come to our aid. (Credit: The Print Collector / Getty Images)
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A state of disbelief
Throughout the loading of the lifeboats, the atmosphere on the deck remained almost eerily calm, according to the accounts of the survivors. “We stood there quietly watching the crew work as they piloted the lifeboats, and no one dared to interfere with them,” recalls Second Class passenger Lawrence Beesley. “The crowd of men and women stood quietly on the deck or paced slowly, awaiting orders from the officers.
That said, there have been several credible reports of men jumping into boats before being ordered by the ship’s officers. An officer fired at least three times with a pistol to maintain order, but then insisted that he had not shot anyone. Some accounts from survivors have reported more gunshots and even multiple murders, but these claims have never been proven.
One of the reasons for the general calm is that the crew deliberately minimized the danger to avoid panic. Lightoller, for example, assured passengers that the lifeboats were lowered just as a precaution and that a rescue ship was already visible just a few miles away. (It was likely the Californian, whose apparent inability to respond to distress calls from the Titanic is another lingering mystery.)
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The Titanic group also did their part, playing happy tunes almost until the very end, survivors reported.
Many others simply seem to have been in denial. Even after learning the ship was sinking, flight attendant Violet Jessop recalled, “My mind, usually adaptable to sudden and unforeseen events, couldn’t accept the fact that this super perfect creation had to do such a futile thing. than the sink.
Passenger First Class Elizabeth W. Shutes recalled that she and her fellow lifeboat occupants wanted to stay close to the Titanic. “We all felt a lot safer near the ship,” she wrote. “Such a ship certainly could not sink. I thought the danger had to be exaggerated and we could all be brought back on board.
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Passenger Beesley, who published a book just weeks after the disaster, argued that while the world now knows how the story of the Titanic ended, the actual participants in the disaster cannot. They relied on the little information they had and many were wrong about optimism. Even “after getting on the lifeboats,” he wrote, “it wouldn’t have surprised us to hear that all the passengers would be saved.
Passenger Archibald Gracie, who published an account of the disaster in 1913, offered another explanation – one that appears to have been widely accepted then, as racist as it sounds today. “The coolness, courage and sense of duty I witnessed here made me grateful to God and proud of my Anglo-Saxon race who gave this superb and perfect demonstration of self-control at this time. most severe test, ”he wrote.
Gracie’s perspective was reinforced by eyewitness accounts of how John Jacob Astor, one of the richest men in the world, had handled death. According to several survivors, Astor put his pregnant young wife in a lifeboat, politely asked her if he could accompany her, and when told only women were allowed, he simply backed away with the rest. men. He died in the shipwreck.
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The lifeboats descended into the water when the Titanic sank. (Credit: Carl Simon / United Archives / Universal Images Group / Getty Images)
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What about executive passengers?
While the accounts of survivors provide a fairly consistent picture of events on the upper decks, much less is known about what went on lower in the ship, where the third-class, or executive, passengers were housed, and where many remained until the end. Few third-class passengers left written accounts or were called to testify in the UK or US inquiries. And many more of them died. Of the 165 women in the third class, for example, only 76, or 46 percent, survived. Of the 237 first or second class women, 220, or nearly 93 percent, survived.
The White Star Line insisted that third-class passengers were not intentionally restrained from the upper decks, where they might have had a chance of surviving. Some defenders of the line said passengers were afraid to leave the large ship or go without their belongings, which were often all they had in the world. Others blamed the language barrier, which made it difficult for many immigrants on board to understand crewmembers’ instructions or read the Titanic’s signage and navigate the ship. Subsequent investigators also noticed the poor preparation of much of the crew, who, for example, had never performed more than a symbolic rescue exercise during the trip.
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Famous Titanic historian Walter Lord came to a harsher conclusion The night goes on, the 1986 sequel to his 1955 classic, A night to remember. While the line may have had “no established policies” of class discrimination, he wrote, testimonies during the inquiries “clearly showed that men in management were being held back and women were being held back. which was equivalent to an hour of handicap in the race for the boats. ”
As is often the case, the less fortunate not only suffered disproportionately, but had fewer opportunities to make their story known for history.
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