One of the more gripping parts of the Titanic story has to do with what happened after the great liner had gone down, when hundreds of people found themselves in the dark and cold. After everything they had gone through with the sinking of the ship itself, their ordeal was only beginning.
Nowhere was this truer than among the men aboard Collapsible Lifeboat “B”. Titanic had four of these collapsible boats in addition to the 16 required by British Board of Trade regulations, and they featured a wooden bottom with canvas sides that could be raised when in use and lowered whilst in storage – hence, the canvas sides being “collapsible”. Two of them – boats “C” and “D” – were stored on the Boat Deck and were successfully launched from the ship on the night of the sinking; the other two – designated “A” and “B” – were latched onto the roof of the Officer’s Quarters and had to be brought down to the Boat Deck.
Boat “B”, located on the port side, flipped over and landed upside-down as officers and crew members attempted to slide it down a makeshift ramp of oars and spars. Worse, the Boat Deck was soon awash as the Titanic began her final plunge, so there was not enough time to get the boat into the lifeboat davits so that it could be properly loaded and lowered away. It was washed off the deck and several people surrounding it were swept up by the rising water, among them being Junior Wireless Operator Harold Bride, who got trapped in an air pocket under the upturned boat.
With the angle of ship growing steeper, the wires supporting the forward funnel of the ship snapped and the funnel collapsed into the sea – creating a wave which pushed away Collapsible “B”. Several people clung on to dear life as the boat drifted away and after the ship went under, many more desperate people swam toward it in the hope of getting onto something – anything that could float. Eventually, Harold Bride escaped from under the boat and joined around 30 other men aboard it – including First Class passengers Jack Thayer and Colonel Archibald Gracie, Third Class passenger Eugene Patrick Daly, and several crew members – among them, Chief Baker Charles Joughin and Second Officer Charles Lightoller, who took command of the boat once he was aboard.
He had managed to organize the men aboard into two rows on either side of the keel of the hull, so that the boat could stay afloat as the air pocket underneath it leaked away and boat gradually sank lower into the water. Matters were made worse as the sea – which been flat calm all night – began picking up a bit of a swell towards dawn, which caused the boat to rock and lose even more of the precious air keeping it buoyant. Lightoller had the men swaying back-and-forth in order to counteract the rocking motion created by the swells.
Many of those aboard the boat that night stood on its bottom, but others were probably forced to hang on to it with the limited space available, so that their feet were in the water. As the boat sank further, even those standing were becoming exposed to icy sea water, and some perished before the night was over as the exposure to the elements was too much.
And yet, even in these dire circumstances, or perhaps because of them, the men found time for spiritual guidance and reflection. According to Harold Bride:
“Somebody said, ‘don’t you think we ought to pray?’ Each man called out his religion and it was decided that the most appropriate prayer for all of us was the Lord’s Prayer. We spoke it over in chorus.”
This moment of unity among Christians and appeal to the Divine may have contributed to their salvation when two other lifeboats, No. 4 and No. 12, heard Officer Lightoller’s whistle and rowed toward the upturned collapsible, at which point, they took on the 25 or so men who had made it this far. Eventually, they would all make it aboard the Carpathia, the Cunard liner which was the closest ship to respond to the Titanic’s radio distress signal which had been sent out by Bride and his senior partner, Jack Phillips, who may have also found refuge aboard Collapsible “B” but wound up among the perished.
Nonetheless, the fact that more than two dozen souls were saved when they could have been lost to the frigid waters of the North Atlantic makes the story of Collapsible “B” an inspiring one of heroism, bravery, tenacity, and dogged survival.
Looking back, Second Officer Lightoller, who was the last survivor to board the Carpathia and the senior-most officer to survive the sinking, told of his own astonishment at how he and so many others were able to make it through against the odds:
“How anyone that sought refuge on that upturned boat survived the night is nothing short of miraculous. Some quietly lost consciousness and slipped overboard. No one was in condition to help.”
Indeed, the conditions made it almost impossible for anyone to save anyone else but themselves. However, it was Lightoller himself who was responsible for getting the boat in order so as to make survival possible. Without him, who knows what may have happened? Or indeed, what if a prayer had not been recited? After the sinking and the subsequent American and British inquiries, Officer Lightoller published a testimony in the October 1912 edition of the Christian Science Journal in which he credited his personal faith the Divine for his survival, with the conclusion that “with God all things are possible.”
In the end, when man’s crowning technological achievement had slipped from under them, these men banded together and stuck it out so that they could survive to tell their story, and so that we may know and understand what happened that fateful night in April over a century ago.