Who saw 3rd class passengers playing with ice on the well deck?

[Mikołaj Wojtas]

Does anyone here have any evidence about 3rd class passengers playing with ice on the well deck? I menaged to find only information about people who supposedly saw it, but none accounts by their hand. The scene on the well deck was brefiely mentioned in the night to remeber. Lord wrote that Natelie Wick saw the whole thing from her cabin window. As far as I know there was no testimony left by her regarding the disaster. I also noticed that on Eleanor Cassebeer page on Encyklopedia there is mentioned that she saw the sterage passengers throwing ice between each other. She was stading on A deck promanade with some other passengers. Someone from her group asked the men on the well deck to throw them some snowballs so they can play as well. I know Cassebeer left two accounts about the disaster. One from a newspaper in 1912, and the second written to her son in 1932. In both of them there is no mention of this event. Are you aware of any survivors who described this in their testimony?

 

[Arun Vajpey]

According to a minor excerpt in On A Sea Of Glass, it was First Class passengers & survivors Eleanor Cassebeer and Harry Anderson who saw some steerage passengers playing with ice chunks on the well deck. This was after their encounter with Thomas Andrews, who reportedly reassured them that the Titanic could break into 3 separate pieces and each part would then float independently. That unlikely quote is from an interview that Mrs Cassebeer gave to Binghampton Press on 29th April 1912. Mrs. Cassebeer Account . In OASOG, that same interview is mentioned as the source for the story of steerage passengers playing soccer with ice chunks, but as you can see, it does not appear in it.

So, the source of that story remains a mystery. I suspect it was Mrs Cassebeer herself because you can see from that interview that she was not averse to a bit of melodrama.

 

[Andrew]

Does anyone know how chunks of ice could've been knocked off the berg by a light side-swipe collision?
It was many times the mass of the ship, hard as rock, and also completely smooth - there wouldn't have been loose ice on it that could've been disturbed and hurled upwards & outwards, especially by a glancing blow.
Unless possibly there was a large overhang at the top of the iceberg, or the bridge wing hit it - but neither of these things were reported.
I've always felt this "ice-on-the-well" deck was an embellishment. One of those things that one or two passengers invented for dramatic effect, and then others jumped on the bandwagon (as humans tend to do!).

 

[Arun Vajpey]

Does anyone know how chunks of ice could've been knocked off the berg by a light side-swipe collision? Unless possibly there was a large overhang at the top of the iceberg, or the bridge wing hit it - but neither of these things were reported.

I think there are enough survivor statements for us to be fairly certain that some ice chunks broke off the iceberg during the impact and fell onto the forecastle and forward well deck.

As to the shape of the berg above the water, other than Fleet and Lee, no other survivor saw it clearly enough to be certain. Olliver only saw the top of the iceberg as it went past the starboard wing. Some passengers reported seeing parts of it I think we could not prove or disprove that and in any case it would not have been the entire bit that was above the waterline. It is quite likely that the icebrg had a slight overhang over the turning Titanic's bow; Sam Halpern's conjecture about its possible shape in the diagrams of his excellent article Encounter In The Night suggests the very same thing.

The one below is Sam's impression of the ship's bow which you can just see about 3 seconds before the impact started. IMO, that is very close to what the actual iceberg must have looked like.

 

[Thomas Krom]

Later today I skim through a few accounts to see if there are any more survivor who recalled this round of soccer with the ice.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

I know Cassebeer left two accounts about the disaster. One from a newspaper in 1912, and the second written to her son in 1932. In both of them there is no mention of this event. Are you aware of any survivors who described this in their testimony?

I looked into this further and made a bit of progress but got no definitive answer. The following is an excerpt from Michael Poirer's ET article Piecing Together A Titanic Puzzle, which is essentially about the enigmatic Mrs Cassebeer herself.

Mounting the stairs to A Deck, she met Mr. Anderson and they walked around “two long stretches of empty deck.” Soon a crowd gathered and as they looked down towards the bow and the forward well deck, they saw people having games with the ice. A few first class passengers jokingly called down to them for ice and playfully, the steerage threw them some snowballs.

That is the same information that appears in OASOG and gives the source as the Binghampton Press interview from 29th April 1912. But as we can see from the link above, there is no mention of steerage passengers playing with ice in the related article. On checking the mentioned sources of Mike's article, it mentions Binghampton Press but also the Walter Lord Collection from the Martime Museum. It is possible that it was from the latter source that the story originated; I certainly recall that the incident is mentioned in Lord's book A Night To Remember and also depicted rather fancifully in the 1958 film. I'll have to check the references in ANTR.

 

[Dave Gittins]

Just a small point about the berg. It wasn't necessarily "as hard as rock". By the time a berg gets down to around 42° N it is quite old and can be quite fragile. Hit by 50,000 tons of ship, naturally bits fell off.

 

[George Jacub]

Edith Russell, first class passenger, was one of those playing with the snow following the collision. She spoke of it often in her interviews. Here are a few:

She mentioned it in a letter to Walter Lord.

Edith Russell | Charles Pellegrino

charlespellegrino.com

Forty four years after the card sharps incident, Edith was dismayed to read about herself again ‘ in the first edition of ‘A Night to Remember.’ On April 28th, 1956 she wrote to Walter Lord.
Washington Hotel
Curzon Street
London, W1
Dear Mr. Lord:
I read your story with mixed emotions, interest , and at the same time with great regret that my story which was originally written for Sir Newman Flower of Cassell’s magazine had been materially worsened by your very successful book. Opera Mundi, my distributors, have sold it to various places in the world in many languages, but you have had a phenomenal success. On page 156 in Reader’s Digest you speak of Robert Daniel. Mr. Daniel and I went on the deck and threw snowballs after the accident.

A television interview transcript

Edith Russell's British Pathé Interview | Titanic Archive

An interview with Titanic survivor Edith Louise Rosenbaum (Russell) from 1970.

titanicarchive.org

There was a very slight bump. Just a little jar. Nothing at all. I went in my room. There was a second light jar. Nothing of consequence. But, you knew something had happened and one man said, "Look at that. That's an iceberg and it's a whopper, because you know, there's one eighth above the water and seven eighths below. And this blooming thing's all the way over the top of the ship." Thought nothing of it. We picked up the bits of ice and most of us played snowballs.

http://www.paullee.com/titanic/ERussell.php

Annotated copies of Ms.Russell's article from April 11th, 1934 in her own hand:

A PIG AND A PROMISE
SAVED ME FROM
THE TITANIC
by Edith L.Russell
We were quickly joined by several others in various stages of undress. We all looked at this white mass, and someone said, "It's an iceberg!" I must say I was overjoyed, because I had always wanted to see an iceberg, from the time of my school days. Someone said icebergs showed only one-ninth above water, and another remarked that this one must be a "corker" under the surface. It towered well above the smoke stacks of the ship. I found out afterwards that an iceberg has a light side and a dark side. Unfortunately destiny decreeed that the dark side should be towards the ship.

We all regarded it as a great joke that we had hit an iceberg, and ran to the forward part of the ship, picking up bits of ice and snow which lay scattered along the deck. Someone suggested a snowball fight and we were soon throwing snow at one another.

 

[Dave Gittins]

Edith Russell ranks with Hans Andersen. She even saw somebody on the deck of Californian. Take her tales with more salt than is healthy for you.

 

[Seumas]

Edith Russell ranks with Hans Andersen. She even saw somebody on the deck of Californian. Take her tales with more salt than is healthy for you.

As I recall, she also claimed in one taped interview that the lifeboat in which she left the ship was the only one to carry children, which was clearly untrue to say the least.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

While George is right about Edith Rosenbaum (Russell) making similar claims about playing with the ice chunks, there are differences between her account and that supposedly made by Eleanor Cassebeer. Here is an excerpt from her detailed account I Survived the Titanic, which was about her experiences on board the ship and published a year after the disaster. It is available on ET and has a foreword by Randy Bigham.

We all regarded it as a great joke that we had hit an iceberg, and ran to the forward part of the boat, picking up bits of ice which were scattered about the deck, someone suggesting a snowball fight. Looking down toward the second class, we noticed a number of stokers who were walking across the lower deck to go down below. And we heard in their walking that there was a crunching sound. Someone said, “Why, they are walking on a ground of ice.”

Miss Rosenbaum made no allusion to third class passengers playing soccer with the ice chunks on the well deck. Also, I would take her statements with a pinch of salt because I don't think she got down to the forward well deck where most of the fallen ice chunks were scattered. Also, how could anyone "look down" from the forward part of the ship at second class spaces, which were mostly located in the rear half of the Titanic?

Edith Rosenbaum was something of a journalist in that era and so embellishment and even sensationalization would have been second nature to her.

 

[Jim Michon]

Does anyone know how chunks of ice could've been knocked off the berg by a light side-swipe collision?
It was many times the mass of the ship, hard as rock, and also completely smooth - there wouldn't have been loose ice on it that could've been disturbed and hurled upwards & outwards, especially by a glancing blow.
Unless possibly there was a large overhang at the top of the iceberg, or the bridge wing hit it - but neither of these things were reported.
I've always felt this "ice-on-the-well" deck was an embellishment. One of those things that one or two passengers invented for dramatic effect, and then others jumped on the bandwagon (as humans tend to do!).

Having just received an autographed card from 3rd class survivor Eleanor Shuman, nee Johnson, yesterday afternoon, I learned that her mother, Alina, and one of her 3rd class roommates, did just this.

From Titanic Wiki for Alina Vilhelmina Johson (Backberg):
"Alina was 27 years old at the time of the voyage. She and her children were Third Class passengers when Titanic started her trip on the 10th of April just after noon. Alina's voyage was pleasant. One of the stewards in the Third Class Dining Room was very nice and had complimented Alina's entourage. He made sure that she received excellent service.

On the night of April 14th, the women woke up to a collision, and the force of it threw the 4-year-old Harold, who was sleeping in his bed, to the floor. Helmina, together with Alina, went out to see what had happened. There were pieces of iceberg lying on the deck but the women laughed and were eager to kick some ice to each other. A crew member who happened to be there ordered the women back to the cabin, as he explained that the ship would soon resume its journey."

From Wikipedia, on 18 month old survivor Eleanor Ileen Shuman (née Johnson; August 23, 1910 – March 7, 1998), it is said that "Eighteen-month-old Eleanor boarded Titanic along with her mother and brother as third class passengers on April 10, 1912, at Southampton, England. They shared a cabin with Elin Braf and Helmina Nilsson. Shortly after the ship struck the iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, Alina and a cabin mate went out on deck and kicked around pieces of ice that had fallen off the iceberg until an officer told them to get back in their cabins as the ship would be on its way soon. Not long after, a steward who had waited on the Johnsons in the dining room and took a liking to them, knocked on their door and, with a group of fellow Swedes, escorted them to the boat deck and to Collapsible D."

 

[brionboyles]

1) There are several accounts of a passenger carrying around a souvenir chunk of ice, if not playing with it; one First Class for his drink and another of a 3rd Class as evidence, saying something like "Will they believe me NOW?"
While I don;t know with certainty if these accounts are fiction or not, they lend credibility to ice on deck. I don;t think the passengers just reached over the side and grabbed chunks as the berg passed by, LOL.
2) The berg appears to have been peaked. It takes no real stretch of the imagination to picture some small bits to be jarred and "swoop" down the peak, shoot off over an edge and fly a few yards thru the air before landing on deck. Even a delicate icycle or two breaking off, sliding down the slope, thru the air and smashing to bits would be indistinguishable from a piece of the main body.

 

[Arun Vajpey]

There are several accounts of a passenger carrying around a souvenir chunk of ice, if not playing with it; one First Class for his drink and another of a 3rd Class as evidence, saying something like "Will they believe me NOW?"
While I don;t know with certainty if these accounts are fiction or not, they lend credibility to ice on deck.

I agree. It might or might not have happened exactly as some descriptions, but there are enough reports from survivors to accept that some ice chunks had indeed fallen on to the foreward well deck and probaly even the forecastle.

The berg appears to have been peaked.

While that appears to have been the 'popular' impression, we can't be certain; in fact, I believe that the appearance of the actual iceberg was closer to Sam Halpern's depiction as seen in the picture in my post #4 above.

We have to remember that it was very dark and the only survivors who could have seen the iceberg clearly were the two lookouts Fleet and Lee. QM Olliver only saw the top of the iceberg drifting past the starboard wing just as he arrived on the bridge; QM Rowe also saw it from a rather awkward angle from the afterbridge while the ship was still turning to port and initially thought that it was the sail of a windjammer. Even if we accept some of the claims of passengers and crew who said they saw the iceberg, it could have only been just parts of it as the berg passed; I don't believe Boxhall saw anything at all and his "small, dark object very low in the water" was IMO a complete fabrication.

Alina and a cabin mate went out on deck and kicked around pieces of ice that had fallen off the iceberg until an officer told them to get back in their cabins as the ship would be on its way soon.

The slight problem with that story is that as a single woman travelling with two small children (and perhaps helping the two Swedish girls) Alina Johnson would almost certainly have been berthed in the "women and families" part of the Third Class at the rear part of the Titanic. Therefore, it would not have been possible for them to come up on to the forward part of the boat deck all the way from their rear cabin deep down so early to see the ice on the forward well deck. In fact, Alina, her children and one of the Swedes Helmina Nilsson are believed to have been rescued on an aft starbioard boat, most likely Lifeboat #13. The other Swede, Elin Braf is believed to have frozen in fear and not entered the lifeboat.

That said, I do have doubts that those gender divisions were enforced so strictly in steerage but we have to consider it all the same.

 

[Mikołaj Wojtas]

The slight problem with that story is that as a single woman travelling with two small children (and perhaps helping the two Swedish girls) Alina Johnson would almost certainly have been berthed in the "women and families" part of the Third Class at the rear part of the Titanic. Therefore, it would not have been possible for them to come up on to the forward part of the boat deck all the way from their rear cabin deep down so early to see the ice on the forward well deck. In fact, Alina, her children and one of the Swedes Helmina Nilsson are believed to have been rescued on an aft starbioard boat, most likely Lifeboat #13. The other Swede, Eileen Braf is believed to have frozen in fear and not entered the lifeboat.

That said, I do have doubts that those gender divisions were enforced so strictly in steerage but we have to consider it all the same.

There is little evidence that the rule of division was strictly followed. In the case of Titanic it is unlikely that ALL women and families were berthed only in the aft section, and single men only in the forward quarters. I think there is more likely that this division was enforced between compartments, rather than between the rear and fore parts on the ship. Berk Pickard testified that his cabin was "No. 10 in the steerage, at the stern." On the plans it was marked as G-10, located on G deck in compartment N. As a single man, Pickard happend to be berthed in the section commonly ascribed to families and single women, and not in the bow of the ship. The same issue applied to the other side. During the evacuation of the 3rd class passengers from the forward part of the ship, it was noticed that beside men, also women and children were in the crowd which was heading aft. Paul Mauge, secretary to the chef o a la carte restaurant said during the inquiry; "a lot of persons came from the front and went to the back, some of them with luggage, some with children. Some showed us a piece of ice." In summary it seems to me that majority of women and families were berthed in the aft portion of the ship, but some happend to be berthed near the bow. In this case, they would probably have one common compartment for themselves, without single men in it at the same time.
Regarding ice; it was still on the well deck as late as 12:10, when officer Pitman was inspecting the forecastle deck. If Alina Johnson was berthed near the stern and went later to the well deck, it must had happend within 10 minutes after the collision. Around that time people started escaping from the forward quarters due to water. This crowd would prevent any passengers berthed aft, from going into the forward part.