Tardy Answer to Telephone Call—Lookout’s Signals Not Answered—Ship Could Have Been Saved—Three Fatal Minutes—Ismay Accused—Women Help With Oars—Ship Broken in Two—Band Played Till Last.
The trifle of a telephone call hardly answered sent the Titanic to the bottom of the Atlantic, occasioned the greatest marine disaster in history and shocked all civilized nations.
This, at least, is the tale told by sailors of the ill-starred Titanic, brawny seamen who only lived to tell it because it happened in the line of their duty to help man the boats into which some of the Titanic’s passengers were loaded.
But the telephone call that went unanswered for probably two or three minutes, none can tell the exact time, was sent by the lookout stationed forward to the first officer of the watch on the bridge of the great liner on the maiden voyage.
The lookout saw a towering “blue berg” looming up in the sea path of the Titanic, the latest and proudest product of marine architecture, and called the bridge on the ship’s telephone.
When after the passing of those two or three fateful minutes an officer on the bridge of the Titanic lifted the telephone receiver from its hook to answer the lookout it was too late. The speeding liner, cleaving a calm sea under a star-studded sky, had reached the floating mountain of ice, which the theoretically “unsinkable” ship struck a crashing, if glancing, blow with her starboard bow.
Had the officer on the bridge, who was William T. Murdock, according to the account of the tragedy given by two of the Titanic’s seamen, known how imperative was that call from the lookout man, whose name was given as Fleet, the man at the wheel of the world’s newest and greatest transatlantic liner might have swerved the great ship sufficiently to avoid the berg altogether or at the worst would have probably struck the mass of ice with her stern and at much reduced speed.
For obvious reasons the identity of the sailormen who described the foundering of the Titanic cannot be divulged. As for the officer, who was alleged to have been a laggard in answering the lookout’s telephone call, harsh criticism may be omitted.
Murdock, if the tale of the Titanic sailor be true, expiated his negligence, if negligence it was, by shooting himself within sight of all alleged victims huddled in lifeboats or struggling in the icy seas.