I have just finished reading Arthur Rostron’s book and although IMO it is not a work of literature, anything he wrote must be worth reading, being from the ‘horse’s mouth’ as it were. Written nearly twenty years after the sinking of the Titanic, inevitably his memory of events may have clouded a little. I mention below a few of the items which interested me; although highlighting my own ignorance of the subject they serve as reminders of the conditions that existed at that time.
On his transfer from sail to steam he comments about the need to maintain the schedule. On his first crossing in a liner [steam], a winter crossing, he writes:-“ that it brought me a new experience. We bore into heavy seas and I was staggered at the speed that was maintained in spite of the damage the weather was causing to the ship. But in those days speed was the be-all and end-all of the crack ships. Competition was won with speed and I have known cases when damage amounting to a five-figure total has been occasioned in a few minutes because speed would not be reduced.” [Seems a large amount? Perhaps he was just over-emphasising the point, but it illustrates the pressure on liner Captains to maintain the schedule and ‘damn the expense’.]
The chapter on ‘Titanic’ makes you realise what a close call the survivors had because Cottam, the Marconi operator, was on the point of retiring when he received the S.O.S from Titanic. According to Rostron, Harold Cottam finished duty at midnight and it was at 12.30 am - when still listening in - whilst undoing his boots that the call came
One of the seeds of the disaster (my words) was the warmer weather in the far north two summers before. Rostron writes:-“It took two years for these giant remnants to work their way far south and we were to be amazed when daylight broke to find on every hand berg and flow stretching as far as the eye could reach. Into that danger zone we raced the Carpathia; every nerve strained watching for ice”. He goes on to say that at daybreak icebergs were everywhere:-“I instructed a junior officer to go to the wheel-house deck and count them. Twenty—five there were over two hundred feet in height and dozens ranging from hundred and fifty down to fifty feet. [It struck me that the Titanic had been racing into a veritable mine-field of icebergs!!].
I won’t quote more from this book because I am sure that most of the experienced folk on ET will be aware of conditions but it does no harm to remind ourselves from time to time
