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)
No one on the ship can have had any doubt now as to her ultimate fate,
and yet the fifteen hundred passengers and crew on board made no
demonstration, and not a sound came from them as they stood quietly on
the decks or went about their duties below. It seems incredible, and
yet if it was a continuation of the same feeling that existed on deck
before the boats left,--and I have no doubt it was,--the explanation
is straightforward and reasonable in its simplicity. An attempt is
made in the last chapter to show why the attitude of the crowd was so
quietly courageous. There are accounts which picture excited crowds
running about the deck in terror, fighting and struggling, but two of
the most accurate observers, Colonel Gracie and Mr. Lightoller, affirm
that this was not so, that absolute order and quietness prevailed. The
band still played to cheer the hearts of all near; the engineers and
their crew--I have never heard any one speak of a single engineer
being seen on deck--still worked at the electric light engines, far
away below, keeping them going until no human being could do so a
second longer, right until the ship tilted on end and the engines
broke loose and fell down. The light failed then only because the
engines were no longer there to produce light, not because the men who
worked them were not standing by them to do their duty. To be down in
the bowels of the ship, far away from the deck where at any rate there
was a chance of a dive and a swim and a possible rescue; to know that
when the ship went--as they knew it must soon--there could be no
possible hope of climbing up in time to reach the sea; to know all
these things and yet to keep the engines going that the decks might be
lighted to the last moment, required sublime courage.
But this courage is required of every engineer and it is not called by
that name: it is called "duty." To stand by his engines to the last
possible moment is his duty. There could be no better example of the
supremest courage being but duty well done than to remember the
engineers of the Titanic still at work as she heeled over and flung
them with their engines down the length of the ship. The simple
statement that the lights kept on to the last is really their epitaph,
but Lowell's words would seem to apply to them with peculiar force--
"The longer on this earth we live
And weigh the various qualities of men--
The more we feel the high, stern-featured beauty
Of plain devotedness to duty.
Steadfast and still, nor paid with mortal praise,
But finding amplest recompense
For life's ungarlanded expense
In work done squarely and unwasted days."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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