The Classic Morpurgo Collection. Michael Morpurgo
it was perfectly right and proper for women and children to go first. I heard later that some men on the starboard side of the ship had tried to rush one of the lifeboats, and that shots had to be fired over their heads to drive them back. But I never saw it with my own eyes.
There were many heroes that night, but if there was one I remember best it was Mr Lightoller. He was everywhere, quietly ensuring the safe loading and launching of the boats, and picking out the seamen to row each one. I can hear his voice even now echoing in my head. “Lower away there. Lower away. Are there any more women? Are there any more women?” And one of the waiting men answered him back, I remember.
“No more women, Officer. There’s plenty of men though, but I don’t see plenty of boats.”
It was something every one of us now had come to realise, that there were hardly any boats left to take the rest of us off, and that many of the lifeboats that remained could not now be launched because of the severe list of the ship. When I saw the sea-water come washing over the bow, and rushing down the deck towards us, I knew that our chances of survival were fading fast. Like so many others, I scanned the horizon desperately for the lights of the Carpathia. We were all aware by now that she was the only ship close enough to come to our rescue. But there were no lights to be seen.
The Titanic was sinking fast, and we knew now we were going down with her. With every minute that passed now the list to port was telling us the end was near. The deck was at such an angle that it was well-nigh impossible to keep our footing. We heard Mr Lightoller’s voice ringing out. “All passengers to the starboard side.”
So that’s where Mr Stanton and I went, slipping and sliding, clutching at each other for support, until we reached the rail on the starboard side and clung on. Here we looked out at the sea, and waited silently for our end. There was nothing more to be done. “I should like to say,” Mr Stanton said, his hand resting on my shoulder, “that if I am to die tonight and I cannot die with my family, then I’d rather die in your company than any other. You’re a fine young man, Johnny Trott.”
“Will the sea be cold?” I asked him.
“I fear so,” he replied, “but don’t worry, that’s all to the good. It will all be over very quickly for us both.”
It was our blessed good fortune that Mr Stanton and I were there on the Boat Deck at the time the last boat was being lowered. It was not one of the large wooden lifeboats – they were all gone by now – but one of the boats with canvas sides, some twenty or more feet long, with a rounded hull. This one was stored below a funnel and there were some men trying to manhandle it down on to the deck, a couple of crew among them. One of them was shouting at us: “This is the only boat left, this is our only chance. We need more hands here!” Wading though water that was waist-high by now, Mr Stanton and I and a dozen other men did all we could to help them heave the boat up and over the rail. All of us knew this was our last hope. How we strained and struggled to launch that lifeboat, but it was too heavy and too cumbersome for us. There weren’t enough of us, and we were very soon exhausted by our efforts. We couldn’t do it. The Titanic was groaning and gasping all about us. She was going down at the bow, fast.
I looked up to see a great wave come rolling along the decks towards us, a lucky wave as it turned out. It swept the lifeboat overboard and we went with it. The shock of the icy sea drove all the breath from my body and left me gasping for breath. I remember trying to swim frantically away from the ship, and then looking back and seeing one of the huge funnels breaking away and falling down on top of me, toppling like a giant tree. As it hit the water I felt myself sucked under and swirled away downwards into a whirlpool of such power I was sure it would take me to the bottom with the ship. All I could do was to keep my mouth pursed, tight shut, and my eyes open.
Suddenly I saw Mr Stanton above me, his feet caught in a rope.
He was kicking and struggling to break free. Then, miraculously, I was released from the whirlpool, and found I could swim up towards him. I managed to free him from the rope, and together we swam hard for the surface, for the light. How deep we were by now I had no idea. All I knew was that I had to swim with all my strength, and not to breathe, not to open my mouth. What I learned that night was what every drowning man learns before he dies, that in the end he has to open his mouth and try to breathe. That is how he drowns. When at last I had to take a breath the sea rushed in and choked me, but at that very moment I broke the surface, spluttering, coughing the water out of my lungs. Mr Stanton was in the water nearby, calling for me. We saw the upturned lifeboat nearby, and swam towards it. There were bodies floating in the water, hundreds of them. The cold was cramping my legs, sapping what little strength I still had. If I didn’t reach the boat, if I didn’t get out of the water and soon, I would be as lifeless as those bodies all around me. I swam for my life.
There were other survivors clambering on to it when we got there, and I couldn’t see how there’d be room for us as well. But helping hands hauled us both up out of the sea and we joined them there, half standing, half lying back against the upturned hull of the lifeboat, and clinging to one another for dear life. Only then did I really begin to take in the horrors of the tragedy I had been living through. The shrieks and cries of the drowning were all around me. I caught my last sight of the great Titanic, her stern almost vertical, slipping into the sea. When she was gone we were left only with the debris of this dreadful disaster strewn all around the ocean, and those terrible cries that went on and on. And there were swimmers in the sea all around us, every one of them, it seemed, heading our way. Very soon we were swamped with them and we were turning them away, yelling at any others who came near that there was no room. And that was true, horribly true. The buoyancy of our boat was already under threat. We were low in the water as it was, and all of us would be lost if we took on any more. What I have never forgotten is that even in their desperate plight many of those swimmers seemed to understand the situation perfectly, and accept it. One of them – and I recognised him as one of the stokers I’d worked alongside – said to us, his voice shaking with cold: “All right then, lads, good luck and God bless you.” And with that he swam off in among the bodies, and the chairs and the crates, and disappeared.
I never saw him again.
I will carry to the grave the guilt of what we did to that man and to so many others. Like so many survivors I have lived through that night out on the open ocean in my dreams, again and again. Mr Stanton and I did not talk much, each of us too busy with our own doubts and dreads, too busy just surviving. But side by side we endured together. I know that for me it was memories that kept me going. I think I relived most of my life that night: Harry the cockroach in his matchbox, the Countess Kandinsky sweeping into the Savoy in her ostrich feather hat, taking her bows at the opera that night, Kaspar curled up on her piano as she sang, Lizziebeth beaming up at me as she fed him his liver, Lizziebeth on the roof of the Savoy, Lizziebeth and her mother in the lifeboat with Kaspar hidden in his blanket.
Around us the ocean was silent and empty now. There were no more cries for help, no more last messages to mother, no more appeals to God. We looked, and we never stopped looking, for the lights of a ship on the horizon that might bring us some hope of rescue. Our lifeboat had floated away from all the others by now and from all the wreckage that had littered the ocean. We were quite alone and quite helpless. From time to time one of our number – there were about thirty of us, I think – said the Lord’s Prayer,