20. DARK CIRCLE
In the deep, even the most insignificant fungus seemed eager to teach: Charles Pellegrino, letter to friends S. Sittenreich and F. Kakugawa, Mar. 2, 2011.
Revelations of Alfred White’s retrograde amnesia and the real horrors of boat A: Alfred White, letters to family of William Parr, contact of family with Bill MacQuitty, June 1, 1912, Nov. 20, 1956, L/P file, pp. 124, 182–186; George Rheims, letter to his wife, Apr. 19, 1912, annotated by Walter Lord and James Cameron, L/P file, pp. 57–58, 232–236; Richard Norris Williams, letter to Walter Lord, Apr. 27, 1962, L/P file, p. 179.
More details about the improbable escape and the medical enigma of Charles Joughin: Joughin, British Inquiry, May 10, 1912, pp. 142, 145, 148; Joughin, personal communication to Walter Lord, discussed by Lord, Sept. 13, 1993, L/P file, p. 38B. On hypothermia and the hazards of warming from the extremities: Barbara M. Medlin and Rich Robles (Keldysh staff), personal communication, 2001. On the actual measurement of the surface area and volume ratios in such processes: Charles Pellegrino, “The Role of Dessication Pressures and Surface Area/Volume Relationships . . . Implications for Adaptation to Land,” Crustaceana 47, no. 3 (1984): 251–268, http://victoria.Icon.ac.nz/vwebv/searchBasic.
Following these same mathematical principles, Joughin’s unorthodox way of warming himself (and surviving it) compounds the mystery: Captain J. J. Anderson, letter to Walter Lord, Jan. 1956, L/P file, p. 429. August Wennerstrom’s harrowing odyssey aboard boat A was recorded in undated unpublished papers, sourced courtesy of Wennerstrom’s family in Wyn Craig Wade, Titanic: End of a Dream (New York: Penguin, 1979), 248–249, 299, 313–314, 320. Fellow survivor David Vartanian’s boat A experience was reported by Philip T. Dattilo, “A Daughter Remembers Titanic David,” Titanic Commutator 23, no. 145 (1999): 28, 29.
George Rheims described the dead and the dying in boat A, leading up to the rescue of Vartanian: letter to his wife, Apr. 19, 1912, p. 4, L/P file, p. 238. The only woman to survive sinking with the Titanic was discovered by Walter Lord to be a boat A survivor, Rosa Abbott: Walter Lord, personal communication, 1986; Judith Geller, Titanic: Women and Children First (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 142.
Albert Moss’s arrival at the overturned boat B was recorded in Per Kristian Sebak, Titanic: 31 Norwegian Destinies (Oslo: Genesis Forlag, 1998), 88–89. This boat was Charles Lightoller’s command: Lightoller, in Jack Winocour, ed., The Story of the Titanic as Told by Its Survivors (New York: Dover, 1960), 301.
Celiney Yasbeck estimated that her boat was within five minutes’ rowing distance of the circle of dying people, but the officer in charge would not move nearer: Yasbeck, letter to Walter Lord, June 15, 1955, pp. 3, 4, L/P file, pp. 226–229; Helen Candee to Colonel Archibald Gracie, in Winocour, 301.
Boat 11 was another that did not move nearer: Edith Russell, unpublished memoir with letter to Walter Lord, Apr. 11, 1934, annotated by Lord, Feb. 11, 1987, communications file, Mar. 1978–Mar. 1988, pp. 6, 7. In boat 5, Herbert Pitman allowed himself to be overruled by his passengers: Pitman, American Inquiry, Apr. 19, 1912, pp. 283, 284; survivor C. H. Behr, letter written for his family’s scrapbook, undated, L/P file, p. 211.
Don Lynch’s chilling explanation for the behavior of the women in Pitman’s boat: Charles Pellegrino, written log, Expedition Titanic XIII, Aug. 2001, as the result of a personal communication with Lynch. Violet Jessop’s observations in boat 16 and the behavior of Mary Hewlett: Violet Jessop with J. Maxtone Graham, Violet Jessop: Titanic Survivor (New York: Sheridan House, 1997), 138; M. Hewlett, letter to her sister, May 30, 1912, L/P file, p. 444. Not all of the women shared Hewlett’s attitude, such as in the case of an odd coincidence recorded in Captain Arthur Rostron’s 1939 account, The Loss of the Titanic (Indian Orchard, MA: Titanic Historical Society, 1975), 16–17.
Frank Prentice on the idle lifeboats: Prentice interview with Walter Lord, undated, L/P file, pp. 659, 660; Augustus H. Weikman, American Inquiry, Apr. 24, 1912, p. 1099. Edward John Buley (Hosono’s accuser) had witnessed people trying to construct rafts, as he told the American Inquiry, Apr. 25, 1912, pp. 606, 609–611. Weikman survived on one of the rafts.
By 3:20 a.m., Harold Lowe pulled the Buley-Hosono boat together with several others and prepared to row back with boat 14 in search of survivors: Buley, American Inquiry, Apr. 25, 1912, p. 606. While transferring passengers, Lowe overlooked Charlotte Collier and her daughter, who were still in his rescue boat: Collier, in D. Hyslop et al., Titanic Voices (Southampton, UK: Southampton City Council, 1994), 133, 137.
Collier wrote that her feet were in several inches of water; this was consistent with another passenger’s account to Gracie that boat 14 struck the water hard enough to be damaged and had developed a slow leak: Jack Winocour, ed., The Story of the Titanic as Told by Its Survivors (New York: Dover, 1960), 197.
Lowe discovered to his horror that he had waited too long before returning to the site of the sinking: Lowe, American Inquiry, Apr. 23, 1912, p. 410. His boat began grating up against hundreds of frozen bodies: Joseph Scarrott, British Inquiry, May 3, 1912, pp. 25–26. The electric torch Lowe brought with him was described in Winocour, 197. Collier’s experience in the circle of death is preserved in D. Hyslop et al., Titanic Voices (Southampton, UK: Southampton City Council, 1994), 137–138.
The initial refusal of Lowe to rescue a nonwhite survivor who was clinging to floating wreckage was revealed over the course of several weeks in 1912: George Crowe, American Inquiry, Apr. 25, 1912, p. 616; Collier, American Semi-Monthly, May 1912.
The Collier passage was sanitized for reproduction in D. Hyslop et al., Titanic Voices (Southampton, UK: Southampton City Council, 1994), 76, but it was mostly restored there on page 76; it was also reproduced in its original form by Gracie in Jack Winocour, ed., The Story of the Titanic as Told by Its Survivors (New York: Dover, 1960), 195. It was also reproduced in its entirety in “Biography of Harold Godfrey Lowe,” Encyclopedia Titanica, 1. The only lesson that Lowe seems to have learned from this experience was to cease cursing Asians and denigrate Italians instead: American Inquiry, Apr. 19, 1912, p. 408; Buley (who went back with Lowe in boat 14), American Inquiry, Apr. 25, 1912, p. 613.
21. EXPLORERS, GRAVES, AND LOVERS
The velocity of the Titanic’s bow section, upon impact with the bottom: B. Matsen, The Titanic’s Last Secrets (New York: Twelve, 2008), 35, 41. Analysis of impact-generated “jetting trenches” and craters: Charles Pellegrino, video log, Expedition Titanic XIII, Sept. 22, 2001. Additional data: Sinking of the Ocean Voyager and its terminal velocity in the Gulf of Oman: Tom Dettweiler, James Cameron, and John-David Cameron, personal communication, 2002.
Analysis of rusticle concreted (preserved) cross-sections of the Titanic’s “Hell’s Kitchen” and starboard stern ejected-materials blanket: Charles Pellegrino and Roy Cullimore, written log and video log, Expedition Titanic VIII, 1996, and post-expedition notes, Apr. 13, 1997; Pellegrino and Cullimore, in William Garske, “How Did the Titanic Really Sink?” Voyage 25, 1997, p. 43.