Titanic (8 page)

“It was a brilliant crowd. Jewels flashed from the gowns of the women,” May said later. “And, oh, the dear women, how fondly they wore their latest Parisian gowns! It was the first time that most of them had an opportunity to display their newly acquired finery.”

(Preceding image)
The first class dining room.

It didn’t seem at all as if they were in the middle of the North Atlantic, May reflected. Instead, she imagined herself in a magnificent New York City hotel. And no wonder. The first class dining saloon could seat more than 550 people — it was the largest dining room on board any ship afloat at the time, 113 feet long and reaching across the full width of the
Titanic
. The walls and ceiling were a glowing white, the furniture oak, and the room sparkled, thanks to the lights of more than 400 bulbs. Chairs at the 115 tables were adorned with pale green leather and had special pegs to help keep them steady in high seas.

In those days, people dressed in formal dinner attire. Dinner started at seven p.m. and was announced by a bugle call. Crystal and china adorned the tables. “I remember at our table there was a great bunch of American beauty roses,” May said. “We were all filled with the joy of living. . . .”

After dinner May stepped out on deck to take in the beauty of the night. She didn’t stay long; it was much colder than she had expected. “There was death chill in the air which sent a shudder through me and caused me to hurry back into the cheer and warmth of the cabin. . . .”

That dark, clear night drew many people outside for a last look at the stars before bed. Even a seasoned traveler like stewardess Violet Jessop slipped out on deck for a few moments after her duties were done.

“It was all so quiet, but how penetratingly cold it had become! Little wisps of mist like tiny fairies wafted gently inboard from the sea and left my face clammy. I shivered,” said Violet. “It was indeed a night for bed, warmth, and cozy thoughts of home and firesides. I thought of the man in the crow’s nest as I came indoors, surely an unenviable job on such a night.”

Since she had served on other ships, Violet knew that lookouts were posted twenty-four hours a day in the crow’s nest high above the deck. But since the introduction of Guglielmo Marconi’s new wireless system, first demonstrated in 1896, ships like the
Titanic
also had another way to learn about what lay ahead. Like the ship
itself, the Marconi system was a symbol of a new century of progress.

Both of the
Titanic
’s wireless operators had been trained at the Marconi school in Liverpool, England. Lead operator Jack Phillips, though only twenty-four, had been working as an operator for six years. Harold Bride, twenty-two, who’d begun the previous July, had already completed several transatlantic round-trips. Rather than working for the White Star Line, the radio operators were employed by the Marconi Communication Company Limited.

Phillips and Bride had been trained to operate the Marconi wireless apparatus, which could transmit messages for at least 250 miles, and even farther at night under good conditions. The equipment was so new that the two young men had just unpacked it the week before.

(Preceding image)
Wireless operator Harold Bride at work in the Marconi Room of the
Titanic
.

Jack Phillips and Harold Bride spent most of their time sending and receiving telegraphic signals, called “Marconigrams.” The majority were private, personal messages from passengers to family and friends, which were sent using Morse code over the Marconi apparatus. Messages were sent to a relay, or shore station, at Cape Race in Newfoundland, Canada. From there messages could be relayed to other shore stations to friends and family on the eastern seaboard and beyond. For passengers, sending a Marconigram was a little like sending a text message while on vacation today. But the process then was a lot more time-consuming. Passengers could write out messages by hand and pay for them at the enquiry office. Messages were then sent by a pneumatic tube to the wireless cabin. Incoming messages were written down by hand by the operator who received them, then typed up by the relief officer and sent by tube back to the enquiry office, where bellboys would pick them up and deliver them to passengers.

These personal messages kept Jack and Harold busy (and also made money for the Marconi company). Ships also relayed messages back and forth to one another. “The
Titanic
herself acted as a relay for messages from vessels lacking sufficient transmitter range to reach the north American coast direct, putting the
Titanic
’s operators in regular contact with fellow operators on nearby ships. Alongside messages from passengers were navigational signals, to be passed on by the Marconi operator to the captain.”

The operators handled messages from many ships in the North Atlantic that had been sending the
Titanic
messages of congratulations on her maiden voyage. Messages were addressed to the
Titanic
’s call letters: MGY.

Last but not least were messages from other ships about conditions at sea. These would turn out to be the most important of all — warnings of ice ahead.

At nine o’clock on Sunday morning, the
Caronia
, eastbound from New York, sent the
Titanic
a message with the heading MSG. This meant that it was a Master’s Service Gram, from one captain to another. From their training, Jack Phillips and Harold Bride knew that messages marked MSG always had to be delivered to the bridge. That was the rule, and they followed it precisely.

Captain Smith posted this one on the notice board for the officers to see: “Captain,
Titanic
— West-bound steamers report bergs, growlers and field ice in 42° N, from 49° to 51° W, April 12, Compliments, Barr.”

This message showed that the ice was directly in the path of the
Titanic.

Captain Smith received a similar message from the
Baltic
in the early afternoon, which he passed along to J. Bruce Ismay, who showed it to some of the passengers, including Jack Thayer and his parents. Ismay didn’t appear to be worried by the warnings. Around seven o’clock on Sunday evening Captain Smith took the message back from Ismay and sent it to the bridge to post.

But not every warning reached the bridge. One message, from the
Amerika
at 1:45 p.m., noted that the ship had passed two large icebergs. But, since it wasn’t marked MSG, it didn’t require the radio operators to deliver it to the bridge. For one reason or another, it never made it.

Another message, at 7:30 p.m., from the
Californian
to the
Antillian,
was overheard by the
Titanic
. In it, the
Californian
reported seeing three large icebergs. Harold Bride remembered taking it to the bridge and handing it to an officer, though he did not recall who it was.

These warnings from other ships crossing the Atlantic all told the same story: The
Titanic
was about to enter an area of ice.

A little before nine o’clock on Sunday evening, Captain Smith excused himself from dinner with Jack Thayer’s parents and other first class passengers to return to the bridge, where he checked in with Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller.

As Lightoller remembered it, he and the captain stood for a while talking about the weather and the sea conditions. It had grown very cold — only one degree above freezing. But what surprised them most on that night in the North Atlantic was the unusually flat, calm sea.

Lightoller said later, “In my fifteen years’ experience on the Atlantic I had certainly never seen anything like it . . .

“I said something about it was rather a pity the breeze had not kept up whilst we were going through the ice region. Of course, my reason was obvious; he knew I meant the water ripples breaking on the base of the berg,” Lightoller told investigators.

Both officers knew that without a breeze to create ripples, icebergs would be harder to see.

“In the event of meeting ice there are many things we look for,” Lightoller testified after the disaster. “In the first place a slight breeze. Of course, the stronger the breeze the more visible will the ice be, or rather the breakers on the ice.

“Therefore at any time when there is a slight breeze you will always see at nighttime a phosphorescent line round a berg, growler, or whatever it may be; the slight swell which we invariably look for in the North Atlantic causes the same effect, the break on the base of the berg, so showing a phosphorescent glow.”

A growler, as Lightoller explained, is “really the worst form of ice. It is a larger berg melted down, or I might say a solid body of ice which is lower down to the water. . . .” This would make it more difficult to see than a large iceberg.

Still, as they gazed out at the calm seas ahead, Captain Smith and Lightoller decided that even without breakers to mark the location of ice, they would be able to see a certain amount of reflected light from an iceberg — surely enough light to spot anything dangerous in time.