Free The Loss of the S. S. Titanic - Its Story and Its Lessons by Lawrence Beesley Page B

she continued for some minutes—I think as much
as five minutes, but it may have been less. Then, first sinking back a
little at the stern, I thought, she slid slowly forwards through the
water and dived slantingly down; the sea closed over her and we had
seen the last of the beautiful ship on which we had embarked four days
before at Southampton.
    And in place of the ship on which all our interest had been
concentrated for so long and towards which we looked most of the time
because it was still the only object on the sea which was a fixed
point to us—in place of the Titanic, we had the level sea now
stretching in an unbroken expanse to the horizon: heaving gently just
as before, with no indication on the surface that the waves had just
closed over the most wonderful vessel ever built by man's hand; the
stars looked down just the same and the air was just as bitterly cold.
    There seemed a great sense of loneliness when we were left on the sea
in a small boat without the Titanic: not that we were uncomfortable
(except for the cold) nor in danger: we did not think we were either,
but the Titanic was no longer there.
    We waited head on for the wave which we thought might come—the wave
we had heard so much of from the crew and which they said had been
known to travel for miles—and it never came. But although the Titanic
left us no such legacy of a wave as she went to the bottom, she left
us something we would willingly forget forever, something which it is
well not to let the imagination dwell on—the cries of many hundreds
of our fellow-passengers struggling in the ice-cold water.
    I would willingly omit any further mention of this part of the
disaster from this book, but for two reasons it is not possible—
first, that as a matter of history it should be put on record;
and secondly, that these cries were not only an appeal for
help in the awful conditions of danger in which the drowning
found themselves,—an appeal that could never be answered,
—but an appeal to the whole world to make such conditions of
danger and hopelessness impossible ever again; a cry that called
to the heavens for the very injustice of its own existence; a cry
that clamoured for its own destruction.
    We were utterly surprised to hear this cry go up as the waves closed
over the Titanic: we had heard no sound of any kind from her since we
left her side; and, as mentioned before, we did not know how many
boats she had or how many rafts. The crew may have known, but they
probably did not, and if they did, they never told the passengers; we
should not have been surprised to know all were safe on some
life-saving device.
    So that unprepared as we were for such a thing, the cries of the
drowning floating across the quiet sea filled us with stupefaction: we
longed to return and rescue at least some of the drowning, but we knew
it was impossible. The boat was filled to standing-room, and to return
would mean the swamping of us all, and so the captain-stoker told his
crew to row away from the cries. We tried to sing to keep all from
thinking of them; but there was no heart for singing in the boat at
that time.
    The cries, which were loud and numerous at first, died away gradually
one by one, but the night was clear, frosty and still, the water
smooth, and the sounds must have carried on its level surface free
from any obstruction for miles, certainly much farther from the ship
than we were situated. I think the last of them must have been heard
nearly forty minutes after the Titanic sank. Lifebelts would keep the
survivors afloat for hours; but the cold water was what stopped the
cries.
    There must have come to all those safe in the lifeboats, scattered
round the drowning at various distances, a deep resolve that, if
anything could be done by them in the future to prevent the repetition
of such sounds, they would do it—at whatever cost of time or other
things. And not only to them are those cries an imperative call, but
to every man and woman who has