Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters Part 9

"'Where is your life-belt?' I asked him.

"'I didn't think there would be any need of it,' he said.

"'Get one while there is time,' I told him. 'The last boat is gone, and we are done for.'

"'No,' he said, 'I think there are some life-boats to be launched, and we may get on one of them.'

"'There are no life-rafts,' I told him, 'and the ship is going to sink.

I am going to jump overboard and take a chance on swimming out and being picked up by one of the boats. Better come along.'

"'No, thank you,' he said, calmly, 'I think I'll have to stick.'

"I asked him if he would mind shaking hands with me. He said, 'With pleasure,' gave me a hearty grip, and then I climbed up on the rail and jumped overboard. I was in the water nearly four hours before one of the boats picked me up."

CAPTAIN WASHED OVERBOARD

Murdock's last orders were to Quartermaster Moody and a few other petty officers who had taken their places in the rigid discipline of the ship and were lowering the boats. Captain Smith came up to him on the bridge several times and then rushed down again. They spoke to one another only in monosyllables.

There were stories that Captain Smith, when he saw the ship actually going down, had committed suicide. There is no basis for such tales. The captain, according to the testimony of those who were near him almost until the last, was admirably cool. He carried a revolver in his hand, ready to use it on anyone who disobeyed orders.

"I want every man to act like a man for manhood's sake," he said, "and if they don't, a bullet awaits the coward."

With the revolver in his hand--a fact that undoubtedly gave rise to the suicide theory--the captain moved up and down the deck. He gave the order for each life-boat to make off and he remained until every boat was gone. Standing on the bridge he finally called out the order: "Each man save himself." At that moment all discipline fled. It was the last call of death. If there had been any hope among those on board before, the hope now had fled.

The bearded admiral of the White Star Line fleet, with every life-saving device launched from the decks, was returning to the deck to perform the sacred office of going down with his ship when a wave dashed over the side and tore him from the ladder.

The t.i.tanic was sinking rapidly by the head, with the twisting sidelong motion that was soon to aim her on her course two miles down. Murdock saw the skipper swept out; but did not move. Captain Smith was but one of a mult.i.tude of lost at that moment. Murdock may have known that the last desperate thought of the gray mariner was to get upon his bridge and die in command. That the old man could not have done this may have had something to do with Murdock's suicidal inspiration. Of that no man may say or safely guess.

The wave that swept the skipper out bore him almost to the thwart of a crowded life-boat. Hands reached out, but he wrenched himself away, turned and swam back toward the ship.

Some say that he said, "Good-bye, I'm going back to the ship."

He disappeared for a moment, then reappeared where a rail was slipping under water. Cool and courageous to the end, loyal to his duty under the most difficult circ.u.mstances, he showed himself a n.o.ble captain, and he died a n.o.ble death.

SAW BOTH OFFICERS PERISH

Quartermaster Moody saw all this, watched the skipper scramble aboard again onto the submerged decks, and then vanish altogether in a great billow.

As Moody's eye lost sight of the skipper in this confusion of waters it again shifted to the bridge, and just in time to see Murdock take his life. The man's face was turned toward him, Moody said, and he could not mistake it. There were still many gleaming lights on the ship, flickering out like little groups of vanishing stars, and with the clear starshine on the waters there was nothing to cloud or break the quartermaster's vision.

"I saw Murdock die by his own hand," said Moody, "saw the flash from his gun, heard the crack that followed the flash and then saw him plunge over on his face."

Others report hearing several pistol shots on the decks below the bridge, but amid the groans and shrieks and cries, shouted orders and all that vast orchestra of sounds that broke upon the air they must have been faint periods of punctuation

BAND PLAYED ITS OWN DIRGE

The band had broken out in the strains of "Nearer, My G.o.d, to Thee,"

some minutes before Murdock lifted the revolver to his head, fired and toppled over on his face. Moody saw all this in a vision that filled his brain, while his ears drank in the tragic strain of the beautiful hymn that the band played as their own dirge, even to the moment when the waters sucked them down.

Wherever Murdock's eye swept the water in that instant, before he drew his revolver, it looked upon veritable seas of drowning men and women.

From the decks there came to him the shrieks and groans of the caged and drowning, for whom all hope of escape was utterly vanished. He evidently never gave a thought to the possibility of saving himself, his mind freezing with the horrors he beheld and having room for just one central idea--swift extinction.

The strains of the hymn and the frantic cries of the dying blended in a symphony of sorrow.

Led by the green light, under the light of stars, the boats drew away, and the bow, then the quarter, then the stacks and last the stern of the marvel ship of a few days before pa.s.sed beneath the waters. The great force of the ship's sinking was unaided by any violence of the elements, and the suction, not so great as had been feared, rocked but mildly the group of boats now a quarter of a mile distant from it.

Just before the t.i.tanic disappeared from view men and women leaped from the stern. More than a hundred men, according to Colonel Gracie, jumped at the last. Gracie was among the number and he and the second officer were of the very few who were saved.

As the vessel disappeared, the waves drowned the majestic

{ill.u.s.t. caption = DEPTH OF OCEAN WHERE THE t.i.tANIC WENT DOWN

The above etching shows a diagram of the ocean depths between the sh.o.r.e of Newfoundland (shown at the top to the left, by the heavily shaded part) to 800 miles out, where the t.i.tanic struck an iceberg and sank.

Over the Great Bank of Newfoundland the greatest depth is about 35 fathoms, or 210 feet. Then there is a sudden drop to 105 fathoms, or 630 feet, and then there is a falling away to 1650 fathoms or 9900 feet, then 2000 fathoms or 12,000 feet, and about where the t.i.tanic sank 2760 fathoms or 16,560 feet.}

hymn which the musicians played as they went to their watery grave. The most authentic accounts agree that this hymn was not "Nearer, My G.o.d, to Thee," which it seems had been

{ill.u.s.t. caption = CARPATHIA

The Cunard liner which brought the survivors of the t.i.tanic to New York.}

{ill.u.s.t. caption = THE HERO WIRELESS OPERATOR OF THE t.i.tANIC

Photograph of Harold...}

played shortly before, but "Autumn," which is found in the Episcopal hymnal and which fits appropriately the situation on the t.i.tanic in the last moments of pain and darkness there. One line, "Hold me up in mighty waters," particularly may have suggested the hymn to some minister aboard the doomed vessel, who, it has been thought, thereupon asked the remaining pa.s.sengers to join in singing the hymn, in a last service aboard the sinking ship, soon to be ended by death itself.

Following is the hymn:

G.o.d of mercy and compa.s.sion!

Look with pity on my pain: Hear a mournful, broken spirit Prostrate at Thy feet complain; Many are my foes, and mighty; Strength to conquer I have none; Nothing can uphold my goings But Thy blessed Self alone.

Saviour, look on Thy beloved; Triumph over all my foes; Turn to heavenly joy my mourning, Turn to gladness all my woes; Live or die, or work or suffer, Let my weary soul abide, In all changes whatsoever Sure and steadfast by Thy side.

When temptations fierce a.s.sault me, When my enemies I find, Sin and guilt, and death and Satan, All against my soul combined, Hold me up in mighty waters, Keep my eyes on things above, Righteousness, divine Atonement, Peace, and everlasting Love.

It was a little lame schoolmaster, Tyrtaeus, who aroused the Spartans by his poetry and led them to victory against the foe.

It was the musicians of the band of the t.i.tanic--poor men, paid a few dollars a week--who played the music to keep up the courage of the souls aboard the sinking ship.

"The way the band kept playing was a n.o.ble thing," says the wireless operator. "I heard it first while we were working the wireless, when there was a rag-time tune for us, and the last I saw of the band, when I was floating, struggling in the icy water, it was still on deck, playing 'Autumn.' How those brave fellows ever did it I cannot imagine."