By Jeffrey V. Moy, North Jersey History and Genealogy Center
Jay H. Mowbray’s sensationalist 1912 book details the rescue of 700 of the 2,300 individuals aboard Titanic when it struck an iceberg on the Atlantic Ocean during the night of April 14, 1912.
The History & Genealogy Center maintains one copy of Mowbray’s popular publication in its rare book collection. Undoubtedly, it was donated by one of the many Morristown residents who eagerly read through the author and journalist’s breathtaking retelling of the “unsinkable” luxury liner’s fateful voyage.
Remarkably written within one month of the disaster, Mowbray presented the accounts of several officers and crew who beat the odds and survived, as well as dozens of passengers who offer dramatic testimony of the days leading up to the crash and their extraordinary escape from the mortally wounded Titanic.
Mowbray produced the publication with numerous photographs, personal accounts, and maps intended to maximize word-of-mouth sales. This genre of ‘”instant books” was typified by “yellow journalism” writing style, eye-catching titles, and graphic illustrations– traits familiar to readers of today’s click-bait driven articles.
One early passage reflects this particular narrative style in declaring: “The sole redeeming circumstance is that the heroes met their death like men, and that human love was victorious over human terror, and mightier than Death and the open grave of the remorseless deep.”
Despite its dramatic flourishes, much of the text is accurate in describing the basic facts surrounding the causes of Titanic’s sinking and why so few survived despite its state-of-the-art emergency bulkhead system, wireless communications technology, and the amount of time it took for the vessel to succumb.
Mowbray notes that the Titanic laid to rest approximately two miles beneath the Atlantic and approximately 370 miles from Newfoundland. He also noted its 15 water-tight steel compartments were designed to contain flooding — even if two of them were breached — as well as its wireless “Marconi” communications room, which enabled its operator to deliver its CQD distress call (a precursor to the SOS) to several nearby vessels, saving hundreds.
In describing the ship’s marvelous design, the author details how the $10 million Titanic contained eight steel decks serviced by three electric elevators. It boasted a squash court, Turkish baths, a hospital and operating room, separate promenade deck, and “Renaissance” cabins.
The ship also housed its own photographic dark room. Lavish furnishings including carved wood and English tapestries, and a 10,000-piece gold and silver table service.
The liner, infamously, carried only 20 lifeboats and rafts under the assumption that they never would be needed. Its defensive measures were marketed as more than capable of keeping passengers and crew afloat until they could be rescued.
Traveling at twenty knots (23.6 mph) on the clear moonless night of April 14, Titanic was operating at close to top speed. By the time the lookout relayed to the bridge, “Iceberg ahead!” the 882-foot-long vessel could not steer clear, taking a grazing blow to its starboard side.
After striking the iceberg around 11:45 pm, damage reports indicated catastrophic flooding beneath the waterline, leading Captain Smith to call for the ship’s evacuation. Armed officers enforced the “women and child rule” as crew loaded boats with those who were, initially, reluctant to leave their staterooms.
The chivalry of so many male passengers allowing females and minors to board lifeboats quickly was linked to the Titanic disaster. According to Mowbray, “the one alleviating circumstance in this terrible tragedy is the fact that the men stood aside and insisted that the women and children should first have places in the boats.”
The press widely lauded the affluent and well-known individuals who stoically met their fates as heroes, including John Jacob Astor, IV and Isidor Strauss.
“There were men whose word of command swayed boards of directors, governed institutions, disposed of millions. They were accustomed to merely pronounce a wish to have it gratified.”
And yet, the author notes, that space was not only made for the “refined” wealthy passengers, but common immigrants alike. These masters of industry gallantly stood aside for “the scared Czech woman from steerage with her baby at her breast; the Croatian with a toddler by her side, coming through the very gate of Death and out of the mouth of Hell to the imagined Eden of America.”
Romanticism aside, the author goes on to document numerous first and second-class men who also boarded lifeboats; most escaped aboard boats 1 and 2 before sufficient numbers of women were present. Some were single parents accompanying small children, and many were rescued from the ocean after the ship had sunk.
The statistical breakdown of survivors indicates that the largest share of those boarding the lifeboats were first class passengers (210 rescued of 330 aboard), followed by second class (125 of 320), and then steerage (200 of 750); the lowest number of survivors were members of the crew, only 210 of 940 on ship survived.
The unwritten maritime rule “women and children first” was a fairly new concept in the early 1900s. Its first recorded usage was during the 1840 sinking of the American ship, the Poland, and the edict was invoked increasingly during the late 1800s.
It heavily reflected Victorian-era norms of propriety with an emphasis on good deeds reflecting one’s inner character, especially when it came to caring for the weak and vulnerable. The original maritime rule of “every man for himself” still applied to those left aboard once the final lifeboats departed, and one surviving officer recalled Captain Smith uttering the phrase when the time came.
As Titanic’s last remaining passengers leapt to the 31-degree water below or were caught in the ensuing vortex, the author notes that those aboard the life boats had only their thoughts to occupy themselves until the Carpathia arrived after 5 am on April 15.
Describing Titanic’s final disappearance beneath the surface, Jay Mowbray writes: “Suddenly there was a mighty roar and the ship, already half submerged, was seen to buckle and apparently break in two.”
Some survivors reported a series of explosions, perhaps from the boilers. But oceanographers and historians have attributed the sound to the cacophony of the ship breaking up with heavy machinery and debris violently thrown about the hull.
Those witnessing the disaster unfold from the boats reported the bow sank first and that the stern was pointed almost vertically for close to five minutes, after which it suddenly plunged out of sight.
Colonel Archibald Gracie IV described his improbable escape from the vessel as it listed upright and he clung to the upper deck.
“When the ship plunged down I was forced to let go and I swirled around and around for what seemed like an interminable time. Eventually, I came to the surface, to find the sea a mass of tangled wreckage.”
Col. Gracie survived by first grabbing hold of a piece of wooden debris, before spotting a capsized collapsible life raft. He pulled one struggling man aboard, and they set off to rescue 30 others before dawn. He noted that “the hours that elapsed before we were picked up by the Carpathia were the longest and most terrible that I ever spent.”
Upon reaching home in New York, Gracie wrote his account of survival but died eight months later of injuries sustained during the accident; his book was published posthumously.
Several widows recounted their husbands promising to don life preservers and swim to safety, or offering reassurances that the ship could not possibly sink, and responding ships surely would pick them up.
However, as the days aboard Carpathia passed it became clear that rescuers had found few additional survivors. A group of civic-minded passengers, led by Margaret “Molly” Brown, quickly began a relief fund for widows and orphans. By the time they reached New York, the committee already had raised over $10,000 (about $290,000 in 2021).
Among the heroes recognized for their actions in saving 705 souls was Carpathia’s radio operator, 21-year-old Harold Cottam, who had stayed on after his shift ended at 11 pm to catch up on work when he happened to hear the Titanic’s distress call.
Upon notifying the captain, Cottam continued delivering updates to the bridge as Carpathia sped towards the sinking liner. By 1:45 am, Harold received Titanic’s final message, “Come as quickly as possible, old man, the engine room is filling up to the boilers.”
He responded that they were en route and notified Titanic to look for Carpathia’s rocket signals. But he heard no response.
Throughout the recovery efforts and trip to New York, Cottam worked round the clock relaying reports of the accident and news to the families of survivors, getting only 10 hours of sleep over five days. Harold Cottam received a hero’s welcome in New York City, but quickly returned to private life as a ship’s radio operator until marrying Elsie Shepperson in 1922 and taking a job in sales. He retired to Lowdham, England, where he died in 1984.
Titanic survivors also commended the actions of Carpathia’s crew in speeding to their rescue when closer vessels failed to hear the distress call. Officers and crew worked throughout the night to clear space, gather supplies, as well as feed and house the hundreds of additional passengers over the four days it took to reach port.
As was the norm for the best sensationalistic “yellow press” writing, Jay Mowbray’s account offered up its fair share of villains. Managing Director of the White Star Line J. Bruce Ismay received the worst scrutiny for surviving the disaster when so many unfortunate men, women, and children did not.
However, subsequent testimony before Congress and the findings of the British government indicate that Ismay only boarded one of the collapsible boats when crew could find no more women or children before it launched. Furthermore, ship’s barber August Weikman testified that officers boarded one man for every four women in order to row and take charge of each life boat.
Weikman was himself thrown from the ship as it broke in two, and later recounted that after landing on some debris he was struck in the back by a large piece of timber. He believed the blow would have killed him if not for the padding of the life preserver.
The barber also noted that his watch stopped at 1:50am, indicating the time he hit the water, where he floated for two hours until occupants of a passing life boat dragged him on board.
Published immediately following major disasters and newsworthy events, the genre of instant books sought to capitalize on public desire for additional information on wars, natural disasters, and other events.
Journalists and reputable authors alike wrote instant books, but the rapid turnaround time for these subscription-based publications, along with the pressure to get them to market before attention had waned, led to inconsistencies, errors, or outright fabrications.
In addition to J. Ismay’s vilification and unsubstantiated reports of misdeeds by crew and passengers, the author offers conflicting accounts of Captain Smith’s actions — including that he either committed suicide, was swept off the deck as the ship went down, or even carried an infant to a passing life boat before returning to the sinking vessel.
Government inquiries into the sinking, both in the United States and United Kingdom, ultimately cited numerous factors that contributed to Titanic’s sinking, but faulted the lack of lifeboats and industry-wide radio communication standards, and inadequate evacuation procedures for causing the great loss of life. Studies of the debris field since the wreck site was located in 1985 back up many survivors’ accounts of the sinking while debunking others.
Jay Mowbray’s Sinking of the Titanic, succeeded in captured the public’s imagination while fulfilling the demand to know how such a luxurious vessel equipped with the most advanced technologies and safety features and deemed unsinkable could meet such an end.
Its donation to the Morristown & Morris Township Library’s local history department speaks to the inquisitiveness and reading habits of past residents and the search for meaning in unpredictably tragic events.
Sources:
- Jay Henry Mowbray, Sinking of the Titanic: Most appalling ocean horror with graphic description of hundreds swept to eternity beneath the wave, Minter Co.; Harrisburg, PA, 1912. NJHGC rare book collection.
- Remembering the Titanic: One of the Greatest Maritime Tragedies in History, National Geographic.
- RMS Titanic, Wikipedia.
- The Sinking of the Titanic’ and the Sensationalism of Jay Henry Mowbray, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives.
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