The passengers in Lifeboat No. 8 looked back at the ship, where some fifteen hundred people crowded the stern, clustered as far from the rails as possible. They huddled together, some weeping, some praying, all conjoined in what an onlooker would later describe as “a mass of hopeless, dazed humanity.”
The melodies of the eight-man band drifted across the water. Their songs? Who can say? Some were convinced they heard ragtime, others said the last song was “Autumn.” Still others insisted it was the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
The vantage point of Lifeboat No. 8 obscured the particulars of the final, excruciating scene: the English priest making his way through the forsaken crowd, taking confessions, the unwavering Isidor and Ida Straus side by side on the deck, which was now slanting upward, the Allisons standing near them, Mrs. Allison clutching her husband’s hand and sheltering her little daughter in her skirts.
Mere hours had passed since the passengers in Lifeboat No. 8 had nibbled on after-dinner chocolates and petits fours and lain in their Queen Anne and Louis XV beds, soothed by the constant rhythm of the Titanic’s giant engines. Yet now they were afloat in the forbidding sea, staring up at the mightiest ship ever made and keeping their distance from her because she was sinking.
The lights in every window and porthole of the Titanic still gleamed with stubborn brilliance. But these rows upon rows of lights were meant to be parallel with the sea, and now they were positioned at a dreadful angle that grew ever more extreme as 150 feet of the ship’s massive, wounded hulk rose out of the water.
Higher and higher she rose, until the forward funnel came crashing down into the ocean, crushing dozens of men desperate enough to believe they could save themselves by swimming. When the Titanic could rise no more, she paused and hung there, motionless, suspended, as if refusing to succumb to her awful destiny.
On the decks, husbands, wives, sisters, and brothers were rent from one another as entire families tumbled down, down, down into the deadly, frigid sea: steerage passengers from Ireland and Holland, Italy and Armenia, bound for a new life; stewards and engineers, plate washers and firemen proud to be chosen for the great ship’s maiden voyage; Major Archibald Butt, President Taft’s favorite military aide; Clarence Moore, master of hounds of the Chevy Chase Hunt; the ship’s eight noble musicians; Margaret Rice and her five boys; Anna and William Skoog, their two sons and two daughters; and the three wealthiest men on board, who had tried to save others but not themselves, and who were, as Benjamin Guggenheim said, “prepared to go down like gentlemen.”
As they fell, every light on the ship went out, came back on in a single flash, then went out again, extinguished forever. The sudden darkness was followed by an earsplitting, hellish roar as four giant engines fell from their moorings and the glorious etched glass dome of the Grand Staircase shattered and everything loose came crashing down: Louis Vuitton wardrobe trunks; 29,000 pieces of glassware; 44,000 pieces of cutlery; potted palms from the Parisian café; the marmalade machine owned by passenger Edwina Troutt; fifty cases of wine; seventy-five cases of anchovies; three crates of models for the Denver Museum; Mrs. White’s locked suitcases; the Countess of Rothes’s diamond belt buckle; the miniature photograph of Gladys Cherry’s mother; pans of newly baked breakfast rolls; a copy of The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam, adorned with a thousand precious gems that had sold at auction to an American bidder; the specially commissioned Royal Crown Derby dinner service; William Carter’s new Renault automobile; and four cases of opium.
Then there was quiet once again and the Titanic seemed to settle down, and for one long moment it seemed as if the miraculous might happen and she would right herself. But then she arched up and paused once more before acceding to a swift descent. The most awful part, the Countess thought, is seeing the rows of portholes vanishing one by one.
Seated behind the Countess, Mrs. Margaret Swift looked at the watch she wore on a platinum chain around her neck. It was 2:20 a.m.