Hartley heard him and sputtered in laughter. “All right, Mr. Andrews. The first request is for Water Music. As soon as we’re down, I promise.”
The crowd waiting to load began to laugh, and the word got around: if they wanted to hear the music, they needed to get into boats.
With the party atmosphere subdued, loading began to move more efficiently. By 1:10, just one-and-a-half hours after the collision, they had launched twelve boats. A good number of people waited near their assigned spaces, and others stood ready to take their places once they were loaded. The guarantee group were coming and going at a steady clip, bringing thirty or forty third-class passengers as far as the first class promenade on A deck. From there, they could easily reach the boat deck and were loading onto boats as efficiently as first- and second-class passengers.
Tom had a chuckle seeing Roderick Chisholm, his chief draftsman, guiding a group from third class with a small girl sitting snugly on his shoulders. She couldn’t have been more than two, but she was looking around in a serious manner as Rod approached Tom. “Her parents are lost,” Chisholm informed him. “Don’t think they speak English. You haven’t noticed any frantic people looking for a child, have you?” Tom couldn’t say that he had, and Chisholm nodded briefly. “Well, I’ll head back down for another group. She’s got a good perch and she’ll spot them right enough. Doubt they got on a boat without her.” He headed off then, with the child clutching to what little hair he had, chatting a blue streak to her about keeping an eye out for her wayward parents. As Rod was approaching the stairs, the child suddenly spotted her parents, and with a shouted “Maman!” used Rod’s head as a launching pad to jump into the arms of her frantic mother. Tom treasured the moment.
The list of the ship was getting worse.
As the pumps began to lose their battle with the seawater, which relentlessly filled the bulkheads, the ship leaned more and more to starboard, making it harder and more dangerous to lower the boats on that side. Tom went below to see what was happening, stopping in waist-deep water at D Deck. He rested his head against the cold metal of the ladder, his body heavy with despair and fatigue. He felt the ship’s pain, heard her groans and creaks as she fought against the pressure of water where no water had a right to be.
A yell of anguish escaped him as he clung to the ladder. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I knew the danger and I built you anyway. I wanted you to live. I’m so sorry…” He hugged the ladder, trying to give her his strength. She would need all the spirit he had been able to build into her to accomplish her task.
I’m trying, he heard the ship tell him, I hurt all over, but I’m trying. I’ll float as long as I can. With a deep breath, he accepted her sacrifice, vowing to help her as much as possible. He went up and over to amidships, then back down to check on the engineers.
Engineering wasn’t flooded yet, but they were working in a couple of feet of water, laboring to keep the machines running and the lights on. He gave the chief engineer a quick report of conditions topside and in the bulkheads. Tom did not need to ask the question he most wanted an answer to.
“We’ll work as long as you need us to, Mr. Andrews,” Joseph Bell told him. “Just give us a shout when everyone is off, and we’ll head to a boat.”
Tom nodded in thanks, took a moment to clap an encouraging hand on Billy Parr’s shoulder—he was more proud than he could say of his guarantee group—and headed topside.
On the starboard boat deck, Mr. Murdoch continued to load people into a boat, but he paused to confer with Tom as he came over, dripping wet and shivering, from his excursion below.
“Finish the boats you’ve started, but it’s getting too dangerous to keep working from this side,” Tom suggested in a low voice. “We should start sending the others to port. Those boats will have to do.”
Murdoch nodded, touching Tom lightly on the shoulder in reassurance. “We only have about twenty-two hundred souls, Mr. Andrews. We won’t need all the boats, as it is.”
There was a sudden lurch as the ship dropped an abrupt few inches toward the bow. Tom instinctively grabbed a rope, watching in horror as a wave washed several feet up the deck, sweeping people off their feet. Some went overboard and he cried out in futile protest. But the real horror was much closer.
He heard Murdoch shout, “Christ!” and turned to the lifeboat, which had begun to rock in great arcs, passengers screaming in terror. Murdoch was shouting orders to the seamen working at the swinging ropes. Tom quickly tried to take the passengers in hand, hoping to calm them. Several stood up, or made as if to jump back to Titanic, and over Tom’s frantic shouts, a few determined fools began to push their way through the crowd on the boat. There was not even time to think: the boat tipped precariously, and three people on the edge fell out. Even over all the noise, Tom heard the crack of a woman’s head against the ship’s railing as all three fell into the water.
Complete chaos engulfed the passengers as every person in the boat attempted to jump out. A few made it, grabbing the railing and hanging on. But most didn’t make it, as the boat turned almost completely over, spilling its cargo into the cold darkness below.
Murdoch was weeping in great gasps as the survivors were helped back on board and he turned to Tom, grasping handfuls of Tom’s life-belt in his fists. “What was that?” he screamed, his face contorted. “Why did the ship fall like that?”
Dear God, the coal fire. The weakened bulkhead. Tom stared at Murdoch, silent with grief and guilt. But Murdoch didn’t seem to want an answer, anyway. He let go of Tom as suddenly as he’d grabbed him and straightened solemnly, his face stern and calm. “Mr. Andrews, take the remaining passengers portside and help them into boats. We can do no more on this side.”
Too numb to think or respond, Tom just nodded and turned to the cowed group of passengers crying and shaking as they leaned against the wall. He gestured toward the door. “All of you, we’ll go portside. It’s safer to use the boats over there.”
He moved them inside. The quickest way was down one level and over through the writing room, and as he guided the shocked group through the ship, he told everyone he saw, “Go portside. Starboard boats cannot be used. Go portside.”
How many people are left? Tom thought in despair, as his crowd of frightened passengers joined the throng still waiting portside. A quick glance at his watch told him it was three o’clock. An hour and ten minutes longer than they had lived before. But still an hour before Carpathia arrived. Would they make it?
At 3:30, an excited murmur spread through the crowd on deck, and out to the evacuees in lifeboats. People were pointing off into the darkness and for a short time, all activity ceased as everyone turned at the shout, “It’s Carpathia!” As they watched, the indiscriminate flickers of light far in the distance turned into larger, brighter, steadier lights. Final certainty came when the far away ship sent up a rocket and a full cheer went up from every person on deck, and in the boats at sea.
On Carpathia, the cheer reached them faintly, but there was no mistaking what it was. Captain Rostron exchanged a grin with his chief officer and went to have a word with the wireless operator.
Harold Cottam had been nearly non-stop on the wireless with Titanic and other rescue ships. He had to be exhausted, but Rostron needed further information. “It’s still dark and we don’t want to run over any lifeboats. Find out where the boats are in relation to Titanic. Tell them to make sure the boats stay on the other side of the ship from us. We’re slowing down, but we should reach them in about fifteen minutes. We’ll approach from the south and stop just west of the ship. We’ll start loading from the boats as soon as we stop.”