Among the men, conversation centred on the accident and the responsibility for it. Many expressed the belief that the Titanic, in common with other vessels, had had warning of the ice packs, but that in the effort to establish a record on the maiden run sufficient heed had not been paid to the warnings. The failure of the safety compartments, said to have been closed from the bridge directly after the accident, was the occasion of amazement, and one theory offered was that the doors had, for some reason, not closed in the usual manner. Others contended that these devices are, at best, but time-savers, and said that without them the Titanic would have gone under before three boats could have been lowered.
THE OFFICERS’ REQUIREMENTS DISCUSSED.
The requirement that the officers on the bridge should take temperatures of the water every fifteen minutes to indicate the approach of ice was also discussed.
As to the behavior of officers and crew, not a word of complaint was heard from the men. They were praised as worthy Britons and true seamen. In the same breath the survivors exalted the heroism of the missing men of the first cabin, who had stood calmly waiting for their turn—the turn which, because of scarcity of boats and shortness of time, never came for most of them.
“God knows I’m not proud to be here!” said a rich New York man. “I got on a boat when they were about to lower it and when, from delays below, there was no woman to take the vacant place. I don’t think any man who was saved is deserving of censure, but I realize that, in contrast with those who went down, we may be viewed unfavorably.” He showed a picture of his baby boy as he spoke.
As the day passed, the fore part of the ship assumed some degree of order and comfort, but the crowded second cabin and decks gave forth the incessant sound of lamentation. A bride of two months sat on the floor and moaned her widowhood. An Italian mother shrieked the name of her lost son.
A girl of seven wept over the loss of her Teddy Bear and two dolls, while her mother, with streaming eyes, dared not tell the child that her father was lost, too, and that the money for which their home in England had been sold had gone down with him. Other children clung to the necks of the fathers who, because carrying them, had been permitted to take the boats.
At 4 P. M. Monday the service for the dead was read by Father Roger Anderson, of the Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross, over the bodies of three seamen and one man, said to have been a cabin passenger, who were dead from exposure when received on this ship. Some of the Titanic’s passengers turned away from the rail as the first of the weighted forms fell into the water.
The Titans