Out on Deck A, port side, towards the stern, many men and women had already collected. I sought and found the unprotected ladies to whom I had proffered my services during the voyage when they boarded the ship at Southampton, Mrs. E. D. Appleton, wife of my St. Paul’s School friend and schoolmate; Mrs. R. C. Cornell, wife of the well-known New York Justice, and Mrs. J. Murray Brown, wife of the Boston publisher, all old friends of my wife. These three sisters were returning home from a sad mission abroad, where they had laid to rest the remains of a fourth sister, Lady Victor Drummond, of whose death I had read accounts in the London papers, and all the sad details connected therewith were told me by the sisters themselves. That they would have to pass through a still greater ordeal seemed impossible, and how little did I know of the responsibility I took upon myself for their safety! Accompanying them, also unprotected, was their friend, Miss Edith Evans, to whom they introduced me. Mr. and Mrs. Straus, Colonel and Mrs. Astor and others well known to me were among those here congregated on the port side of Deck A, including, besides Clinch Smith, two of our coterie of after-dinner companions, Hugh Woolner, son of the English sculptor, whose works are to be seen in Westminster Abbey, and H. Björnström Steffanson, the young lieutenant of the Swedish army, who, during the voyage, had told me of his acquaintance with Mrs. Gracie’s relatives in Sweden.
It was now that the band began to play, and continued while the boats were being lowered. We considered this a wise provision tending to allay excitement. I did not recognize any of the tunes, but I know they were cheerful and were not hymns. If, as has been reported, “Nearer My God to Thee” was one of the selections, I assuredly should have noticed it and regarded it as a tactless warning of immediate death to us all and one likely to create a panic that our special efforts were directed towards avoiding, and which we accomplished to the fullest extent. I know of only two survivors whose names are cited by the newspapers as authority for the statement that this hymn was one of those played. On the other hand, all whom I have questioned or corresponded with, including the best qualified, testified emphatically to the contrary.
Our hopes were buoyed with the information, imparted through the ship’s officers, that there had been an interchange of wireless messages with passing ships, one of which was certainly coming to our rescue. To reassure the ladies of whom I had assumed special charge, I showed them a bright white light of what I took to be a ship about five miles off and which I felt sure was coming to our rescue. Colonel Astor heard me telling this to them and he asked me to show it and I pointed the light out to him. In so doing we both had now to lean over the rail of the ship and look close in towards the bow, avoiding a lifeboat even then made ready with its gunwale lowered to the level of the floor of the Boat Deck above us and obstructing our view; but instead of growing brighter the light grew dim and less and less distinct and passed away altogether. The light, as I have since learned, with tearful regret for the lost who might have been saved, belonged to the steamer Californian of the Leyland line, Captain Stanley Lord, bound from London to Boston. She belonged to the International Mercantile Marine Company, the owners of the Titanic.
This was the ship from which two of the six “ice messages” were sent. The first one received and acknowledged by the Titanic was one at 7.30 p. m., an intercepted message to another ship. The next was about 11 p. m., when the Captain of the Californian saw a ship approaching from the eastward, which he was advised to be the Titanic, and under his orders this message was sent: “We are stopped and surrounded by ice.” To this the Titanic’s wireless operator brusquely replied, “Shut up, I am busy. I am working Cape Race.” The business here referred to was the sending of wireless messages for passengers on the Titanic; and the stronger current of the Californian eastward interfered therewith. Though the navigation of the ship and the issues of life and death were at stake, the right of way was given to communication with Cape Race until within a few minutes of the Titanic’s collision with the iceberg.
Nearly all this time, until 11.30 p. m., the wireless operator of the Californian was listening with ’phones on his head, but at 11.30 p. m., while the Titanic was still talking to Cape Race, the former ship’s operator “put the ’phones down, took off his clothes and turned in.”
The fate of thousands of lives hung in the balance many times that ill-omened night, but the circumstances in connection with the S. S. Californian (Br. Rep. pp. 43-46), furnish the evidence corroborating that of the American Investigation, viz., that it was not chance, but the grossest negligence alone which sealed the fate of all the noble lives, men and women, that were lost.
It appears from the evidence referred to, information in regard to which we learned after our arrival in New York, that the Captain of the Californian and his crew were watching our lights from the deck of their ship, which remained approximately stationary until 5.15 a. m. on the following morning. During this interval it is shown that they were never distant more than six or seven miles. In fact, at 12 o’clock, the Californian was only four or five miles off at the point and in the general direction where she was seen by myself and at least a dozen others, who bore testimony before the American Committee, from the decks of the Titanic. The white rockets which we sent up, referred to presently, were also plainly seen at the time. Captain Lord was completely in possession of the knowledge that he was in proximity to a ship in distress. He could have put himself into immediate communication with us by wireless had he desired confirmation of the name of the ship and the disaster which had befallen it. His indifference is made apparent by his orders to “go on Morseing,” instead of utilizing the more modern method of the inventive genius and gentleman, Mr. Marconi, which eventually saved us all. “The night was clear and the sea was smooth. The ice by which the Californian was surrounded,” says the British Report, “was loose ice extending for a distance of not more than two or three miles in the direction of the Titanic.” When she first saw the rockets, the Californian could have pushed through the ice to the open water without any serious risk and so have come to the assistance of the Titanic. A discussion of this subject is the most painful of all others for those who lost their loved ones aboard our ship.
When we realized that the ship whose lights we saw was not coming towards us, our hopes of rescue were correspondingly depressed, but the men’s counsel to preserve calmness prevailed; and to reassure the ladies they repeated the much advertised fiction of “the unsinkable ship” on the supposed highest qualified authority. It was at this point that Miss Evans related to me the story that years ago in London she had been told by a fortune-teller to “beware of water,” and now “she knew she would be drowned.” My efforts to persuade her to the contrary were futile. Though she gave voice to her story, she presented no evidence whatever of fear, and when I saw and conversed with her an hour later when conditions appeared especially desperate, and the last lifeboat was supposed to have departed, she was perfectly calm and did not revert again to the superstitious tale.
