The Titanic - The Unsinkable Ship's Tragic Fate and Legacy by Hour History by the & Taylor A.G

Author:Hour, History by the & Taylor, A.G.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5

The Survivors Come Home

“About this time people began jumping from the stern, my friend Milton Long and myself stood beside each other and jumped on the rail. We did not give each other any messages for back home because neither thought we would get back.”

-Jack B. Thayer, Titanic survivor

On April 18th, 1912, the citizens of New York, and really much of the rest of the world had their eyes glued to the harbor. For it was on this day that the Carpathia—a ship loaded up with Titanic survivors—was brought back to dry land. Besides the curiosity of the general public, this occasion was of intense interest to relatives, who had yet to learn the whereabouts of their family members.

In the leadup to this homecoming, so-called “passenger lists” of survivors had been written and rewritten many times. Although these lists gave an idea of who may have survived, there was always a chance that someone might have been missed. So it was, in this glum sense of despair, that family members who had not seen the names of their relatives mentioned on the survivor lists swarmed the docks, in the hopes that their relations had simply been overlooked, and were alive and well.

The news media was of course in full force to cover this event, no doubt hoping to gain riveting personal interest stories of the reunion of survivors with their worried families. News reporters were also eager to get answers to some of the most daunting questions that plagued the whole Titanic disaster. They wanted to probe officials as to why this luxury liner—said to be well-nigh unsinkable—sunk like a rock to the bottom of the Atlantic.

Prior to the Titanic, the biggest maritime story was when Admiral Dewey blew a whole Spanish armada out of the water back in 1898, bringing an end to the Spanish–American War. Ironically, the whole Spanish—American War itself was kicked off by another maritime disaster—the sinking of the USS Maine. Although in retrospect, the notion that Spain actually sank Maine has been called into serious question.

It was early on April 18th, that the Brooklyn Naval Yard received a message via radio. The message, sent from one of the scout ships that had been sent by President Taft, read off the names of all of the third-class survivors. Interestingly, although the scout ship had issued a direct request from Taft to get information on his missing presidential aide Archibald Butt, the Carpathia did not permit this information to be transmitted.

For reporters on the scene, this in itself proved to be fodder for headlines, and soon newspapers were being emblazoned with the headlines, “TAFT WIRE REFUSED BY RESCUING VESSEL.” The newspaper editorial staff then had a field day attempting to surmise why this might be the case. It was argued that there was “censorship” at play, and some even speculated that perhaps old Ismay might be trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.

There was indeed already a feeling of deep distrust between the public and

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