The Titanic, carrying 2,201 souls, left Southampton punctually at noon on April 10th. There was no departure ceremony. On her way from dock she passed the Majestic and the Philadelphia, both giants of twenty years ago and now by contrast with Leviathan humbled to the stature of dwarfs. About a mile down the water she passed Test Quay, where the Oceanic and the New York lay berthed. Her wash caused the New York to break her moorings and drift into the Channel. As the Titanic was going dead slow danger of a collision was soon averted, “but,” as Andrews wrote that evening, “the situation was decidedly unpleasant.”
From Cherbourg he wrote again to Mrs. Andrews: “We reached here in nice time and took on board quite a number of passengers. The two little tenders looked well, you will remember we built them about a year ago. We expect to arrive at Queenstown about 10.30 a.m. to-morrow. The weather is fine and everything shaping for a good voyage. I have a seat at the Doctor’s table.”
One more letter was received from him by Mrs. Andrews, and only one, this time from Queenstown, and dated April 11th. Everything on board was going splendidly, he said, and he expressed his satisfaction at receiving so much kindness from everyone.
Here all direct testimony ceases. Proudly, in eye of the world, the Titanic sailed Westward from the Irish coast; then for a while disappeared; only to reappear in a brief scene of woefullest tragedy round which the world stayed mute. If, as is almost certain, a chronicle of the voyage was made by Andrews, both it and the family letters he wrote now are gone with him. But fortunately, we have other evidence, plentiful and well-attested, and on such our story henceforward runs.
The steward, Henry E. Etches, who attended him says, that during the voyage, right to the moment of disaster, Andrews was constantly busy. With his workmen he went about the boat all day long, putting things right and making note of every suggestion of an imperfection. Afterwards in his stateroom, which is described as being full of charts, he would sit for hours, making calculations and drawings for future use.
Others speak of his great popularity with both passengers and crew. “I was proud of him,” writes the brave stewardess, Miss May Sloan, of Belfast, whose testimony is so invaluable. “He came from home and he made you feel on the ship that all was right.” And then she adds how because of his big, gentle, kindly nature everyone loved him. “It was good to hear his laugh and have him near you. If anything went wrong it was always to Mr. Andrews one went. Even when a fan stuck in a stateroom, one would say, ‘Wait for Mr. Andrews, he’ll soon see to it,’ and you would find him settling even the little quarrels that arose between ourselves. Nothing came amiss to him, nothing at all. And he was always the same, a nod and a smile or a hearty word whenever he saw you and no matter what he was at.”
Two of his table companions, Mr. and Mrs. Albert A. Dick, of Calgary, Alberta, also tell how much they came to love Andrews because of his character, and how good it was to see his pride in the ship, “but upon every occasion, and especially at dinner on Sunday evening, he talked almost constantly about his wife, little girl, mother and family, as well as of his home.”
This pre-occupation with home and all there, was noticed too by Miss Sloan. Sometimes, between laughs, he would suddenly fall grave and glance, you might say, back over a shoulder towards Dunallan and Ardara far off near Strangford Lough.
“I was talking to him on the Friday night as he was going into dinner,” writes Miss Sloan, in a letter dated from the Lapland on April 27th. “The dear old Doctor[4] was waiting for him on the stair-landing, and calling him by his Christian name, Tommy. Mr. Andrews seemed loth to go, he wanted to talk about home; he was telling me his father was ill and Mrs. Andrews not so well. I was congratulating him on the beauty and perfection of the ship; he said the part he did not like was that the Titanic was taking us further away from home every hour. I looked at him and his face struck me as having a very sad expression.”
One other glimpse we have of him, then in that brief time of triumph, whilst yet the good ship of his which everyone praised was speeding Westwards, “in perfectly clear and fine weather,” towards the place where “was no moon, the stars were out, and there was not a cloud in the sky.”[5] For more than a week he had been working at such pressure, that by the Friday evening many saw how tired as well as sad he looked: but by the Sunday evening, when his ship was as perfect, so he said, as brains could make her, he was himself again. “I saw him go in to dinner,” said Miss Sloan, “he was in good spirits, and I thought he looked splendid.”