PREVIEW: A Survivor's Tale - The Titantic

A Survivor’s Tale

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the t ita n ic 19 12 - 2 012

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A Survivor’s Tale the titanic 1912 - 2012

A Survivor’s Tale the sin k ing of the s. s. tita n ic

•• john b. thayer with an introducion by lorin stein

thor n w i ll ow 2012

To commemorate the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic and celebrate the memory of those who lost their lives 1912 - 2012

i n troduct ion copy r ight © 2 0 1 2 by l or i n stei n ———— the si nk i ng of the s. s. t i tan ic copy r ight © 1 9 4 0 by john b. th ay er

introduction

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y 1940, when John B. Thayer IV wrote his account of the Titanic disater, much of what he had witnessed was already legend. Yet Thayer’s tory is intense and personal, as when he describes his regret at losing sight of his father, or the sound of hundreds calling for help on the open sea: “like locuts on a midsummer night, in the woods in Pennsylvania.”

Thayer was the heir to a Philadelphia railroad fortune. His experience was, crucially, that of a firt-class passenger. His mother and the family maid survived, along with ninety-seven percent of the women in firtclass. His father perished with two-thirds of the men. (In teerage, by comparison, the respecive death rates were fifty-eight and eighty-four percent.) For Thayer, looking back three decades later, the wreck of the Titanic symbolized the collapse of civilization as he knew it, as if the Firt World War, the Great Depression, and the income tax had all rushed in on the sucion of the ship. “To my mind,” Thayer writes, “the world of today awoke April 15, 1912.”

The Sinking of the S. S. Titanic was privately printed in an edition of five hundred copies, one of which Thayer inscribed to my great-grandfather. I have never read the book without feeling the power of Thayer’s

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memory—that, as he wrote, he indeed saw that night “as vividly and with the same clarity as twenty-eight years ago.” The shock remained fresh, though by that time he had served in the artillery, married an heiress to another railroad fortune, and retired early from business, devoting himself to various boards and clubs; he was, like his father, an avid sportsman.

In 1945 Thayer took his own life. The newspapers attributed his suicide to the recent loss of a son, a bomber pilot shot down in the Pacific theater; Thayer’s mother had also died that year. In his lat weeks, a friend told reporters, he “seemed to suffer from amnesia,” but the key memory of his life—the key to his world, as he saw it—is set down in these pages. l or i n stei n New York, April 2 01 2

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preface

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his account of the sinking of the S. S. Titanic, has been written primarily as a family record for the information of my children and perhaps their children in memory of my Father, John Borland Thayer, the third of that name, who lo his life in the disaer.

Ju as no two happenings in the ream of space time are identical, no two ships either deroyed by an “A of God” in peace time, or of an “Enemy” in time of war, sink in the same manner or under the same conditions. And due to the great size of modern ships no two individuals no matter how close they may be together on shipboard have the same description of experience to relate, should they be so fortunate as to survive the ordeal. Therefore, every account by an individual survivor of such a disaer probably has some new reader intere to those intereed in ories of the sea.

It takes the many separate accounts pieced together to give the true composite hiory of the whole happening and I hope this attempt at a true description of the Titanic disaer may have some hiorical value.

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The ship was carrying twenty-two hundred and eight persons. Seven hundred and three persons left the ship in the lifeboats, leaving fifteen hundred and fifty-three to go down with the ship.

Forty-two of these were saved: twenty-eight were on the bottom of an overturned lifeboat and of this number I was one; fourteen were in the half submerged collapsible boat, among whom was my good friend Richard Norris Williams, who also lo his Father. Only about one in every thirty-six who went down with the ship was saved, and I happened to be one of those.

The whole event passes, before me now in nineteen hundred and forty, as vividly and with the same clarity, as twenty-eight years ago in nineteen hundred and twelve. Nevertheless, in writing this ory I have referred to atiics and a brief article prepared by me shortly after the disaer.

I want to emphasize some of the every day conditions under which we were then living, to show how much humanity was shocked by the approaching disaer.

These were ordinary days, and into them had crept only gradually the telephone, the talking machine, the automobile. The airplane due to have so soon such a imulating yet devaating effe on civilization, was only a few years old,

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and the radio as known today, was ill in the scientific laboratory. The Marconi Wireless had ju come into commercial use, and the Morse Code for help was “C.Q. D.,” as our modern “S.O.S.” was ju making its appearance. The safety razor had ju been invented, and its use was gradually spreading. Upon rising in the morning, we looked forward to a normal day of cuomary business progress. The conservative morning paper seldom had headlines larger than half an inch in height.

Upon reaching the breakfa table, our perusal of the morning paper was slow and deliberate. We did not nervously clutch for it, and rapidly scan the glaring headlines, as we are induced to do today. Nothing was revealed in the morning, the trend of which was not known the night before.

We knew that our morning coffee came from Brazil; that it was grown as a free crop, without deruion of the surplus; that it was purchased from the small corner grocer, a friend, at a price eablished by competition, without the loading and build-up, due to many hidden taxes; and that it was not “dated.” These days were peaceful and ruled by economic theory and praice built up over years of slow and hardly perceptible change.

There was peace, and the world had an even tenor to its ways.

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A dollar could be exchanged for four shillings, four marks, or five francs. In exchange for a fivedollar gold piece or a five-dollar bill, one could pocket a pound note or a gold sovereign.

As an individual, returning to Haverford School outside of Philadelphia, I confidently knew that after graduation in the Spring, and according to plans for my future laid down by my Father in deference to my nebulous ambitions, I would attend College at Princeton, New Jersey, and from there go to London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna, where I would serve an apprenticeship in private and commercial banking houses, and would return to praice commercial or private banking in the United States. It could be planned.

It was planned. It was a certainty.

In those days one could freely circulate around the world, in both a physical and an economic sense, and definitely plan for the future, unhampered by class, nationality, or government.

True enough, from time to time there were events—catarophes—like the Johnown Flood, the San Francisco Earthquake, or floods in China—which irred the sleeping world, but not enough to keep it from resuming its slumber.

It seems to me that the disaer about to occur was the event, which not only made the world

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rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a art, keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since, with less and less peace, satisfaion, and happiness.

Today the individual has to be contented with rapidity of motion, nervous emotion, and economic insecurity. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912. john b. th ay er Philadelphia, December 1940

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i n memory of john bor l and th ay er 1 8 62 - 19 12

the sinking of the s. s. titanic

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he s.s. titanic of the White Star Line, large ship the world had ever known, sailed from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York, on April 10th, 1912. She was built by Messrs.

Harland & Wolff, at Belfa. She was a fabricated eel vessel of gigantic dimensions, regiered at Liverpool, her gross tonnage was 46,328 tons, her length overall being 852 feet, with a breadth of 92 feet, and a depth of 65 feet. The diance from the keel to the top of the funnels was 175 feet. She had a double bottom extending the full length of the ship, with a space five to six feet between the inner and outer plates, and was divided into sixteen water-tight compartments, with access to each compartment through water-tight doors.

The rudder alone weighed 100 tons. She was driven by three enormous screws, the center one weighing 22 tons, the other two 38 tons each, and was capable of making 23 knots. The la word in luxury, she was thought unsinkable.

Captain E.J. Smith, her commander, Commodore of the White Star Line Fleet, was on his la round trip from Southampton, before having to retire on age. In his thirty-eight years of service

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a c e n t u ry l at e r , the sinking of the S.S. Titanic still fascinates us, above all for those laî ´ crucial minutes as the lifeboats filled and those left behind accepted their fate. Haunted by his own survival, John B. Thayer, a private school senior from a proper Philadelphia family, set down his searing memories as a tribute to his father, who’d gone down with the ship. Originally intended only for his family and friends, his gripping account puts us right where he was: aboard that elegant vessel and then, appallingly, clinging to a lifeboat in icy water. l o r i n s t e i n i s editor of The Paris Review and a member of the Thornwillow editorial board. p l e a s e l o o k f o r other Thornwillow libretti by Louis Begley, Harry Belafonte, Jonathan Galassi, Adam Gopnik, and Peter Matthiessen. thor n w i ll ow.com