December 28, 1997

Word for Word: The Senate Titanic Hearings

EW YORK -- The phrase "Senate investigation" today conjures up made-for-TV hearings in search of a defining moment.

But one Senate inquiry bursting with such moments took place before the advent of electronic mass media: it was the 1912 investigation into the sinking of the Titanic, begun just days after the supposedly unsinkable ocean liner struck an iceberg and went down in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage, with the loss of more than two-thirds of the 2,223 people aboard.

Details from those 17 days of hearings are primary source material for historical accounts of the disaster, and now for the epic new film "Titanic," the most expensive movie ever made.

The hearings, before a special panel of the Senate Commerce Committee, were opened in the ornate East Room of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on April 19, 1912, four days after the Titanic sank and the day after survivors arrived in port.

The panel's chairman, Sen. William Alden Smith, R-Mich., had rushed from Washington to insure that shipping officials and crew, most of them British, couldn't leave the country before being questioned. Later the hearings moved to Washington.

The more than 1,100 pages of testimony, most of it originally transcribed by the senator's secretary, William McKinstry, yield a narrative of the disaster in the words of those who had just lived it. Excerpts follow. -- TOM KUNTZ

The Titanic didn't take ice warnings from nearby ships seriously. To one such warning, just before the Titanic struck the berg on the evening of Sunday, April 14, the ship's wireless operator had responded: "Shut up. I am busy." A lookout, Frederick Fleet, said there were no binoculars in the ship's crow's nest:

Senator Smith: Did you make any request for glasses on the Titanic?

Fleet: We asked (for) them in Southampton (England), and they said there was none for us. . . .

Smith: You had a pair of glasses from Belfast to Southampton?

Fleet: Yes, sir, but none from Southampton to New York. . . .

Smith: Suppose you had glasses such as you had between Belfast and Southampton, could you have seen this black object (the iceberg) at a greater distance?

Fleet: We could have seen it a bit sooner.

Smith: How much sooner?

Fleet: Well, enough to get out of the way.

Maj. Arthur Peuchen, a first-class passenger from Toronto, said the evening had actually passed quite agreeably -- up to a point:

Sunday evening I dined with my friends, Markelham Molson, Mr. Allison and Mrs. Allison; and their daughter was there for a short time. The dinner was an exceptionally good dinner. It seemed to be a better bill of fare than usual, although they are all good. After dinner my friends and I went to the sitting-out room and had some coffee . . . I then went up to the smoking room and joined Mr. Beatty, Mr. McCaffery and another English gentleman who was going to Canada. We sat chatting and smoking there until probably 20 minutes after 11, or it may have been a little later than that. I then bid them good night. . . . I had only reached my room and was starting to undress when I felt as though a heavy wave had struck our ship. . . . Knowing that it was a calm night and that it was an unusual thing to occur on a calm night, I immediately put my overcoat on and went up on deck. As I started to go through the grand stairway I met a friend who said, "Why, we have struck an iceberg." . . .

There weren't nearly enough lifeboats for all aboard, and the ones available were being underloaded, mainly with women and children:

Senator Smith: From what you have said, you discriminated entirely in the interest of the passengers -- first the women and children -- in filling these lifeboats?

Charles Lightoller, second officer: Yes, sir.

Smith: Why did you do that? Because of the captain's orders or because of the rule of the sea?

Lightoller: The rule of human nature.

Some men managed to break the rule:

Smith: And how many people did you put into (the lifeboat)?

Harold Lowe, fifth officer: Fifty-eight.

Smith: How many women, do you know?

Lowe: They were all women and children, bar one passenger, who was an Italian, and he sneaked in . . . dressed like a woman.

James Cameron's new film alludes to Isidor and Ida Straus of New York with a shot of an elderly couple lying in their stateroom bed as the water rises beneath them. Survivors confirmed that Mrs. Straus would not leave her husband:

Hugh Woolner, first-class passenger: She would not get in (the lifeboat). I tried to get her to do so and she refused altogether to leave Mr. Straus. . . . We went up to Mr. Straus, and I said to him: "I am sure nobody would object to an old gentleman like you getting in. There seems to be room in this boat." He said, "I will not go before the other men."

Woolner and another man leaped off the ship and onto a lifeboat being lowered past them:

Woolner: It was full up to the bow, and I said: "There is nobody in the bows. Let us make a jump for it. You go first." And he jumped out and tumbled in head over heels into the bow, and I jumped, too, and hit the gunwale with my chest . . . and I sort of bounced off the gunwale and caught the gunwale with my fingers, and slipped off backwards.

Smith: Into the water?

Woolner: As my legs dropped down I felt that they were in the sea. . . .

Smith: You pulled yourself up out of the water?

Woolner: Yes. And then I hooked my right heel over the gunwale, and (his companion) caught hold of me and lifted me in.

Lightoller, the second officer, said he didn't leave the ship; rather, as it sank, the ship left him. He was sucked underwater:

Lightoller: As I say, I was on top of the officers' quarters, and there was nothing more to be done. This ship then took a dive, and I turned face forward and also took a dive.

Senator Smith: From which side?

Lightoller: From on top, practically midships, a little to the starboard side, where I had got to, and I was driven back against a blower, which is a large thing that . . . faces forward to the wind and which then goes down to the stokehole. But there is a grating there, and it was against this grating that I was sucked by the water and held there.

Smith: Was your head above water?

Lightoller: No, sir.

Smith: You were underwater?

Lightoller: Yes, sir. And then this explosion, or whatever it was, took place. Certainly, I think it was the boilers exploded. There was a terrific blast of air and water, and I was blown out clear.

Out in the lifeboats, many didn't want to go back to save those in the water freezing to death in their life vests and screaming for help. One boat did belatedly, saving only a handful:

Edward Buley, seaman: There were a good few dead, sir. Of course, you could not discern them exactly on account of the wreckage; but we turned over several of them to see if they were alive. It looked as though none of them were drowned. They looked as though they were frozen. . . .

Senator Duncan Fletcher, Democrat of Florida: They were head and shoulders out of the water?

Buley: Yes, sir. . . .

Fletcher: They were not, apparently, drowned?

Buley: It looked as though they were frozen altogether, sir.

Herbert Pitman, the third officer, was questioned on why he didn't use his lifeboat to save people:

Smith: I have no desire to lacerate your feelings, but we must know whether you drifted in the vicinity of that scene for an hour.

Pitman: Oh yes, we were in the vicinity of that wreck the whole time.

Smith: Did this anguish or these cries of distress die away?

Pitman: Yes, they -- they died away gradually.

Smith: Did they continue during most of the hour?

Pitman: Oh yes, I think so. It may have been a shorter time -- of course, I didn't watch every five minutes.

Smith: I understand that, and I am not trying to ask about a question of five minutes. Is that all you care to say?

Pitman: I'd rather you'd have left that (testimony) out altogether.

Smith: I know you would, but I must know what efforts you made to save the lives of passengers and crew under your charge. If that is all the effort you made, say so. . . .

Pitman: That is all, sir. That's all the effort I made.

Perhaps most public opprobrium was reserved for the first witness before the hearings, J. Bruce Ismay, British president of the Titanic's parent company, and the man implicated in urging the ship's captain to risk higher speeds. Early in the disaster, Ismay hopped into a lifeboat to save himself and, as he testified, he never looked back:

Smith: You did not see her go down?

Ismay: No, sir.

Smith: How far were you from the ship?

Ismay: I do not know how far we were away. I was sitting with my back to the ship. I was rowing all the time I was in the boat. We were pulling away.

Smith: You did not see her go down?

Ismay: I am glad I did not.