They left Lifeboat No. 8 by climbing, one by one, onto a wooden seat two feet long and a foot wide that was suspended on vertical ropes that raised them to the deck. It must have seemed appropriate to them that seamen called this device a Jacob’s Ladder, named for the stairway to heaven described in the Book of Genesis. On the deck of the Carpathia, stewards wrapped them in blankets and offered tumblers of hot brandy, holding the glass to the lips of the many whose hands shook too much to grip it.
It took several hours to evacuate all the lifeboats, which were then set adrift or hoisted onto the Carpathia’s deck. There, wives sought their husbands, and children sought their fathers, and some rejoiced while others were forced to grapple with irredeemable loss and misery.
One of the first people Caroline Bonnell saw was Hugh Woolner, who had tried to persuade Isidor and Ida Straus to save themselves. She searched in vain for Washington Roebling, the cheerful protector who had put her into Lifeboat No. 8. Sarah Daniels looked for the Allisons, only to learn that they had not survived, and that her young charge, Helen Loraine, was the only child to be lost from first class or second class. Marie Grice Young looked for the kindly carpenter, John Hutchinson, but he was not to be found.
Nor was Mrs. White’s twenty-two-year-old manservant; nor Mr. Lambert-Williams, who had reassured the Countess that the watertight compartments would hold; nor the sad older gentleman who had told Roberta that something terrible was about to happen.
Mrs. Taussig, Mrs. Kenyon, and Mrs. Wick were frantic as they scanned the decks for their husbands, but they were three of the reasons the Carpathia had already been dubbed “the ship of widows.” Another widow was the young bride, Maria Peñasco.
In the course of the morning, Mrs. Bucknell met up with Molly Brown, who had laughed at her several days before when she said she had “evil forebodings” about the voyage.
“Didn’t I tell you?” Mrs. Bucknell exclaimed. “I knew it.”
The sun was still rising when the Carpathia’s engines started up again, while high above the crowded deck, her house flag flew at half-mast. Can a ship move in a dignified manner? If so, the Carpathia was supremely dignified as she headed slowly toward the Titanic’s last position in search of any possible survivors. As they approached the site of the sinking, the Countess, Gladys, and Roberta stood at the rail, taking in the extraordinary sight: ice floes as far as the eye could see, and a field of icebergs—glassy, defiant, towering peaks standing up to two hundred feet high, glistening in the harsh morning light.
The Carpathia threaded its way through the ice until it reached the spot where, two and a half miles below, the Titanic lay in pieces on the ocean floor. There were no survivors to be found, only bits of wreckage. Caroline leaned over the rail and saw a man’s glove and a baby’s bonnet floating on the water.
As the Carpathia headed toward New York, the Countess sent Roberta to the wireless shack with messages for her parents and husband. There, helping the Carpathia’s operator, was Harold Bride, the Titanic’s assistant operator. His ankles, possibly broken, were swathed in heavy bandages, and his eyes were as dark and deadened as the tips of matchsticks whose flames had been blown out. It was from Harold that Roberta learned what had become of Jack.
After the sinking, Jack had clung to the same overturned boat that Harold held on to, a boat that had gone into the water upside down and become the refuge of the fifteen or so crew members who managed to reach it. Did Jack feel that he had failed when he heard the cries of the dying? We will never know. What can be said is that his hopes seemed to be high as he speculated, throughout the night, about ships—in addition to the Carpathia—that might be on the way. He had sent distress messages to ten ships in all, among them the Olympic, the Baltic, the Virginian, the Mount Temple, the Celtic, and the Asian, and he was certain that at any moment one of them—or perhaps all—would come to save the few who were still living.
But Jack Phillips had been “all done in” before the crisis occurred. At some point before the dawn broke, his heart gave out, and his voice was no longer heard.
“He was a brave man,” said Harold. “I learned to love him that night.”