“Ladies, come forward,” an officer shouted, his voice amplified by a megaphone. “Ready yourselves to get into the boats.”
He repeated the order several times, but not one passenger stepped forward. No one thought for a moment that the ship was going to sink, not even the officers poised to fill the lifeboats. Why, Caroline Bonnell wondered, would we trust ourselves to tiny open rowboats when we are aboard the biggest liner in the world?
The Titanic was not merely the biggest liner: At nearly a sixth of a mile long and ten stories high, she was the largest man-made moving object ever built, so immense that on her test launch it had taken twenty-two tons of tallow and soap to ease her down the slipway. The immoderate boast of the White Star Line was that she was “practically unsinkable,” but in 1912, when technological pride had morphed into technological arrogance, that essential qualifier had been summarily deleted.
Finally, with repeated urgings from the ship’s officers, the women moved toward the railing and the men drew back, a bit of graceful choreography that ultimately would have the effect of dividing the dead from the living.
Sarah Daniels stepped out on the Boat Deck and beheld an astonishing sight: a gathering of first-class passengers that would have looked like a party were it not for the seamen placing blankets in the lifeboats and scurrying about while a dozen assistant bakers, each carrying four loaves of bread, distributed their goods among the boats.
She ran back to the Allisons’ suite to implore them to dress and come up to the Boat Deck. But her pleas succeeded only in further enraging Mr. Allison.
Mr. and Mrs. Emil Taussig came onto the deck just as Captain Smith and several officers were preparing Lifeboat No. 8. Even then, the white-bearded, patriarchal captain cut a reassuring figure, no small feat for a beaten man whose heart was breaking.
Mr. Taussig gently guided his eighteen-year-old daughter, Ruth, to the Captain, who held out his hand and helped her into the empty boat. Ruth perched on one of the four wooden seats. She looked very small and very frightened. Then Captain Edwards extended his hand to Mrs. Taussig.
“I will not go,” she told him, “if my husband cannot accompany me.”
“I cannot allow it,” the Captain said.
“But my husband is an expert oarsman,” she insisted.
“I would be happy to volunteer my services,” said Mr. Taussig.
“No,” said the captain. “It’s women and children only.”
Tillie Taussig held tight to her husband’s arm. He insisted she get into the boat, but she refused. She held on to him even as he backed away and joined the other men who had helped their wives and children into lifeboats, kissed them, held them, and walked away. For men traveling in first class, such gallantry was instinctive, a function of habit and breeding so ingrained as to render unnecessary the command “All men stand back from the boats.” Still, the irony of his particular situation would not have been lost on Mr. Taussig, who was a major shareholder in the company that built some of the Titanic’s lifeboats and had long campaigned to increase the number of lifeboats a ship must carry.
Two stewards broke through the crowd and rushed up to Lifeboat No. 8. “Do you know how to row?” the Captain asked them.
“Yes, sir,” they said.
“Then get in,” said the Captain.
“My husband can row!” Tillie Taussig called out. But Captain Smith ignored her.