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.

THE “UNWRITTEN LAW” OF THE SEA.

The revolver which the sailors say snuffed out Murdock’s life was not the only weapon that rang out above the shrieks of the drowning. Officers of the Titanic, upon whom devolved the duty of seeing that the “unwritten law” of the sea—“women and children first”—was enforced, were, according to the recital of the members of the great liner’s crew, forced to shoot frenzied male passengers, who, impelled by the fear of death, attempted to get into the lifeboats swinging from their davits.

The sailors’ account of the terrific impact of the Titanic against the berg that crossed the path was as follows:

“It was 11.40 P. M. Sunday, April 14. Struck an iceberg. The berg was very dark and about 250 feet in height.

“The Titanic struck the berg a glancing blow on the starboard bow. The ship, which was traveling between twenty and twenty-three knots an hour, crashed into the berg at a point about forty feet back of the stem.

“The Titanic’s bottom was torn away to about fore bridge. The tear was fully fifty feet in length and was below the water line.”

Regarding the state of the sea and the character of the night the sailors declared:

“It was a perfect night, clear and starlight. The sea was smooth. The temperature had dropped to freezing Sunday morning. We knew or believed that the cold was due to the nearness of bergs, but we had not even run against cake ice up to the time the ice mountain loomed up. The Titanic raced through a calm sea in which there was no ice into the berg which sank her.”

Continuing, their joint account the two men of the Titanic’s crew further said:

“The first officer of the watch was Murdock. He was on the bridge. Captain Smith may have been near at hand, but he was not visible to us who were about to wash down the decks. Hitchens, quartermaster, was at the wheel. Fleet was the outlook.”

It is characteristic of sailors that they make no effort to learn the baptismal names of a ship’s officers.

“Fleet reported the berg, but the telephone was not answered on the bridge at once. A few minutes afterwards the telephone call was answered, but it was too late.

THE SHIP HAD STRUCK.

“The ship had struck. Murdock, after the ship struck the berg, gave orders to put helm to starboard, afterwards he ordered the helm hard to port and the ship struck the berg again.

“Afterwards Murdock gave an order for the carpenter to sound the wells to learn how much water the ship was taking in. The carpenter came up and told Murdock the Titanic had seven feet of water in her in less than seven minutes.”

Keeping on with their narrative the sailors, whose nerves had not been broken by their experiences declared:

“Then Captain Smith, who had put in an appearance, gave orders to get the boats ready.

“There was less than ten minutes between the time the Titanic first struck the berg and the second crash, both of which brought big pieces of ice showering down on the ship.

“Orders came to the crew to stand by the boats. The boats were got out. There were twenty-two boats all told.”

At this juncture the sailors described without apparent prejudice or bitterness how J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the Board of Directors of the White Star Line, was the first to leave the Titanic.

“Ismay,” the sailors asserted, “with his two daughters and a millionaire, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, and the latter’s family, got into the first accident or emergency boats, which are about twenty-eight feet long, and were always ready for lowering under the bridge. The boat in which Ismay and Sir Cosmo left was manned by seven seamen. There were seventeen persons in the boat.

“This boat pulled away from the ship a half hour before any of the lifeboats were put into the water.

“There were thirteen first-class passengers and five sailors in the emergency boat. Both boats were away from the ship within ten or fifteen minutes of the ship’s crashing into the berg.”

FIRST BOATS TO GET AWAY.

Asked to explain how it was possible for two boats to be put over the ship’s side into the water without being subjected to a rush on the part of the great ship’s passengers, the Titanic seamen said: “Ismay and those who left in the two emergency boats occupied cabins de luxe. The two boats were swinging from davits ready for lowering. We have no idea who notified Mr. Ismay and his friends to make ready to leave the ship, but we do know that the boats in which they were got away first.”

The sailors’ seemingly unvarnished tale then went on as follows:

“It was perhaps a half hour before the first of the lifeboats was ready for lowering. Not a man was allowed in one of the lifeboats so far as we could see, only women and children. The boats were all thirty-six feet long and carried about sixty passengers. There were about thirty-five or forty passengers to a boat when they were lowered, but two sailors went in each boat. Besides the sixteen lifeboats and the two emergency boats, four collapsible boats, each with a carrying capacity of forty passengers, were put over the sides of the Titanic, every boat on the ship was put into the water.

“One of the collapsible boats filled with water. The women and children in the boat were mostly third-class passengers. The boat turned keel and nearly two score persons clung to it. Many of these were rescued by the lifeboats.”

The spokesman for the sailors here asserted: “We want to make it plain that the officers and crew of the Titanic did their duty. Not a male passenger got into the lifeboats. During the early excitement men tried to force their way into the boats, but the officers shot them down with revolvers. I saw probably a half dozen men shot down as the lifeboat to which I was assigned was being filled. The men shot were left to die and sink on the upper deck of the Titanic.”

The Titanic’s sailors described how frail women, steeled by a desperate emergency, seized oars and labored with the seamen to get the lifeboats at a safe distance from the great liner, sinking deep and deeper under the weight of water.

WOMEN HELP WITH THE OARS.

“There were ten oars to each lifeboat,” the sailors said. “The women seized the sweeps and helped us to get the boats clear of the ship. We got away about 100 yards from the ship and waited to see what would happen. The liner was sinking fast, but the lights continued to shine through the black night.

“The end came at 2.30 on Monday morning. The lights on the ship did not go out until ten minutes before the liner sank. The inrushing seas reaching the after fires produced an explosion, which sundered the big liner. The forward half of the Titanic dived gently down. The after part of the ship stood on end and then disappeared.

“The force of the explosion blew, it seemed to us watching from the lifeboats, scores of passengers and sailors into the air.”

That there were stout hearts on the Titanic, even in the last moments of an unprecedented catastrophe, that refused to quail was proven by the rough seamen’s further testimony.

“The band on the promenade deck,” they declared, “played ‘Abide With Me’ and ‘Eternal Father, Strong to Save,’ and other hymns as the ship sank.”

The Titanic sank at 2.30, almost at the spot where she collided with the mountain of ice.

It was an hour later when the Carpathia was sighted by the thinly-clad occupants of the lifeboats and it was 4.30 before the first of the Titanic’s passengers set foot on the deck of the Cunarder. It was 8 o’clock on Monday morning, April 15, before the last of the half-clad suffering passengers of the Titanic were taken aboard the Carpathia, a not difficult feat, as the sea continued smooth.

The Carpathia’s run from the Newfoundland banks to New York was uneventful except for the burial at sea of five persons. Four of the five, according to the sailors, were consigned to the deep at about 4 P. M. on Monday, April 15. One of the four was a sailor, one a fireman and two male passengers of the third class.

TELEPHONE CALL DOUBTED.

The alleged negligence of Murdock, the first officer of the watch, who is blamed, as stated above, by some of the sailors for the wreck in not responding immediately to a telephone call from the lookout giving warning of the iceberg ahead, is doubted by a naval man who has had a long experience on transatlantic liners.

“I cannot help doubting, in fact, absolutely disbelieving, that an officer of the watch could be negligent in either responding to a call from the crow’s-nest or even failing to discover anything in the course of his vessel as soon as the lookout. Especially considering the fact that the vessel had been warned of ice several times.

“The position of the senior officer of the watch is on the windward side of the bridge. He does not depend on the lookout, that man is only a check upon him. Usually any object in the course of the vessel is discovered by both at the same time. The lookout’s signal was not a telephone call when I was on the seas, but a horn blast. Three blasts, object dead ahead; one blast, object on port bow; two blasts, object on starboard bow.

“That Murdock did not see the berg as soon as his lookout, seems improbable; that he did not see it immediately after his lookout, seems impossible; that he did not answer any signal from the lookout immediately is impossible, unless he was dead. Murdock knew his responsibility, and he wasn’t shirking. He wouldn’t have been on the watch, or on the Titanic, if he ever shirked.

“Could a vessel the size of the Titanic change its course sufficiently to avoid the berg within three minutes supposed to have elapsed during which Murdock didn’t answer his lookout’s call? It could. I never sailed a vessel the size of the Titanic, but I unhesitatingly say that the Titanic’s course could be changed in considerably less than a mile. Why, by putting the wheel hard-a-port and stopping the engines on that side the vessel could be turned so quickly that it would list fifteen degrees in swinging around. I have steered a transatlantic liner in and out among fishing smacks and they are easier to hit than an iceberg.”

QUESTIONED ABOUT CONDITIONS ON MOONLESS NIGHT.

Two other seafaring men of long experience, who have many nights sat in the crow’s-nest of a liner and watched the course, were asked how far an iceberg the size of the one that the Titanic struck could be seen on a clear night without a moon, a condition on which all of the survivors seem to agree was present the night the Titanic was sunk.

One of these men said at least one mile, the other at least two miles. So the fact remains that Murdock was supposed to be on the bridge keeping a strict lookout and not depending on the crow’s-nest; that he could have seen the iceberg when it was at least a mile from the vessel, and that the Titanic could have been easily turned sufficiently in her course to avoid the berg within a mile.

The surviving passengers are unanimous that the “unbelievable” happened. The voyage had been pleasant and uneventful, except for the fact that it was being made on the largest and most magnificent vessel that ever sailed and for the keen interest which the passengers took in the daily bulletins of the speed.

The Titanic had been making good time and all accounts agree that on the night of the disaster she was apparently going at her usual rate—of from 21 to 25 knots an hour.

J. H. Moody, the quartermaster, who was at the helm, said that the ship was making twenty-one and that the officers were under orders at the time to keep up speed in the hope of making a record passage.

These orders were being carried out in face of knowledge that the steamer was in the vicinity of great icebergs sweeping down from the north. That very afternoon, according to the record of the hyrographic officer, the Titanic had relayed to shore a wireless warning from the steamer Amerika that an unusual field of pack ice and bergs menaced navigation off the Banks.

OFFICERS CONFIDENT EVEN IN THE FACE OF DANGER.

But it was a “clear and starlight night,” as all the survivors described the weather, and the great ship sped through the quiet seas with officers confident that even though an iceberg should be seen the vessel could be controlled in ample time, and the passengers rested in full confidence that their temporary quarters in the largest and most magnificent vessel ever constructed were as safe as their own homes.

This confidence is emphasized in the tales of nearly all the survivors that when the crash came there was almost no excitement. Many who felt anxious enough to go on deck to inquire what had happened were little perturbed when they learned that the ship had “only struck an iceberg.” It appeared to be a glancing blow and at first there was no indication of a serious accident.

A group of men at cards in the smoking room sent one of their number to look out of the window, and when he came back with the announcement that the boat had grazed an iceberg, the party went on with the game. It was never finished.

The stoppage of the engines was noticed more than the collision, the effect being, as one survivor put it, like the stopping of a loud ticking clock.

The over-confident passengers were not brought to the slightest realization that the collision might mean serious danger until the call ran through the ship, “All passengers on deck with life-belts on.”

Captain Smith, it is said, was not on the bridge when the collision occurred, but when hurriedly summoned by his first officer, he took charge of what seemed a hopeless situation in a manner which the passengers praise as calm, resolute and efficient to the highest degree.

One of the most stirring narratives of action and description of scenes that followed the collision was told by L. Beasley, a Cambridge University man, who was one of the surviving second cabin passengers.

THE CREWS ALLOTTED TO THE BOATS.

“The steamer lay just as if she were awaiting the order to go on again, when some trifling matter had been adjusted,” he said. “But in a few minutes we saw the covers lifted from the boats, and the crews allotted to them standing by ready to lower them to the water.

“Presently we heard the order, ‘All men stand back and all ladies retire to the next deck below’—the smoking room deck or ‘B’ deck. The men stood away and remained in absolute silence, leaning against the end railing or pacing slowly up and down.

“The boats were swung out and lowered from A deck. When they were to the level of B deck, where all the ladies were collected, the ladies got in quietly with the exception of some, who refused to leave their husbands. In some cases they were torn from them and pushed into the boats.

“All this time there was no trace of any disorder; no panic or rush for the boats, and no scenes of women sobbing hysterically. Everyone seemed to realize so slowly that there was imminent danger. When it was realized that we would be presently in the sea with nothing but our life-belts to support us until we were picked up by passing steamers, it was extraordinary how calm everyone was and how complete the self-control.

“One by one the boats were filled with women and children.

“Presently we heard the order, ‘All men stand back,’ and all lowered and rowed away into the night. Presently the word went around among the men, ‘The men are to be put in boats on the starboard side.’ I was on the port side and most of the men walked across the deck to see if this was so. Presently I heard the call, ‘Any more ladies?’

“Looking over the side of the ship I saw boat No. 13 swinging level with B deck, half full of women. I saw no more come, and one of the crew said then: ‘You’d better jump.’ I dropped in and fell in the bottom as they cried ‘lower away.’”

Beasely said that the lifeboat was nearly two miles away from the Titanic less than two hours later, when they made out that the great liner was sinking.

SHIP APPARENTLY BREAKS IN TWO.

Other survivors who were nearer to the sinking liner told of hearing the strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee” played as the liner sank, and some of those in the lifeboats blended their voices in the melody. Suddenly there was a mighty roar and the ship, already half submerged, was seen to buckle and apparently break in two by the force of an explosion caused when the water reached the hot boilers.

The bow sank first and for fully five minutes the stern was poised almost vertically in the air, when suddenly it plunged out of sight.

With the last hope gone of seeing their loved ones alive, many women in the lifeboats seemed to be indifferent whether they were saved or not. They were nearly 1000 miles from land and had no knowledge that a ship of succor was speeding to them. Without provisions or water, there seemed little hope of surviving long in the bitter cold.

There were sixteen boats in the forlorn procession which entered upon the terrible hours of suspense.

The confidence that the big ship, on which they had started across the sea, was sure to bring them safely here was now turned to utter helplessness. But the shock of learning that their lives were in peril was hardly greater than the relief when, at dawn, a large steamer’s stacks were seen on the horizon, and eager eyes soon made out that the vessel was making for the scene.

The rescue ship proved to be the Carpathia, which had received the Titanic’s distress signals by wireless.

By 7 o’clock in the morning all the Titanic’s sixteen boats had been picked up and their chilled and hungry occupants welcomed over the Carpathia’s side. The Carpathia’s passengers, who were bound for a Mediterranean cruise, showed every consideration for the stricken, and many gave up their cabins that the shipwrecked might be made comfortable.

The rescued were in all conditions of dress and undress, and the women on the Carpathia vied with one another in supplying missing garments.

On the four days’ cruise back to New York many, who had realized that their experiences would be waited by an anxious world, put their narratives to paper while their nerves were still at a tension from the excitement of the disaster they had barely escaped.

CHAPTER V.

BELIEVED SHIP UNSINKABLE.

Outside of great naval battles no tragedy of the sea ever claimed so many victims as did the loss of the Titanic. The pitiful part of it is that all on board the Titanic might have been saved had there been a sufficient number of lifeboats aboard to accommodate the passengers and crew.

Only sixteen lifeboats were launched, one of these, a collapsible boat, the last to be launched, was overturned, but was used as a raft and served to save the lives of many men and women.

Many women went down with the ship—steerage women, unable to get to the upper decks where the boats were launched; maids, who were overlooked in the confusion; cabin passengers, who refused to desert their husbands, or who reached the decks after the last of the lifeboats was gone and the ship was settling for her final plunge to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Confidence in the ability of the Titanic to remain afloat led many of the passengers to death. The theory that the great ship was unsinkable remained with hundreds who had entrusted themselves to the gigantic hulk long after the officers knew that the vessel could not long remain above the surface.

That so many of the men passengers and members of the crew were saved, while such a large majority of females drowned was due to the fact that the women had not appeared about the lifeboats in sufficient numbers to fill them when they first were launched. Dozens of male survivors assert they were forced into the first boats lowered against their will by officers who insisted that the boats should go overboard filled to their capacity.

From a rather calm, well ordered sort of leaving of passengers over the side when the disaster was young the departure of survivors became a riot as the last boats were lowered and it was apparent that the Titanic would sink.

Steerage passengers fought their way to the upper decks and struggled with brutal ferocity against cabin passengers who were aimlessly trying to save themselves. Officers of the ship shot down men who sought to jump into already overcrowded boats. The sound of the pistol shots mingled with the strains of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” played by the ship’s orchestra as the Titanic took her final plunge.

MURDOCK SHOOTS HIMSELF.

Murdock, the first officer, who was on the bridge in charge of the Titanic when she struck the iceberg, shot himself when convinced the vessel was doomed. The report that Captain Smith shot himself is contradicted by survivors, who say they saw him swept from the ship as she went down.

The Titanic settled into the sea gently. The greater part of her bulk was under water when she slipped beneath the waves. No trace of suction was felt by those in lifeboats only a few hundred yards away.

Colonel John Jacob Astor died a hero and went down with the ship. Had he leaped into the water as she made her final plunge, he might have been picked up by one of the lifeboats, but he remained on the deck and was swept under by the drawing power of the great bulk, bound for the bottom.

All the officers who died and most of the members of the crew upheld the traditions of heroism held sacred by seamen. They did their duty to the end and died with their ship. Not a man in the engine room was saved; not one of them was seen on deck after the collision. They remained at their posts, far down in the depths of the stricken vessel, until the waves closed over what was at once their pride and their burial casket.

A boiler explosion tore the Titanic apart shortly before she sank. This occurred when the sea water, which had been working its way through the forward compartments, invaded the fireroom. After the explosion the Titanic hung on the surface, upheld only by the water-tight compartments, which had not been touched by the collision.

Although the officers of the Titanic had been warned of the proximity of ice, she was steaming at the rate of twenty-three knots an hour when she met her end. The lookouts in the crow’s nest saw an iceberg ahead and telephoned the bridge. The vessel swung slightly in response to her rudder, and the submerged part of the iceberg tore out her plates along the starboard quarters below the water.

COMPARTMENT WALL GIVES WAY.

Water rushed into several of the compartments. The ship listed to starboard. Captain Smith hurried to the bridge. It was thought the ship would float, until a shudder, that vibrated throughout the great frame, told that a compartment wall had given away. Then a definite order was given to man the lifeboats, and stewards were sent to instruct passengers to put on life preservers.

So thoroughly grounded was the belief of the cabin passengers that the Titanic was unsinkable that few of them took the accident seriously. Women in evening dress walked out of the magnificent saloons and joked about the situation. Passengers protested against getting into the lifeboats, although the ship was then sinking by the head.

Mr. and Mrs. H. J. Allison and their little daughter remained on the ship and were lost, after the infant son of the Allison family had been placed in a lifeboat in charge of a nurse.

Isidor Straus and his wife did not appear on deck until an order had been issued that only women and children should be allowed in the lifeboats. Mrs. Straus clung to her husband and refused to leave him. They died in each other’s arms.

Those who escaped in the first lifeboats were disposed to look on their experience as a lark. The sailors manning the oars pulled away from the Titanic. The sound of music floated over the starlit waves. The lights of the Titanic were burning.

Like simultaneous photographs of the same tragedy etched on the brains of 745 persons, survivors of the Titanic tell of their experiences and what they saw in those pitifully few hours between the great ship’s impact on the iceberg and the appalling moment when she disappeared.

As the survivors came, half fainting, half hysterical, down the Carpathia’s gang plank, they began to relate these narratives. Many of these were disjointed, fragmentary—a picture here, a frightful flash of recollection there, some bordered on hallucination, some were more connected as one of those who are now beginning to realize the horror through which they came. A few strangely enough, are calm and lucid. But every one thrills with some part of the awful truth as its narrator saw it.

INDIVIDUALLY CONFLICTING STORIES OF THE WRECK.

Each tale is like another view of the same many-sided shield. Sometimes they seem to contradict each other, but that is because those who witness such scenes see them as individuals. There is not a survivor but has something new and startling and dramatic to tell.

Taken altogether their accounts are a composite picture of 700 separate experiences.

The shock of the collision had barely jarred the ship. One man who was directing letters in his cabin kept on with his work until he felt a sudden shift in the position of the ship and rushed to the deck in time to leap into a lifeboat. Some of the passengers had returned to their berths.

Nothing occurred to indicate to the passengers aboard the Titanic or moving away from the ship in lifeboats that the vessel would not remain afloat until help should arrive, until the boilers exploded. Then the end was apparent to all.

Men with life-preservers strapped about their waists, jumped overboard by scores and some were picked up by boats which had not got far from the ship.

As the last three lifeboats were launched the restriction as to women and children was removed. It was a free-for-all then on the deck, where unskilled men, principally stewards, were trying to get the cumbersome boats overboard. Nearly all those who took part in that struggle for life are dead. Those who survived are not anxious to talk about it.

Just before the Titanic disappeared from view men and women leaped from the stern. As the portion of vessel remaining above water swung up to an almost perpendicular position hundreds on the upper decks were thrown into the sea and were pulled down in the vortex. The biggest, most thrilling moments of the wreck were those last moments when the air-tight compartments in the after part of the Titanic were supporting the balance of the ship.

KEPT TOGETHER BY GREEN LIGHT.

None are alive to tell the tale of that short period. Toward 2 o’clock on Monday morning a green light aboard one of the lifeboats kept the fleet of craft carrying the survivors together. Through the hours until dawn the men in charge of the boats hovered about that green light. Occasionally bodies of men slipped by the lifeboats. A few men, more dead than alive, were pulled aboard the boats, that were now overcrowded.

The weather became bitterly cold and the survivors suffered physical pain as well as mental anguish. Benumbed by the extent of the catastrophe most of the women sat motionless in their places. The Carpathia appeared soon after dawn. Not until the big Cunarder was close by did the realization of what had happened reach the women survivors.

Many of them became temporarily insane. It was necessary to use force to place them in swings in which they were hoisted to the Carpathia’s decks. The officers of the Carpathia knowing the Titanic had gone down, were prepared for an emergency. Passengers on the Cunarder gave their cabins to the Titanic sufferers. The captain surrendered his room for hospital purposes. Stewardesses were compelled to cut the clothing from some of the women who had jumped into the water and been picked up by the lifeboats.

Among the survivors picked up by the Carpathia were several babies. These little ones were tossed overboard by their parents and rescued by the boats. The identity of these orphans may never be determined. When the list of persons aboard the Carpathia was checked up it was found that among the survivors were thirty women who had been widowed by the disaster.

Nearly all these women, bereft of their life partners, were reassured by the hope that those who had been left behind had been picked up by another vessel until they reached New York. For some reason the impression prevailed on the Carpathia that the Californian had picked up a number of survivors floating in the sea upheld by life-preservers.

EVERY HUSBAND SAVED SAVES HIS WIFE.

As against the thirty widows stands the record of every married man who was saved. Each of these men saved his wife also. No wife was left on the Titanic by a husband who had reached a lifeboat.

Narratives of the various survivors, assembled in a consecutive narrative, makes one of the most thrilling tales of modern life. It is a narrative filled with heroism unparalleled—bravery and heroism performed by American business men. They were men of millions who had everything to live for and yet, in that crisis at sea, they worked coolly, steadfastly to save women and children. Then they went down with the White Star liner Titanic, the greatest ship afloat.

When the Carpathia came into port carrying the more than 700 survivors of the disaster, the curtain, which had hidden the story of the tragedy since the first word of it was flashed to a startled world, was drawn aside. Here is the real tale of the sinking of the Titanic.

The Titanic was athrob with the joy of life on Sunday night, when without warning, the great liner was jammed against a partly submerged iceberg. The blow, which was a glancing one, did not cause much of a jar and there were some on board who did not know that an accident had happened until later. The liner struck the berg on the starboard side amidships.

Only Captain E. J. Smith, the commander, realized that there might be grave danger, and even he did not regard the collision as fatal. Going to the wireless cabin in which Phillips, the operator, was in conversation with Cape Race on traffic matters, he gave orders to the wireless man to hold himself in readiness to flash out a distress signal.

At the time there was a great throng in the main saloon, where the ship’s orchestra was giving a concert. Despite the bitterly cold weather, some of the passengers were taking advantage of the bright moonlight to stroll upon the decks. Survivors, who were upon the starboard side, said that the ice mountain which the vessel struck was at least 150 feet high where exposed.

UNDER FULL HEAD OF STEAM.

At the time the ship was steaming ahead under nearly a full head of steam, at about twenty-one knots. If she had been going slowly the disaster probably would never have happened.

Acting under orders from Captain Smith, the ship’s officers passed among the passengers, reassuring them as the rumor that the ship had struck spread.

“Keep cool; there is no danger,” was the message which, repeated over and over, gradually became monotonous. The warning was hardly necessary for none, save the highest officers of the ship, who were in Captain Smith’s confidence, knew the real gravity of the situation.

Captain Smith immediately went below and began an examination. This showed that quick action was necessary. Within fifteen minutes of his first warning the captain again entered the wireless cabin and told Phillips to flash the distress signal.

“Send the international call for help, so they will understand.” Captain Smith said.

Bride, the assistant operator, who had been asleep, was standing at Phillips’ side.

Some of the passengers who had been sleeping were aroused and left their berths. Many hastened on deck to get a glimpse of the berg, but, so swiftly was it moving in the gulf stream current, that, within twenty minutes after the vessel struck it, the ice mountain had disappeared from view. At 11.50 P. M., fifteen minutes after the collision, the first intimation of impending danger was given. Officers passed among the passengers warning them to put on life belts. The tarpaulins were cast off, the lifeboats and the life rafts and the davit guys loosened so that the boats could be swiftly swung over the side.

Members of the crew also donned life preservers; but, with studied forethought, Captain Smith ordered the principal officers not to don their belts. They were told, however, to be ready to do so in an emergency.

PHILLIPS POUNDS OUT THE S. O. S.

The ship soon had begun to list. The wireless masts were sputtering a blue streak of sparks. Phillips at his key pounded out one “S. O. S.” call after another. He alternated between the “S. O. S.” and the “C. Q. D.” so that there might be no chance of the signal being misunderstood.

The first ship to respond to the Titanic was the Frankfurt; the second was the Carpathia. Phillips told the Carpathia’s wireless man that the accident was serious and that the White Star liner was sinking by the head.

“We are putting about and coming to your aid,” was the reply flashed by the Cunarder.

About 12.15 o’clock the officers began warning the women to get into the boats. Even at this time no one realized that there was any danger. Many of the women refused to get into the boats and had to be placed in them forcibly by the crew.

Colonel and Mrs. John Jacob Astor were walking upon the deck. They were approached by Captain H. D. Steffason, of the Swedish Embassy, at Washington. Captain Steffason advised Mrs. Astor to leave the ship. She demurred, saying there was no danger. Finally Colonel Astor said:

“Yes, my dear, it is better for you to go; I will follow in another boat after all the women have been taken off.”

They kissed and parted. It was a beautiful parting.

Mrs. Washington Dodge, of San Francisco, wife of another prominent passenger, was asleep in her stateroom. She was aroused by her husband, who urged her to get in a boat. So certain were both that the measures were only precautionary and not necessary that they did not even kiss each other good-bye. Mr. Dodge embarked in another boat.

These incidents are given because they are typical. They show how little the passengers knew that they were standing at the brink of death.

THE GAP INCREASES.

The riven plates under the water increased the gap, allowing more and more water to pour into the hold. The steel frame had been buckled by the impact of the collision and water was rushing into the supposedly water-tight compartments around the doors. The dynamo supplying the ship’s searchlight and the wireless outfit were put out of commission.

Officers hurried hither and thither, reporting to Captain Smith. This master mariner, hero of the White Star Line, knew that he was doomed to death by all the traditions of the sea, but did not flinch. He was the coolest man on board. As lifeboat after lifeboat was filled and swung over the side it pulled off some distance and stood by.

When the officers began to load the women of the steerage into the boats trouble started. Men refused to be separated from the wives. Families clamored to get into life boats together. The ship’s officers had a hard time subduing some of the steerage passengers. The survivors say that some of the men of the steerage were shot by the ship’s officers.

As the officers were loading the women of the first cabin list into the boat they came upon Mrs. Isador Straus, the elderly wife of the noted philanthropist. She started to get into a boat, but held back, waiting for her husband to follow. Mr. Straus tenderly took her in his arms, bade her farewell and explained that he must abide by the inexorable rule of the sea, which says women and children must be saved first.

“If you do not go I don’t go,” exclaimed the devoted wife. She clung to her husband’s arm, and, despite his efforts and the efforts of officers to persuade her to get into one of the boats, she refused. The devoted couple went to death together.

While the vessel was going down the call for help was picked up and acknowledged by the White Star liners Olympic and Baltic. They turned their heads toward the Titanic, but were too far away to render aid.

STRAINS OF MUSIC DROWNS ALL CRIES.

The band, which had been playing incessantly in the main saloon, moved out to the open deck and the strains of music rose above the shouts of the officers and the cries of the passengers. By 1 o’clock even those who knew nothing of seamanship began to realize by the angle at which the giant liner careened that she was in grave danger. By this time more than half of the life boats had been sent away and they formed a ring in the darkness about the great vessel.

Excitement began to run high. Major A. W. Butt, U. S. A., military aide to President Taft; William T. Stead, the famous journalist; Colonel Aster, and others of the passengers volunteered their services to Captain Smith. They helped the officers hold back other male passengers who by this time had become thoroughly frightened.

As one of the lifeboats was being swung over the ship’s side, a frantic mother who had been separated from her eight-year-old boy, cried out hysterically. Colonel Astor was standing by the boat, assisting the officers. The little boy, in fright and despair, stretched out his arms appealingly to his mother, but the officer in command of the boat said that it would not be safe for another to enter.

Colonel Astor, seeing a girl’s hat lying upon the deck, stealthily placed it upon the boy’s head. Lifting up the child, he called out: “Surely you will not leave a little girl behind.” The ruse worked and the child was taken on board.

Up in the wireless room, Bride had placed a life preserver upon his companion, Phillips, while Phillips sat at his key. Upon returning from Captain Smith’s cabin with a message, Bride saw a grimy stoker of gigantic proportions bending over Phillips removing the life belt. Phillips would not abandon his key for an instant to fight off the stoker. Bride is a little man (he was subsequently saved) but plucky. Drawing his revolver he shot down the intruder and the wireless work went on as though nothing had happened.

J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the International Mercantile Marine Company, owners of the White Star Line, was sitting in the cafe chatting to some friends when the liner ran upon the berg. He was the first one informed by Captain Smith. Ismay rushed to the deck to look at the berg.

“THE SHIP CANNOT SINK.”

“The ship cannot sink,” was the reply which he gave, with smiling assurance, to all inquirers.

Nevertheless, there are survivors who say that Ismay was one of the passengers of the lifeboats which put off. They saw him enter the boat.

By 1.30 o’clock the great vessel, which only a short time before had been the marvel of the twentieth century, was a water-logged hulk. Panic was steadily growing. The word had been passed around that the ship was doomed. The night continued calm. The sea was smooth. The moon was brilliant in the sky.

Into one of the last of the lifeboats that were launched two Chinamen, employed in the galley, had hidden themselves. They were stretched in the bottom of the boat, face downward, and made no sound. So excited were the women that they did not notice the presence of the Chinese until the boat had pulled off from the Titanic. Then the officer in charge drew his revolver and shot both to death. The bodies were tumbled overboard.

The weather was very cold and the sea was filled with floating ice. All were warned before getting into the boats to dress as warmly as possible. By the time the boats were filled the water had entered the engine-room and the ship was drifting helplessly. About 2 o’clock Captain Smith, who had been standing upon the bridge with a megaphone to his mouth, again went to the wireless cabin.

“Men,” he said to Phillips and Bride, with a break in his voice, “you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Abandon your cabin, for it is now every man for himself.”

Bride left the cabin, but Phillips still clung to his key. He perished. The saving of Bride, the second wireless man, was only one of a series of thrilling escapes. Wearing a life belt, Bride went upon deck. He saw a dozen men passengers tugging at a collapsible boat trying to work it to the edge of the deck.

BRIDE SWEPT OVERBOARD.

The wireless man went to their assistance and they had got it nearly to the point from which they could swing it over, when a wave rolled over the deck. Bride, who had hold of an oar lock, was swept overboard with the boat. The next thing he knew he was struggling in the water beneath the boat.

The icy water struck a chill through him. He realized that unless he got from beneath the boat he would drown. Diving deeply, he came up on the outside of the gunwale and grasped it. On every hand was wreckage of all kinds and struggling men who had been washed overboard by the submerging comber. Bride clung to the craft until he saw another boat near by. Exerting all his strength, he swam to this boat and was pulled in it more dead than alive.

By this time all the boats and life rafts had been taken from the ship. The boats were ringed about the ship from 150 feet to 1,000 yards distant. Their occupants could see the lights burning on the vessel which had settled low in the water.

Suddenly as they looked great billows of live sparks rose up through the four funnels. These were followed by billowing clouds of smoke and steam. The rush of water had reached the boiler rooms and the boilers had exploded. After this the great vessel sank more rapidly and within less than twenty minutes had plunged to her grave, two miles beneath the surface.

In the meantime, however, those upon the sinking ship, who knew that they had only a few hours at most to live, lived up to the most splendid example of Anglo-Saxon courage. As the ship sank lower those on board climbed higher, prolonging life to the last minute. Frenzied search was made of every part of the decks by those who hoped that the sailors had overlooked a life raft or small boat which might be used. Their search was vain.

Colonel Astor, Major Butt, C. M. Hays, W. M. Clark and other friends stood together. Astor and Butt were strong swimmers. When the water reached the ship’s rail, Butt and Astor jumped and began swimming rapidly away. There was little suction despite the bulk of the foundering craft.

SHIP DISAPPEARS FROM VIEW.

There was a dreadful cry as the ship disappeared from view. Instantly the water was filled with hundreds of struggling men. The spot just above the grave of the liner was strewn with wreckage. Some tried to climb upon the ice cakes. But the cold air and the cold water soon numbed the fingers of the men in the water. Even the most powerful of the refugees soon gave out. Exhausted by their effort and numb from exposure they dropped one by one.

There are survivors, however, among them Dr. Henry J. Frauenthal, of this city, who said that they heard cries from the water for two hours after the Titanic sank. Amidst the acres and acres of wreckage hundreds of dead bodies floated. Many of them were among the first cabin passengers, still dressed in their evening clothes which they had worn when the ship struck the iceberg.

CHAPTER VI.

HOW SURVIVORS ESCAPED.