"Fifteen first-class bellboys"?

[Arun Vajpey]

Lord mentions that after the last lifeboat was lowered at 2:05 a "curious calm" came over the Titanic.

I have always considered that sentence as more than a bit of artistic licence on Lord's part. While the many of the eventual victims left on board the sinking Titanic after Collapsible D was lowered at 02:05 am maintained a modicum of self-control, there would have been a good deal of shouting, wailing and hurried movement towards the imagined sanctuary of the dry and rising stern. That would have been human natutre under the circumstances and one does not need to be a rocket scientist or a history professor to guess the scenario, which can hardly be described as a "curious calm".

ANTR and TNLO are both written in a charming style and are still good as basic primers, but nonetheless they contain a considerable number of inaccuracies.

Agreed completely. The thing that I don't like about books like A Night To Remember, The Maiden Voyage, Titanic: An Illustrated History is that they all try to be too "charming" in their writing style but in so doing with a tragic factual event, make their works appear melodramatic and novelized more than anything else. Lord brought out a lot of exellent facts that became sources of information and research later but I am not a fan of his writing style.

Another human tendency is that even those of us who no longer accept the old and meaningless adage "old is gold" are reluctant to challenge original or otherwise traditionally accepted works.

Like Suemas, I agree 100% that On A Sea Of Glass, is the absolutly best way the chronology of events of the Titanic's ill-fated voyage should have been presented; the authors limit their licenece to chapter titles, which is fine and gives the book the necessary humane ethos while keeping the content clinical. The narrative, complemented by the superb Appendices section is a fantastic and highly informative piece of work.

One needs to offer counter evidence. But this is what you did in this case, and I greatly appreciate it. But kindly don't lash out at me just because I quote Lord. Just offer the counter evidence, as you did here.

I believe Seumas was indulging in a healthy arguement and not "lashing out" at you by any stretch of imagination. I believe it is perfectly OK to question each others' opinions or ask for explanations in a "politely firm" manner. Yes, I accept that Seumas, myself and perhaps one or two others have lashed out at an ex-member in the past but while the mods rightly considered those posts as inappropriate, it was only after we were pushed beyond a certain limit. I believe you can guess who and what I am taking about and so I will go no further.

I can say here and now that I greatly appreciate the points that you make and the manner in which you present them and hope for continued exchanges with you. That may occasionally involve disagreement but if so, it would only be a difference of opinion and no more. I believe that such healhty arguments between educated and intelligent people adds 'spice' of these forums.

 

[Brad Walton]

I have always considered that sentence as more than a bit of artistic licence on Lord's part. While the many of the eventual victims left on board the sinking Titanic after Collapsible D was lowered at 02:05 am maintained a modicum of self-control, there would have been a good deal of shouting, wailing and hurried movement towards the imagined sanctuary of the dry and rising stern. That would have been human natutre under the circumstances and one does not need to be a rocket scientist or a history professor to guess the scenario, which can hardly be described as a "curious calm".


Agreed completely. The thing that I don't like about books like A Night To Remember, The Maiden Voyage, Titanic: An Illustrated History is that they all try to be too "charming" in their writing style but in so doing with a tragic factual event, make their works appear melodramatic and novelized more than anything else. Lord brought out a lot of exellent facts that became sources of information and research later but I am not a fan of his writing style.

Another human tendency is that even those of us who no longer accept the old and meaningless adage "old is gold" are reluctant to challenge original or otherwise traditionally accepted works.

Like Suemas, I agree 100% that On A Sea Of Glass, is the absolutly best way the chronology of events of the Titanic's ill-fated voyage should have been presented; the authors limit their licenece to chapter titles, which is fine and gives the book the necessary humane ethos while keeping the content clinical. The narrative, complemented by the superb Appendices section is a fantastic and highly informative piece of work.


I believe Seumas was indulging in a healthy arguement and not "lashing out" at you by any stretch of imagination. I believe it is perfectly OK to question each others' opinions or ask for explanations in a "politely firm" manner. Yes, I accept that Seumas, myself and perhaps one or two others have lashed out at an ex-member in the past but while the mods rightly considered those posts as inappropriate, it was only after we were pushed beyond a certain limit. I believe you can guess who and what I am taking about and so I will go no further.

I can say here and now that I greatly appreciate the points that you make and the manner in which you present them and hope for continued exchanges with you. That may occasionally involve disagreement but if so, it would only be a difference of opinion and no more. I believe that such healhty arguments between educated and intelligent people adds 'spice' of these forums.

Thank you, Arun. I probably expressed myself sloppily by using the phrase "lash out." If so, I regret the expression. My only point was that I find it more helpful to controvert facts by counter-facts, rather than by generalizing on an author's reliability (which I generally consider a form of the genetic fallacy: if so-and-so said it, you ought therefore to doubt or dismiss it -- after more than two years of covid, I have become particularly impatient of this kind of argumentation). In fact, Seumas, in addition to stating a caveat on Lord's work, did offer counter evidence to the "curious calm" idea and to the number of bell-boys, and I am grateful to him for having taken the time and trouble to do so. I do not consider myself any kind of expert on the Titanic. However, I am interested in some of the more recent research. I have a copy of On a Sea of Glass and find it extremely useful and informative. However the print is too small for my eyes, so it is taking me a long time to read and absorb it. As a Titanic non-expert, most of my postings here relate to status-quaestionis issues. In approaching such issues it is useful to refer to the source of a supposed fact or opinion for which one requests an update, My references to Lord have generally been intended simply as statements of where I have seen a particular assertion, not arguments from authority.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

I have a copy of On a Sea of Glass and find it extremely useful and informative. However the print is too small for my eyes, so it is taking me a long time to read and absorb it

I have both the hardcover (UK) and paperback (INdia) copies of On A Sea Of Glass. At 66 I did think that the font on the paperback was rather small but I personally can read it easily. The Hardcover has a bit larger font and if you don't have it, might consider buying it.

 

[Brad Walton]

I have both the hardcover (UK) and paperback (INdia) copies of On A Sea Of Glass. At 66 I did think that the font on the paperback was rather small but I personally can read it easily. The Hardcover has a bit larger font and if you don't have it, might consider buying it.

Thank you for that suggestion. I think I will struggle on with the paperback and use a magnifying glass when necessary.

 

[Sam Brannigan]

Regarding the "curious calm", I think it's important to remember the size of the ship. While furious activity might have been going on at the base of the first funnel, it's easy to imagine the after end of the boat deck with its empty davits as a quiet spot, the after well deck and poop deck even more so. The anguished scenes during loading had played out - as discussed in another thread at present the "bell boys" enjoyed a smoke towards the end, and I'm sure many others did as well...there was really nothing for more than a thousand people to do but quietly hope so I'm kind of with Lord on the curious calm.

Even on the poop deck the pre-break up angle was far from extreme, and there is also a school of thought that suggests that in the last minutes the stern was nowhere near as crowded as people now believe. I think the break-up was a total shock for those remaining on board, in the same way that the collapse of the WTC towers on 911 was utterly beyond belief. I reckon they knew the ship was sinking but they hoped the rate would slow, or that some kind of buoyancy would be naturally found. The catastrophic structural collapse must have been horrendously shocking and I seem to recall evidence that the worst of the crying and wailing happened before the stern section sank.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Regarding the "curious calm", I think it's important to remember the size of the ship.
There was really nothing for more than a thousand people to do but quietly hope so I'm kind of with Lord on the curious calm.

I think that Lord's "curious calm" after Collpasible D was launched at 02:05 am was just a figure of speech and part of his writing style, of which I am not really a fan. While there might not have been pandemonium, I do not believe everyone just stood and waited calmy for the end. We now know that Wilde and Lightoller lowered Collapsible D in a hurry with only about half the seats taken because they were concerned about the crowd around them rushing the boat. Then there was a lot of activity around Collapsibles A & B, including passengers waiting in the vicinity for their chances. There would have been a lot of shouting, screaming and running around, things to be expected in such a stuation.

Walter Lord's "calm" was just the prologue to fit in with the Titanic's last moments as was then believed - sinking majestically intact with lights blazing, band playing etc. OK, Lord did not exactly say so and admitted that the lights failed a couple of minutes before and that structures came loose but IMO in writing the book he was careful not to completely erase the popular romanticism associated with the disaster. After all, he wanted it to sell well.

There is also a school of thought that suggests that in the last minutes the stern was nowhere near as crowded as people now believe. I think the break-up was a total shock for those remaining on board

Partly agree.

In saying that the stern was not as crowded as depicted in many books or films, we must be careful not to go too far the other way. By around 02:10 am, most, if not all people still left on board the Titanic IMO were on the boat deck. We must remember what Gracie and others said about the rush of people coming up to the deck in the final minutes. A few might have remained inside their cabins or lost within the bowels of the ship but those could not have been many. Even allowing for those and the ones who had already jumped overboard, there must have been at least 1200 people on the boat deck level in the final minutes; they must have congregated somewhere and the most obvious place would have been the imagined sanctuary of the still dry and rising stern.

While I agree 100% that the break-up would have come as a shock to all concerned including the crew, even prior to that there would have been many who knew that a miraculous rescue was not going to happen and so they did not have long to live. But despite that, the human tendency is to try and get away from the apparent source of danger even in that sort of a hopeless situation. Therefore, with a few exceptions like Captain Smith, Thomas Andrews, maybe some engineers etc. most of those 1200 or so would have instinctively retreated towards the stern, the only place they could go before the slope became unsurmountable.

Finally, when we mean "stern" in context of the final plunge of the Titanic, we really mean the still dry stern section, a quite a large deck area considering that the ship itself was 882 feet long. 1200 or so people congregating there might not have been as hemmed-in as is normally depicted in films and TV shows.