Titanic: The Novelization (110th Anniversary Edition)

The Aftermath

Archibald Gracie, finally coming to the surface after swimming free of the suction, found himself in the middle of a nightmare.

"Looking about me, I could see no Titanic in sight. She had entirely disappeared beneath the calm surface of the ocean and without a sign of any wave. That the sea had swallowed her up with all her precious belongings was indicated by the slight sound of a gulp behind me as the water closed over her. The length of time that I was under water can be estimated by the fact that I sank with her, and when I came up there was no ship in sight. The accounts of others as to the length of time it took the Titanic to sink afford the best measure of the interval I was below the surface....What impressed me at the time that my eyes beheld the horrible scene was a thin light- gray smoky vapor that hung like a pall a few feet above the broad expanse of sea that was covered with a mass of tangled wreckage. That it was a tangible vapor, and not a product of imagination, I feel well assured. It may have been caused by smoke or steam rising to the surface around the area where the ship had sunk. At any rate it produced a supernatural effect, and the pictures I had seen by Dante and the description I had read in my Virgil of the infernal regions, of Charon, and the River Lethe, were then uppermost in my thoughts. Add to this, within the area described, which was as far as my eyes could reach, there arose to the sky the most horrible sounds ever heard by mortal man except by those of us who survived this terrible tragedy. The agonizing cries of death from over a thousand throats, the wails and groans of the suffering, the shrieks of the terror-stricken and the awful gaspings for breath of those in the last throes of drowning, none of us will ever forget to our dying day. 'Help! Help! Boat ahoy! Boat ahoy!' and 'My God! My God!' were the heart-rending cries and shrieks of men, which floated to us over the surface of the dark waters continuously for the next hour, but as time went on, growing weaker and weaker until they died out entirely."

Jack Thayer, shivering on the swamped Collapsible B, heard the voices of those still in the water, after Titanic disappeared.

"Probably a minute passed with almost dead silence and quiet. Then an individual call for help, from here, from there; gradually swelling into a composite volume of one long continuous wailing chant, from the fifteen hundred in the water all around us. It sounded like locusts on a midsummer night, in the woods in Pennsylvania. This terrible continuing cry lasted for twenty or thirty minutes, gradually dying away, as one after another could no longer withstand the cold and exposure. Practically no one was drowned, as no water was found in the lungs of those later recovered. Everyone had on a life preserver. The partially filled lifeboats standing by only a few hundred yards away never came back. Why on earth they didn't is a mystery. How could any human being fail to heed those cries? They were afraid the boats would be swamped by people in the water."

And he was right I'm afraid. In spite of everyone shouting cries of "Please help us!", "For God's sake!", "Come back!", "Save one life!", "Don't leave me!" and so on and so forth, nobody dared to make a move. Some would rather wait until things calmed down. Some preferred not to go back at all, like a certain Quartermaster Hitchens.

"If we go back," he told his passengers. "They'll swamp the boat and pull us right down."

"Oh you're just trying to scare us!" scoffed Maggie.

She turned to the others.

"Come on, girls! Let's grab an oar and go back!"

Before any of them could speak, Hitchens resumed his tirade.

"Are you out of your bloody mind?! We're in the middle of the North Atlantic! I'm in charge of this boat and if these people want to live or die, it's their choice."

"But there is plenty of room for more!" rebuked Maggie, taking a stand. "If you had any heart, you'd know that those are your men out there!"

"Sit down at once! My men made their choice and if they wanted to die, they should die!"