Titanic Eyewitness
17 year-old sees it all on that starry night
The Thayer family travels first class on the Titanic maiden voyage. Jack is accompanied by his parents and their maid, Margaret Flemming. On the evening of April 14th he walks out onto the deck after dinner.
It was a brilliant, starry night. There was no moon and I have never seen the stars shine brighter. They appeared to stand right out of the sky, sparkling like cut diamonds.
Jack says goodnight to his parent at around 23.30. As he returns to his cabin he feels the ship sway gently ‘as though she had been gently pushed.’
Moments later the engines stop.
Jack goes to his parents’ cabin. He accompanies his father back to the deck to investigate. They find a small crowd of passengers there. One is Thomas Andrews, the designer of Titanic.
‘What’s happening, Mr Andrews?’ his father asks.
‘There are five bulkheads overflowing,’ he says. ‘This ship is sinking.’
Passengers have surrounded Andrews now. They stare at him in silence until one says, ‘You are sure, Mr Andrews?’
‘It is a mathematical certainty,’ he says. ‘Everyone assemble on deck with their lifejackets.’
Ten minutes later the Thayer family assemble on the now crowded deck. The mood is anxious but subdued. People are whispering about ice fragments. Jack can see no obvious damage.
The chamber orchestra are already playing. Everyone is wearing life jackets, as the crew hurry around issuing orders and answering queries. A space is cleared so that officers can launch white distress flares.
These light up the sky. Still there is no panic but the noise and the urgent activity of crew is clearly unsettling some passengers.
I have spent much time on the ocean, yet I have never seen the sea smoother than it was that night.
12.30: Passengers see the lights of another ship (SS Califironia) in the distance.
12.50: Stewards call out the order ‘All women to the port side.’ Half empty lifeboats are lowered into the sea.
In the confusion, Jack is separated from his family. He meets a friend he has made on the ship, Milton Long (29) who is travelling alone. The two young men look for Jack’s parents but cannot locate them . ‘I think they’ve left in a lifeboat,’ says Jack
02.15: The sinking ship tilts sharply upwards. There are muffled explosions. Jack points down at the ocean. The drop is over 200 feet. ‘We have to dive,’ he says. ‘It’s our only chance.’
‘I don’t swim very well,’ says Milton. ‘Please stay on the ship as long as we can.’
They can delay no longer. Milton Long put his legs over the rail. He holds on for a minute before turning to Jack. “You are coming boy, aren’t you?”
Jack says, “Go ahead, I’ll be with you in a minute”.
Milton does not turn to face the sea. He steps backwards and disappears.
He is never seen again.
Jack now stepped onto the rail, with his back to the ship. Pushing forward, he dives into the icy sea
“I was pushed out and then sucked down. The cold was terrific. The shock of the water took the breath out of my lungs.
“Down and down, I went, spinning in all directions. Swimming as hard as I could in the direction which I thought to be away from the ship, I finally came up with my lungs bursting, but not having taken any water.”
Debris falls from the ship. Jack is forced back under the water.
Somehow Jack gets back to the surface. An upturned lifeboat floats towards him. Men pull him onto it. Jack clings on, staring up at the stricken ship
Her deck was turned slightly toward us. We could see groups of the almost fifteen hundred people aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly, as the great part of the ship, two hundred and fifty feet of it, rose into the sky.
03.30 Jack surveys looks back at the survivors still in the sea. These might include his father. Ahead half-empty lifeboats are sailing away.
There they were, only four or five hundred yards away, listening to the cries, and still they did not come back. If they had turned back several hundred more would have been saved.
The counter argument is that desperate survivors might have capsized the lifeboats. Plus the swell of the sinking ship threatened everything around her. One lifeboat does return to rescue three passengers, but only when the numbers had ‘thinned out’
07.30 The Carpathia arrives to rescue those still in the water. Jack gets onto the last lifeboat. He is lifted onto the ship. Frozen and in shock, Jack does not realise that his mother is close by. When they finally recognise each other, the joy is short-lived
‘Where’s Daddy?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know, mother,’ he replies.
The {three day} trip back to New York was one big heartache and misery,” he wrote. It seemed as if there were none but widows left, each one mourning the loss of her husband. It was a most pitiful sight.
At the dock in New York, 100,000 welcome the rescue ship. Jack walks through the cheering crowds to face his own ‘heartache and misery’.
Quotes are from Jack Thayer’s various accounts, written long after the disaster as an informal record. For more on the extraordinary stories surrounding the disaster The Rest is History Titanic podcasts provide an excellent summary. My free Titanic teaching materials (including five presentations) are here
