Disaster of the Century

DOWN TO ETERNITY (191 pp.)--Richard O'Connor--Gold Medal Books (35-c-).

A NIGHT TO REMEMBER (209 pp.)--Walter Lord--Holt ($3.50).

Dim moon-eyed fishes near

Gaze at the gilded gear,

And query, "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"

Thus Thomas Hardy on the sinking of R.M.S. Titanic, on the night of April 14, 1912, with the loss of more than 1,500 men, women and children. Writers, long fascinated by the Titanic disaster, have never been content to leave the last word with the fish.

There have since been greater disasters in the two world wars, but the Titanic continues to exercise its singular fascination--and its symbolic significance in the world's memory.

It was an age awed by ships as this age is by planes, and the Titanic in 1912 was the biggest ship ever built. She was on her maiden voyage. She was proclaimed "unsinkable." Her decks were heavy with millionaires. Among the first-class passengers (suites cost from $2,300 to $4,350) were a dozen great names in the Almanach de Gotham, including Colonel John Jacob Astor IV, who was assessed at $125 million, the Wideners, father and son, with $7,000,000 between them, and Benjamin Guggenheim with a round $10 million.

It was a world of luxury--cigars, astrakhan coats, burgundy, and women as gilded as the Jersey Lily herself--and miraculously, thanks to the White Star Line, that world was afloat. Everyone was sure that, like the age she symbolized, the Titanic would last forever.

Talk of an Iceberg. Legends nearly sink the Titanic story. In one version, "everyone aboard--wealthy dandies, deckhands, immigrants . . . alike behaved in the most exemplary tradition," while in the opposite version, "everyone aboard went mad with panic; strong men trampled over women and children to get to the lifeboats ..."

Both these books try to sift the fact from the fiction (most important correction : although some survivors still insist it was Nearer, My God, to Thee, the consensus is that it was an Episcopal hymn, Autumn, that the band played as the Titanic went down). Of the two books, Down to Eternity is the less thorough, but it tells a compelling story. A Night to Remember, on the bestseller list for nine weeks, is a breathtakingly detailed log. Author Lord spent 28 years, since he was ten, in fascinated research about the Titanic. By now, he knows with uncanny exactness where everyone was and what everyone did on the fateful night.

The collision with the iceberg (latitude 41DEG 46 min. N.; longitude 50DEG 14 min. W.) occurred at 11:40 p.m. Chief Night Baker Walter Belford was in the galley making rolls for the following day; the slight jolt of the collision caused a pan of rolls to clatter to the floor. In the smoking room on A deck, in a leather armchair, one Spencer V. Silverthorne, a buyer for a St. Louis department store, was reading a new bestseller, Owen Wister's The Virginian. Nearby, Hugh Woolner, son of an English sculptor, was having a hot whisky and water. Few people realized that anything had happened. But a steerage passenger named Carl Johnson found his shoes under water when he tried to get dressed, and Mrs. Henry B. Harris, wife of a theatrical producer, noticed that the dresses which had been gently swaying in her closet suddenly stopped swaying. Mrs. Arthur Ryerson, a steel heiress, asked a steward what was the matter. Said he: "There's talk of an iceberg, ma'am."

"I Must Be a Gentleman." Gradually the news spread, bringing with it the muted, logical panic of nightmare. At five minutes after midnight, Captain Edward J. Smith ordered the crew to uncover the 16 wooden lifeboats--inadequate to carry more than half of the passengers. In the brightly lighted gymnasium off the boat deck, Colonel Astor whiled away the nervous minutes by slicing a life jacket open with a penknife to show his wife what was inside. People were dashing back into cabins to fetch suddenly remembered possessions; one girl cried: "I've forgotten Jack's photograph," while Mr. Lucien Smith firmly kept his wife from going for her jewels. As people began to crowd into the boats --with some exceptions, women and children first--extraordinary dialogues took place.

Dan Marvin to his new bride: "It's all right, little girl, you go and I'll stay a while."

Dr. W. T. Minahan to his wife: "Be brave; no matter what happens, be brave."

Mrs. Walter D. Douglas to her husband: "Walter, you must come with me." Walter: "No, I must be a gentleman."

Some men did manage to get into the boats, notably Henry Sleeper Harper, of the publishing family, who took along an Egyptian dragoman and his Pekingese named Sun Yatsen.

At 2:05 a.m., Captain Smith went into the wireless shack for the last time and said: "Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Abandon your cabin. Now it's every man for himself."

"In the Last Boat." There was genuine heroism. Mrs. Isidor Straus stepped from the gunwale of a boat back on deck to share death with her beloved financier-husband. "Where you go I go," she said, and they sat down together in a couple of deck chairs. "A gallant Southerner," Major Archie Butt, military aide to President Taft, went to his death as he courteously bowed women into the boats. But Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, managed to get a seat in the boat, was later denounced as a coward and lived his remaining years in shamed seclusion.

There was one woman who would stand out in any company: Mrs. John J. Brown of Denver, who, according to Author O'Connor, had been wet-nursed by a stray goat, and who wore a $60,000 chinchilla opera cloak. Before her husband, "Leadville Johnny" Brown, struck it rich (his mine produced $20 million in gold), she was Molly Tobin, and although she became the pal of a 70-year-old French duke, her origins, in the Irish way, were her pride. On the Titanic's decks, she would summon a steward with a basket of oranges. When at her command he tossed them overside, she would whip a pistol from her sable muff and riddle the fruit; the effect on the tapioca-fed steerage passengers is not recorded. During the sinking, she manned a lifeboat. Reports Author Lord: when asked how they left the ship, "nearly every woman survivor replied firmly, 'In the last boat.'"

By 1:45, the water was approaching B deck. Benjamin Guggenheim stood with his valet, both in faultless evening clothes. "We've dressed in our best," said Guggenheim, "and are prepared to go down like gentlemen." The ship went at 2:20 a.m., leaving behind a drama that will not wane. This air age, when death commonly comes too swiftly for heroism or with no survivors to record it, can still turn with wonder to an age before yesterday when a thousand deaths at sea seemed the very worst the world must suffer.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.