The Loss of the S. S. Titanic: Its Story and Its LessonsBeesley, Lawrence
History
The Loss of the S. S. Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons
Beesley, Lawrence
Shipwrecks -- North Atlantic Ocean; Titanic (Steamship)
The behaviour of people during the hours in the lifeboats, the landing
on the Carpathia, the life there and the landing in New York, can all
be summarized by saying that people did not act at all as they were
expected to act--or rather as most people expected they would act, and
in some cases have erroneously said they did act. Events were there to
be faced, and not to crush people down. Situations arose which
demanded courage, resource, and in the cases of those who had lost
friends most dear to them, enormous self-control; but very wonderfully
they responded. There was the same quiet demeanour and poise, the same
inborn dominion over circumstances, the same conformity to a normal
standard which characterized the crowd of passengers on the deck of
the Titanic--and for the same reasons.
The first two or three days ashore were undoubtedly rather trying to
some of the survivors. It seemed as if coming into the world
again--the four days shut off from any news seemed a long time--and
finding what a shock the disaster had produced, the flags half-mast,
the staring head-lines, the sense of gloom noticeable everywhere, made
things worse than they had been on the Carpathia. The difference in
"atmosphere" was very marked, and people gave way to some extent under
it and felt the reaction. Gratitude for their deliverance and a desire
to "make the best of things" must have helped soon, however, to
restore them to normal conditions. It is not at all surprising that
some survivors felt quieter on the Carpathia with its lack of news
from the outside world, if the following extract from a leading New
York evening paper was some of the material of which the "atmosphere"
on shore was composed:--"Stunned by the terrific impact, the dazed
passengers rushed from their staterooms into the main saloon amid the
crash of splintering steel, rending of plates and shattering of
girders, while the boom of falling pinnacles of ice upon the broken
deck of the great vessel added to the horror.... In a wild
ungovernable mob they poured out of the saloons to witness one of the
most appalling scenes possible to conceive.... For a hundred feet the
bow was a shapeless mass of bent, broken and splintered steel and
iron."
And so on, horror piled on horror, and not a word of it true, or
remotely approaching the truth.
This paper was selling in the streets of New York while the Carpathia
was coming into dock, while relatives of those on board were at the
docks to meet them and anxiously buying any paper that might contain
news. No one on the Carpathia could have supplied such information;
there was no one else in the world at that moment who knew any details
of the Titanic disaster, and the only possible conclusion is that the
whole thing was a deliberate fabrication to sell the paper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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