Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic (43 page)

When it was released, Lord Mersey’s report was considered to be far more erudite, comprehensive, and knowledgeable than that of Senator Smith’s inquiry. But with the passage of time, Senator Smith’s effort has fared far better in the hands of scholars and legal experts. Despite all the pomp and procedural trappings of the Mersey Inquiry, it was not as comprehensive as the American investigation, although in fairness, it has to be said that its warrant didn’t permit the scope of inquiry that Smith’s committee possessed. Ultimately, the American investigation, for all its seeming informality, or perhaps because of it, learned far more about what happened in those desperate hours than did the British inquiry. The Board of Trade’s inquest still has its notable defenders, such as Walter Lord, and on technical matters it far surpassed anything Senator Smith and his colleagues learned, but it was Senator Smith’s persistent and perceptive questioning that has left the world with the most vivid account of what really happened to the men and women aboard the Titanic.

With Lord Mersey’s summation of the Court of Inquiry’s findings, the inquests were closed and the investigations completed. Civil suits against the White Star Line by survivors and victims’ families would drag on for years, but between the Senate investigation and the British Court of Inquiry, everything constructive that could be done had been done. Lessons were learned and conclusions drawn, and no amount of damages could bring back the dead. It could only be hoped that after the best efforts of legislators, regulating bodies, and the officers and crewmen of the North Atlantic liners were put forward, there would never be a repetition of that awful April night.

—Zachariah 12:12

 

 

 

ON GENTLY ROLLING HILLSIDESON THE OUTSKIRTS OF HALIFAX, NOVA Scotia, far enough from the center of the city that an entirely appropriate atmosphere of tranquility covers everything, sit row upon row of grey granite stones, all similarly carved and shaped. Some are more weatherworn than others, some bear names, others are nameless, but all have cut into their sloping upper faces a date: April 15, 1912. Below the date there is a number. The number is that given to the body that rests beneath the headstone, when it was plucked from the North Atlantic eighty-five years ago. They are all from the
Titanic.
¹

Late in the evening of April 15, 1912, the Halifax agents of the White Star Line, A.G. Jones and Company, chartered the Commercial Cable Company’s cable ship
Mackay-Bennett
to recover as many of the victims of the Titanic as possible. Hurriedly placed orders for tones of ice, coffins—more than a hundred of them—as well as embalmers’ supplies were quickly filled, and by morning of April 17, Capt. F. H. Lardner had assembled an all-volunteer crew, while some forty members of the Funeral Directors Association of the Maritime Provinces had come aboard, and the
Mackay-Bennett
was ready to sail at noon. (In the days and months to come the White Star Line would be frequently, and sometimes justly, accused of callousness. In contrast, the voyage of the
Mackay-Bennett
was a genuinely compassionate act: the company was under no contract to recover any of the victims, especially at its own expense.
²

Already passenger ships were giving the area where the Titanic sank a wide berth. True, the shipping lane had been shifted some sixty miles farther south the day after the disaster, but even more compelling was the primal urge to shun the dead, and what captain would wish to present his passengers with the spectacle of a sea strewn with wreckage and floating bodies? One skipper, Captain Nelson of the
Volturno
—herself to be immolated in a horrendous fire with terrible loss of life only eighteen months later—with—held news of the sinking ship from his officers, crew, and passengers until the ship made port in New York.

Nevertheless, some ships did pass near the spot where the Titanic went down, and the wireless messages guided the
Mackay-Bennett
to the spot. One ship, the
Bremen,
reported nearly a hundred bodies at 42.00’N, 49.20’ W When the Bremen docked at New York, several of her passengers were buttonholed by reporters, and among the most memorable of their accounts was that of Mrs. Johanna Stunke, who painted a heartbreaking vignette of unwitnessed tragedy:

The
Mackay-Bennett
arrived on the scene the evening of April 20, but night fell before the crew could begin work, so the next morning the laborious, back-breaking task of recovering the dead began. The seas were heavy and the wind bitingly chill as the boats were rowed back and forth and each body dragged aboard. All day long they worked, until by dusk the men of the Mackay-Bennett had recovered fifty-one bodies.

As each body was brought aboard the
Mackay-Bennett,
a numbered square of canvas was attached to it. Any valuables or personal effects found were placed in a correspondingly numbered canvas bag. Since few of the dead carried any identification, a complete description of each victim was made—height, weight, age (estimated if not known), hair and eye color, any birthmarks, scars, or tattoos. All this information was meticulously recorded in the hope that it might provide the means to identify the dead. (When Edward A. Kent’s body was brought on board, he was still carrying the miniature of her mother that Mrs. Candee had given him for safekeeping. The miniature, which was eventually returned to Mrs. Candee, was one of the items used to confirm Kent’s identity.)

The sea had not been kind to the bodies: exposure to the wind and water had seemingly aged many of them—Second Class passenger Reginald Butler, for example, was only twenty-five when he died, but the Halifax coroner would estimate his age at forty-two. Several of the bodies were so badly disfigured after a week’s immersion in the sea that the embalmer considered it pointless to carry them all the way back to Halifax. At 8:15 that evening, a burial service was held on the forecastle deck. Afterward, the
Mackay-Bennett’s
engineer Frederick Hamilton, described it in his diary that night:

Working from sunrise to sunset, by twilight on April 22, the crew of the
Mackay-Bennett
had recovered 187 of the
Titanic’s
dead. Captain Lardner informed White Star’s New York office that he would need help, but the Halifax agents had anticipated such an eventuality and had already chartered the Anglo-American Telegraph Company’s cable ship
Minia
on April 21. She sailed the next day and by April 26, the two ships were searching together. By noon that day 14 more bodies had been pulled from the sea, and the Mackay-Bennett had exhausted her stores. She put about for Halifax with 190 victims aboard, while the
Minia
would continue the search for more corpses until May 3. Between them the two ships recovered 323 bodies (5 more were later picked up by two other ships) and 119 of them were buried at sea.

The
Mackay-Bennett,
her colors at half-mast, arrived at Halifax on April 30 and immediately slipped into Coaling Wharf Number 4 in His Majesty’s Naval Dockyard. There, shielded from morbid photographers by high concrete walls and protected by a joint police and naval guard, the bodies were unloaded. Even in death, the careful distinctions of class were observed: first came the crewmen, packed in ice but not embalmed nor sewn in canvas; followed by the bodies of the Second and Third Class passengers, which were sewn up in canvas; last off were the First Class passengers, all embalmed, all in coffins.

The authorities in Halifax had thoroughly prepared for the
Mackay-Bennett’s
return. The Mayflower Curling Rink on Agricola Street, just a few blocks from the dockyard, was turned into a temporary morgue, where sixty-seven canvas-enclosed cubicles had been set up, each holding three bodies. Only people who could produce proof of identity or authorization from next of kin were allowed inside the morgue. The second floor of the rink was converted to a suite of offices for the coroner and his staff, who worked hard at producing the documentation necessary for issuing death certificates. In each case the cause of death was listed as “accidental drowning, S.S. Titanic, at sea.”

The first body to be claimed and released was Number 124, John Jacob Astor. Despite the condition of the body—crushed and covered with soot (Astor had been caught beneath the forward funnel when it fell into the sea)—identification had been a fairly simple procedure. The records show that he wore a blue serge suit, a blue handkerchief (with, curiously, the initials “A.V” on it), a gold-buckled belt, brown boots with red rubber soles, and a brown flannel shirt with “J. J. A.” on the collar. It was this shirt that provided the positive identification of Astor’s body, not as commonly believed, the amount of cash he carried. (This included £225 in notes, $2,440 in American currency, £5 in gold, 7s in silver, and 50 francs. Other personal items included a gold watch, gold cuff links, and a diamond ring with three stones.) The body was claimed by his son Vincent, who, along with the family’s lawyer, Nicholas Biddle, and the skipper of Astor’s private yacht, Captain Roberts, had taken a special train to Halifax.

The purser’s list prepared aboard the
Mackay-Bennett,
which the coroner was now using to assist in identifying the bodies, makes for melancholy reading. Some entries are remarkably detailed, which often meant that identification was relatively easy: many others were heartbreakingly stark, making identification nearly impossible. For example: “Number 33; Male, estimated age: 30; blue suit; no marks; brown hair and moustache; no effects.” Or: “Number 23, Female, about 25, fair hair. Sum of 150 Finnish marks sewn into clothing.” Or: “Number 63; Female, estimated age 22, dark black hair. Clothing—blue dress and blouse, black shoes. Effects—purse with miniature photo; key; few coins; photo locket. No marks on body or clothing. Probably Third Class.” Or: “Number 88; Male, estimated age 50, dark hair, moustache light. Clothing—dungaree trousers, flannel shirt. No marks on body or clothing, no effects. Fireman.” One particularly sad entry is Number 328—“four feet, six inches, about 14 years old, golden brown hair, very dark skin, refined features. Lace trimmed red-and-black overdress, black underdress, green striped undershirt, black woolen shawl and felt slippers. Probably third class.”
⁵

In what was probably the strangest twist in the process of identification, the body of Michel Navatril was originally identified as “Mr. Hoffmann,” the alias under which he was traveling. It was money that enabled authorities to identify “Mr. Hoffmann” as Michel Navatril: he was being sought by a number of French creditors for outstanding debts. The creditors had issued, on both sides of the Atlantic, a detailed description of Navatril, and this description came to the attention of the Nova Scotian authorities. It matched the body of “Mr. Hoffmann” so closely that the creditors’ representatives were called in, and in short order they were able to confirm that the body was indeed that of Michel Navatril. When his body was recovered, the equivalent of several hundred dollars in French francs were found in the various pockets of his clothing. The representatives promptly placed liens on the cash he had been carrying.
⁶

Three days after the
Mackay-Bennett
returned, the burials began. Based on instructions from relatives—or in the case of the unidentified or unclaimed bodies, educated guesswork about the victim’s religion—those still at the curling rink were designated to be buried in one of three Halifax cemeteries : Fairview, which was a nonsectarian plot; Baron de Hirsch cemetery, right next to Fairview, for those who were Jewish; or Mount Olivet, about a half-mile to the south, for Roman Catholics. All the bodies were properly embalmed, placed in simple yellow-pine coffins, and on Friday, May 3, 1912, the first of a series of funeral services were held.