Today was the 100th Memorial of the sinking of the Titanic. It is a such a sobering day, especially since it also happens to be my grandpa's birthday. He passed away two Octobers ago.
Here is an article that came out in the New York Times before they even knew what all had happened. This is so powerful and heartbreaking. Hold out through it. It really is worth the read!!!
FIFTEEN HUNDRED LIVES LOST WHEN TITANIC PLUNGES HEADLONG
INTO DEPTHS OF THE SEA.
Men of World-Wide Prominence Go Down With Ship After Women
and Children Are Taken Off in Lifeboats—Only Six Hundred and Seventy-five
People Saved Out of Total of Twenty-two Hundred on Board Ill-fated
Vessel—Newest and Greatest Liner in World, Built at Cost of Ten Million Dollars
and Embodying Latest Scientific Principles, Sinks as Quickly as Wooden Fishing
Smack After Collision With Iceberg Off Coast of Newfoundland.
Los Angeles Time:
April 16, 1912.
This dramatic headline article from the Los Angeles Times
recounts the sinking of the British luxury liner Titanic. The exact figures
mentioned here have been revised since the time of publication, and the term
advices is used to mean information.
[BY DIRECT WIRE TO THE TIMES]
New York, April 15.—[Exclusive Dispatch.] The greatest
marine disaster in the history of the world occurred last Sunday night when the
Titanic, of the White Star Line, the biggest and finest of steamships,
shattered herself against an iceberg and sank with 1500 of her passengers and crew
in less than four hours.
Out of nearly 2200 persons that she carried only 675 were
saved and most of these are women and children. They were picked up from small
boats by Cunarder Carpathia which found, when she ended her desperate race
against time, a sea strewn with the wreckage of the lost ship and the bodies of
drowned men and women.
Not a name of those saved had reached the offices of the
White Star line or the Cunard line at midnight, though every effort was being
made to get in communication with the vessel that bore the survivors. It is
probable that these names will be received in the morning. All night a crowd of
anxious relatives and friends of the Titanic's passengers were massed in front
of the line's offices at No. 9 Broadway.
There were 325 first cabin passengers on the Titanic, of
whom 128 were women and 15 children. In the second cabin there were 285
persons, including 79 women and 8 children, and in the steerage the complement
of 710 was divided almost equally, it is believed, between women and men, with a
small percentage of children.
The numbers are enough to indicate that if the women and
children were saved, very few men could have survived the disaster, as there
were almost enough women and children aboard to make up the 675 survivors. The
crew numbered 860, bringing the total of those known to be aboard up to 2180,
but it is understood that at the last minute before sailing several got aboard,
making the total up to a full 2200.
Capt. E. J. Smith of the Titanic is believed to have gone to
the bottom with his vessel.
Among the 1320 passengers of the giant liner were Col. John
Jacob Astor and his wife, Isidor Straus, Maj. Archibald W. Butt, aide to
President Taft, George B. Widener and Mrs. Widener of Philadelphia, Mr. and
Mrs. Henry S. Harper, William T. Stead, the London journalist, and many more
whose names are known on both sides of the Atlantic. The news that few besides
the women and children were saved has caused the greatest apprehension as to
the fate of these.
When the Titanic plunged headlong against a wall of ice at
10:40 p.m. on Sunday night, her fate established that no modern steamship is
unsinkable, and that all of a large passenger list cannot be saved in a liner's
small boats. The White Star line believed that the Titanic was practically
invulnerable and insisted until there was no doubting the full extent of the
catastrophe that she could not sink. The great ship was the last word in modern
scientific construction, but she found the ocean floor almost as quickly as a
wooden ship.
On her maiden trip, the Titanic, built and equipped at a
cost of $10,000,000, a floating palace, found her graveyard when, swinging from
the westerly steamship lane, south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, to take
the direct run to this port, she hurled her giant bulk against an iceberg that
rose from an immense field that drifted from the Arctic. Running at high speed
into that grim and silent enemy of seafarers, the shock crushed her bow. From a
happy, comfortable vessel she was converted in a few minutes into a bedlam of
misery and dreadful suffering. Through rent plates and timbers water rushed so
swiftly that her captain, E. J. Smith, the admiral of the White Star fleet,
knew there was no hope of saving her. That much the faltering wireless had
told.
At midnight tonight the officials of the White Star Line
were struggling to get into communication with the Cunarder Carpathia, which
has on board, the 675 women and children saved from the Titanic, but not one
word of news could they obtain. All they could get by wireless was that the
Carpathia, which left New York on April 13 for the Mediterranean, was retracing
her course to this port, bringing here the women and children widowed and
orphaned by the disaster. The Marconi stations were striving also to get in
touch with either the Carpathia or the Allan liner Virginian to find out
whether all the rescued were really on board the Carpathia, or the Virginian
carries others that were saved, but the while keeping hope to the last, freely
admitted there had been “horrible loss of life.”
Accepting early estimates of the fatality list as accurate,
the disaster is the greatest in marine history. Nearest approaching it in
magnitude were the disasters of the steamer Atlantic in 1873, when 547 lives
were lost, and the La Bourgogne in 1898, with a fatality list of 571.
Should it prove that other liners, notably the Allan liners
Parisian and Virginian, known to have been in the vicinity of the Titanic early
yesterday, had picked up other of her passengers, the extent of the calamity
would be greatly reduced. This hope remains.
News of the sinking of the liner and of the terrible loss of
life came early last evening with all the greater shock because hope had been
buoyed up all day by reports that the steamship, although badly damaged, was
not sinking, and that all her passengers had been taken off safely.
The messages were mostly unofficial, however, and none came
directly from the liner, so that a fear remained of possible bad news to come.
SURVIVORS PICKED UP.
Shortly after 7 o'clock tonight there came flashing over the
wires from Cape Race, within 400 miles of which the liner had struck the
iceberg, word that at 2:20 o'clock this morning, three hours and fifty-five
minutes after receiving her death blow, the Titanic had sunk. The news came
from the steamer Carpathia, relayed by the White Star liner Olympic, and
revealed that by the time the Carpathia, outward bound from New York, and
racing for the Titanic on a wireless call, reached the scene, the doomed vessel
had sunk.
Left on the surface, however, were lifeboats from the
Titanic and in them it appears, according to meager reports received at a late
hour, were some 675 survivors of the disaster. These, according to advices, the
Carpathia picked up and is now on her way with them to New York.
For the rest, the scene as the Carpathia came up was one of
desolation. All that remained of the $10,000,000 floating palace on which
nearly 1400 passengers had been voyaging luxuriously to this side of the
Atlantic, were bits of wreckage. The biggest ship in the world had gone down,
snuffing out in her downward plunge, it appeared, hundreds of human lives.
A significant line in the Cape Race dispatch was the
announcement that of those saved by the Carpathia, nearly all were women and
children. Should it prove that no other vessel picked up any passengers of the
sinking liner, this might mean that few of the men had been saved, as the
proportion of women and children among the passengers was large. The same facts
would likewise spell the doom of practically the entire crew of 800.
In the cabins were 230 women and children, but it is not
known how many there were among the 740 third-class passengers.
In the first cabin there were 128 women and fifteen
children, and in the second cabin seventy-nine women and eight children.
NOTABLE PERSONS.
Notable persons, travelers on the Titanic, whose fate was in
doubt in the lack of definite advices as to the identity of the survivors,
were: Mr. and Mrs. John Jacob Astor, Maj. Archibald W. Butt, aide to President
Taft; Charles M. Hayes, president of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, his wife
and daughter; W. T. Stead, Benjamin Guggenheim, F. D. Millett, the artist, and
G. D. Widener of Philadelphia, Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus, J. B. Thayer,
vice-president of the Pennsylvania Railroad; J. Bruce Ismay, Henry B. Harris,
the theatrical manager, and Mrs. Harris, and Col. Washington A. Roebling, builder
of the Brooklyn bridge.
A ray of hope appeared shortly before 11 o'clock tonight in
a message to the night operator at the Marconi wireless station at Sable
Island, near the scene of the disaster. Answering an inquiry regarding the
delivery of wireless messages to the passengers of the Titanic, the operator
reported that it was difficult to deliver them, “as the passengers are believed
to be dispersed among several vessels.”
Even this faint indication that other vessels than the
Carpathia had picked up survivors of the Titanic was eagerly seized upon by
thousands of relatives and friends of those who had set sail on her for this
country.
The White Star offices had endeavored vainly from 8 o'clock
until 11 p.m. to get further word from the Olympic about the Titanic.
Vice-President Franklin said at 11 o'clock they were hopeful of getting another
message tonight.
TRYING FOR LIST OF LIVING.
The company also was trying to get into wireless
communication with the Carpathia and filed a message asking that if possible
the complete list of the names of the 675 survivors said to be on board the
Carpathia be sent by wireless.
Such a list Vice-President Franklin believes to be of the
utmost importance, as hope was waning among the White Star line officials
tonight that any others than these 675 persons had survived.
Amid confusion at the offices the situation was studied as
calmly as possible. Mr. Franklin figured that notwithstanding his fervent hope
to the contrary the Allan line steamers Virginian and Parisian barely could
have reached the scene of the disaster in time to have been of assistance. When
the Virginian first reported catching the “C.Q.D.” signal she said she was not
likely to be able to reach the scene of the wreck before 10 a.m. today. That
would have been nearly eight hours after the Titanic sank. It was equally
doubtful if the Parisian could have reached the scene in time.
Mr. Franklin said that from his knowledge of Capt. Smith's
gallantry and heroism on other occasions, the veteran navigator must have stuck
to his bridge and gone down with his ship.
There was discussion as to whether all the male passengers
had sacrificed opportunity to save themselves by giving women and children the
first chance at the boats.
“There is no rule of the sea,” said Mr. Franklin, “which
requires such a sacrifice. It is a rule of courtesy on land as well as sea that
gallant men have often observed in time of disaster.”
The White Star officers figured from their data that the
Olympic was forty miles from the scene of the Titanic's sinking when she sent
the news of it at 7 o'clock tonight. At that hour the Carpathia was estimated
to be 1080 miles east of Sandy Hook.
Source: Los Angeles Times, April 16, 1912
This rambles just a bit, but I think it is really incredible at capturing the chaos of the event for those who were alive at the time. The final accounting was 1523 of the 2228 passengers and crew members aboard died. Only 705 survived. Those heroic men who sacrificed their lives for their women and men fill me with such inspiration and awe that I just want to burst out in thanksgiving to them! Let them me an example to today's men!!!!
The Titanic on the beginning of her one and only voyage.
The wreckage of the Titanic deep below the sea. Awesome, or what?!
And here are some pictures of my beloved Grandpa. So thankful to God that he lived and breathed! Miss him soooooo much!!! My grandma is visiting us right now.
Grandpa holding Thadden when he was two.
One of Grandpa's greatest loves was hunting. And yes that is me being, well, me.
Abrienne feeding Grandpa her juice.
A sobering day for me and any who cherish the lives in this world. So glad God made both joy and sorrow in this life. The sorrow to compliment the joy and the joy to compliment the sorrow.
