The Titanic Murders - By Max Allan Collins Page 0,78

the loading of women and children onto lifeboats; when all of the lifeboats had been dispatched, the gentlemen returned to their card game in the Smoking Room until the slant of the table no longer allowed. Stories of Major Butt on deck fighting off swarthy steerage “rabble” with a walking stick or even a firearm appear to be one of the many yellow-journalistic inventions that pervaded early coverage of the disaster.

Archie Butt was last seen standing solemnly to one side on the boat deck, stoically awaiting his fate like the good soldier he was. He was apparently in the company of his friend Francis Millet; both men died in the sinking, Millet’s body recovered by the crew of the MacKay Bennett, whose grim task it was to salvage as many Titanic corpses as possible from the icy Atlantic.

Captain Smith’s fate remains clouded, as do conflicting reports of his demeanor on deck. The press of the day made him out a hero, but considering the source, the reports that he fell into a dazed, near-catatonic state are more credible; still, witnesses recalled seeing him with a megaphone, directing lifeboats to return to pick up more passengers (an order ignored). One story has him committing suicide with a pistol, but more credible is the eyewitness account of a steward who saw his captain walk onto the bridge, shortly before the forward superstructure went under, presumably to be washed away—a suicide of sorts, at that.

Another crew member reported seeing Captain Smith in the freezing water, holding a baby in his arms, moments before his ship made her final slide into the sea. Legend has it that the captain swam to a lifeboat, handed the child over, and swam off to go down after, if not with, his ship. The last reliable reports of Smith have him, in the water, cheering the attempts of crew members to struggle onto the top of an overturned lifeboat, calling, “Good lads! Good lads!” An oar offered to Smith was out of the captain’s reach, as a swell carried him away.

Some of the most famous stories of that night—the ones sounding most like legend—are true.

Isidor Straus, offered a seat on lifeboat number eight in consideration of his age, refused to go when other, younger men were staying; and Ida Straus refused to leave her husband’s side.

“I will not be separated from my husband,” she said. “As we have lived, so will we die together.”

And they did; in one final indignity, however, the ocean took Mrs. Straus’s body, while her husband’s was recovered, to be buried in Beth-El Cemetery, Brooklyn. Forty thousand attended the memorial service for the couple, with a eulogy read by Andrew Carnegie.

Benjamin Guggenheim, at first protesting the discomfort of a life belt, later abandoned it for his finest evening wear. With his valet, he awaited death in style, announcing, “We’ve dressed up in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” Oddly, his final thoughts—or at least his final thoughts of how he might like to be remembered—had to do with his long-suffering wife, writing the following note: If anything should happen to me, tell my wife I’ve done my best in doing my duty.

This may have been small solace to Mrs. Guggenheim, after Madame Aubert—rescued with the others in lifeboats by the ship Carpathia—came ashore announced as “Mrs. Benjamin Guggenheim.” As a further indignity, Guggenheim’s business affairs were in disorder, his steampump company doing poorly at the time of his death, leaving his children to make do with trust funds of only half a million or so, each.

Thomas Andrews, one of the first to understand that his ship was doomed, circulated through the Titanic dispensing various stories to various passengers, depending on how well he felt they might bear up under the truth. He worked manfully to see to it that as many women and children as possible were gotten into the lifeboats; but despair, finally, overtook him.

Andrews was last seen in the Smoking Room, staring at a serene nautical painting, his life belt nearby, flung carelessly across a green-topped table. His arms were folded, his shoulders slumped. When a steward, moving quickly through the room, asked him, “Aren’t you even going to have a try for it, Mr. Andrews?”, the shipbuilder did not even acknowledge the question.

William T. Stead was also seen in the Smoking Room, seemingly absorbed in the book he was reading, unconcerned about the brouhaha (he had taken a break from his book and was one of the