978 words 
Walter Lord
A Night To Remember
R&W Holt, 1955
In this dark time, in our crumbling civilization, where a feral black kid stabs a white student in the chest over a seat, the US dollar is tanking and America is being invaded from the south, it was a pleasure for me to read A Night To Remember, the nonfiction novella about the night Titanic sank.
The book was written in the 1950s by an author who interviewed dozens of survivors and compiled the anecdotes into an entertaining narrative. We just passed the 113th anniversary of the tragedy (April 14-15) which was the impetus for me to read it. There was much to learn about that chaotic night and even more questions to be asked but what was glaring to me about the accounts was how the passengers conducted themselves in the face of certain death. It may seem I am being macabre by celebrating a tragedy; on the contrary I am showcasing the values that our people once possessed.
It was a testament to the greatness of our Western culture prior to its “cultural enrichment.” Heroes were made that dark, cold night. Officers Lightoller (who was a veritable action hero throughout his brilliant career) and Lowe were stolid and effective leaders. While the bow of the magnificent streamliner was slowly succumbing to the rising waters, they maintained order throughout the ordeal and saving many lives in the process. Captain Smith delivered competent orders to his brave crew while remaining calm and was said to have helped load boats during key moments as the night progressed; he chose to do the dutiful thing and go down with the ship. “I’ll follow her (Titanic) down,” one passenger heard him say after being offered a seat on a life boat. Even the architect of the grand vessel, Thomas Andrews, ushered women and children to boats, encouraged passengers to wear their life belts and assisted the crew during the mayhem. He also chose to go down with the ship into the dark cold depths of the Atlantic.
However, the significance of the stories reside elsewhere. Those officers were the best the White Star Line had to offer. They were chosen because they displayed traits which would be vital in the types of circumstances Titanic faced that night. What was notable to me was how the regular person, the passenger or the low-end crewman, reacted. Sure, there will always be those who act selfishly and irrationally. There were accounts of women being concerned about trivial things while the boat was sinking, some even vitiated the process of loading passengers on lifeboats. But that’s women for you; they can be wonderfully incomprehensible. There were also cowards, crew who abandoned posts or male passengers that insisted on entering lifeboats before women and children. There was even a thief on board that attacked the communications engineer. Yet, these accounts were the minority. What was prevalent was the anecdotes of small acts of heroism, kindness, duty and competency which could only be unique to the English and Europeans as a whole during such a harrowing event. Duty over life, competency over irrationality, steadfastness over panic—these are just a few ideals which were displayed that night. Men were ready to die. Many such accounts suggest that a preponderance of men understood their duty to allow women and children (many of which were their wives and children) on the lifeboats and await their death in the freezing ocean with dignity. Those same men also contributed to the overall rescue efforts of loading passengers and lowering the boats into the water. Regarding the general feeling on the boat, there was very little panic. I believe this was an exercise in the trait of stoicism, an important trait for men of a successful civilization to possess and one that has all but been lost in this current age. One passenger was claimed to have said to another, “Be English,” or rather, be stoic during this time fraught with danger. A sense of community was also shared amongst the passenger. They all seemed to be familiar with one another, showing genuine kindness and brotherhood to each other despite being strangers.
Women also played a positive role. Everyone has heard the myth of the Unsinkable Molly Brown who manned an oar and encouraged the officer of her boat to rescue survivors in the water after the Titanic sank. She wasn’t the only heroine; there were others. Lucy Noel Martha, the Countess of Rothes manned the tiller of her lifeboat and took up a leadership role. Other women, Kate Bourke, Kate Phillips, and Sarah Elizabeth Chapman to name a few, chose to stay with their husbands and face certain death, instead of boarding a lifeboat, a last act of courage to remain with their men.
Lastly, I must mention the engineers and firemen. They manned the boilers, generators and engines at the lowest depths of the vessel. They were ordered to stay at their posts for as long as possible—to extinguish the fires in the boilers and keep the lights on. Many stayed, fulfilling their duty to the ship and passengers, and many perished as a result. Duty—another ideal which doesn’t seem to exist in this time of radical individualism. Unfortunately, now a man’s value is not measured by his will, his commitment to duty or his moral compass but his ability to make money, the size of his footprint on social media or his success with women. For me, this book made me long for a time lost, a time I unfortunately never was able to experience. The ideals displayed by the victims of Titanic, those of decency, decorum, and duty, are missing in today’s fast-paced and money-centric world. If you desire to experience a taste of what Western society was like a century ago and have a bit of escapism from the present awfulness, I recommend this quick read.
20 comments
Read this when quite young and saw the movie. I had never been in cold water other than my local swimming club’s spring-fed pool, which must have been well above the Newfoundland Atlantic seawater temperature, so I thought at 11 years old or whatever that it was no big deal to see the people in the water swimming to the lifeboats and being refused because they were full. I actually thought they could just hang out there treading the glassy calm water, until the rescue ship came, even if they couldn’t get into the boats.
To clarify, I saw the old black and white movie based on Walter Lord, not the famous one from 1997.
Also, big ships sinking still happen. The Faro, a giant Puerto Rican freighter, sank off the Bahamas in, what, 2014? There have been at least two popular history books published about it. The one I read was riveting. It was a two-ship line that brought cars and trucks and orange juice concentrate between Florida and Puerto Rico. One ship was mestizo staffed, the other one was white and black Americans. The latter was the one that sank in the storm.
Another popular history of the Lusitania said that passengers in the know knew the jig was up when members of the Black Gang (the engineers and stokers stained black by coal dust) showed up on deck in broad daylight and were seen by the luxury passengers. This was usually never allowed because it would bogart the high of the richies to know that there were “orcs” on board. The only time the Black Gang would show themselves is if the ship was about to sink.
Extraordinary. Thank you, that will join the list of books to read. I never saw the famous film, but I have read that it gives a very different – and false – account of the disaster. Is this so? Great piece.
I was probably the last person in the world to see the movie Titanic. A coworker said, “You never saw the movie??? Well, actually, it wasn’t really that great, but I own the DVD, & I’ll let you borrow it, if you like.”
I heard a historian remark that the movie was accurate in that the band on the Titanic’s deck continued to play on until they were completely enveloped by the ocean.
I can confirm that is true, the bandmaster’s name was Wallace Hartley and there’s a memorial to him in the town I grew up in:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Hartley
It’s interesting to read that, thank you.
She didn’t like Jack and Rose? How can anyone not get behind Jack and Rose? 🙃
There was a grim but equally inspiring precedent for this in the tale of the Birkenhead in 1845 (from whence the ‘women and children first’ protocol originated)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Birkenhead_(1845)
I sometimes feel as though I’m clinging on to the wreckage of England the way these sailors clung on to the wreckage of their ship.
“But to stand and be still to the Birkenhead drill is a damn tough bullet to chew,
And they done it, the Jollies — Her Majesty’s Jollies — soldier and sailor too!”
-Rudyard Kipling
The sinking of the Birkenhead did indeed establish the maritime protocol of women and children first. The Wikipedia link given above is a good summary of what happened. The incident illustrates the same lost character traits as the Titanic. I’m skeptical that today’s multicultural members of the US or British military would display the same stoicism and selflessness under those circumstances.
They had us go into the auditorium to view the movie version when I was in 8th grade. I thought it was pretty good and didn’t really see the honor of the sacrifice at the time. It seemed more like an obligation that some men were eager to escape. I think they were trying to instill some good qualities in us even though we were happy to be skipping class.
I did see the movie in the fifties based on this, with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck. There was a 1940 (?) film Titanic made in Germany where a German ship’s officer tries to save the ship but of course the British ignore him, and…
the special effects of the German film were highly regarded, and were used in the 50’s movie.
I’m not quite beholden of the honor of it all, since I read where many boats were sent off half-full of women and children, leaving many passengers to drown when they could have been taken on. Then, there is Miles Mathis’s site, which he insists the Titanic was all a fake, that it never sunk and this was an elaborate con by major financiers to collect insurance money.
I’m not quite sure why the cult of the Titanic remains. Perhaps because it is a closing chapter on the 19th century’s faith in progress. Thomas Hardy wrote The Convergence of the Twain in 1912, a moody poem on the Titanic:
“…And as the smart ship grew/In stature, grace, and hue/In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
Alien they seemed to be:/No mortal eye could see/The intimate wedding of their later history.
…Till the spinner of the Years/ Said “Now!’ And each one hears,/And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.”
In Boston symphony hall there is a bronze marker with the names of the musicians on the Titanic. There is disagreement whether their last piece played was Nearer My God to Thee or Songe d’ Automne, a sad waltz recalling Ravel, the notes and mood…elegiac.
If I went down, I’d go with Songe d’ Automne.
I’m not quite sure why the cult of the Titanic remains. It remains because there were so many survivors to keep the story alive. There have been many ships that have went down where everyone was lost and were forgotten after a couple of years. 🚢
“Then, there is Miles Mathis’s site, which he insists the Titanic was all a fake, that it never sunk and this was an elaborate con by major financiers to collect insurance money.”
Do people like this believe any historical events actually occurred?
I was brought up with the principle of women and children first but today I am not so sure. Today they would probably sue me for being sexist and so on. Might even accuse me of being a racist for me offering them my seat on the lifeboat. My o my how the world changed in such a short time.
While it’s true that great valour was shown that night, so was great hubris. I think that’s really important to say. For a start the tragedy was avoidable, as the radio operator went to bed. Then the California’s operator also went to bed. The course steered was too dangerous and was done so to get a record crossing of the Atlantic. It was to be Smith’s last voyage (even had it been successful). There weren’t enough lifeboats, partly to not obscure the views from deck. As for Lightoller, he acted bravely, but he also let lifeboats go half and three quarters full; one had about 8 in it , I believe, when they could take at least 5 times that number. Brave, yes; but brave to a fault? Should we reward bravery with no end product?
The same bravery of the same class of men was put to awful use in WW1 just a couple years later. Eager guys signed up for a jolly good adventure and a crack at the Bosch. Brave? Yes. But brave to a fault. I agree these people were all of a higher standing than people today. But their standards and their chivalry were such that they got taken advantage of by canny operators and tight-knit foreign groups to whom morals are an afterthought.
In those days, the upper class were like a species apart. You can understand why Communism had some appeal to ordinary folk back then. Much of the hubris of the Titanic incident are to do with this aristocracy-as-gods idea people had at the time. If you were a male in the budget range lower decks, there was no hope for you. Would you regard Lightoller as a brave beacon of Anglo morality then, if you were a labourer on his way to New York and saw this hoity toity midshipman blocking your access to a barely full lifeboat, while allowing millionaire’s wives on board? I’m surprised a mob didn’t throw him overboard. Of course, he had a gun, and I believe he actually shot a couple of men in the chaos.
I think the Titanic is when the White world lost its innocence. The 1890s/1900s were the absolute peak of our power. The Titanic, mighty vessel as she was, encapsulated it; utterly awesome Godlike power, but also, equally high hubris, foolishness and gullibility. There’s a conspiracy theory that several high ranking bankers against the Federal Reserve (founded 1913, the following year) were on board. I don’t know about that, but it’s an interesting theory.
As for the 1997 film, it’s good for seeing what the ship would’ve been like. (I typically only even watch films for the scenery and costumes these days; I really don’t give a toss about the stupid teenage dialog or “romance” or overblown action sequences.) The story is just dumb and the Rose character is a totally detestable brat; she’d be an eco-zealot 5th wave feminist with green armpit hair nowadays, put it that way. But it’s interesting to see the ship in action. It also explains how the ship went down. The special features and commentary on the DVD go into more detail on that. Frankly, that stuff is about 6 million times more interesting that the dumb 90s movie aimed at teenage girls.
Andrew Anglin said he blames James Cameroon’s movie for the OceanGate sub disaster of 2023. I have to agree. Cameroon is Well known to be a deep sea diving expert, as he had to go down there to get footage of the wreckage. I think it was his already existing enthusiasm for diving that even made him want to make the film – I believe he actually just made the film as a pretext to fund more dives. Diving at that depth is obviously a very expensive and safety cautious business. OceanGate was a conman hack trying to do deep dives on the cheap. What’s remarkable is that his deathtrap actually did do several deep dives before it imploded, destroying that fool and the poor bastards who were lured in by his snake oil sales pitch. Stockton Rush was related to USA founding fathers, and part of the disaster is that he rejected expertise from “old white guys in their 50s”. How our race has fallen. Before James Cameroon, nobody really cared about the Titanic anymore. I posit that had that movie never come out, those OceanGate travellers would still be alive. Remember, the film was absolutely massive. I were just a nipper at the time but I remember how giant it was. The theme tune is a bit of a meme nowadays, it’s like peak White [girl] culture.
By the way the Nazis also made a Titanic film. Think about all the great, non subversive cinema we could’ve had, if only the Anglos had not had such hubris…. it’s the same Titanic-sized hubris-folly that fired up Blighty for two pointless world wars. The ‘Anglo hero complex’ needs to be regulated into something that doesn’t serve the Jews.
Don’t forget about the OceanGate-Titan disaster in June 0f 2023. The CEO, who was the pilot of the vessel, and passengers were attempting to view the wreck of the Titanic when it imploded. He had been warned of the safety hazards of the trip and ignored them. Also, he had previously said something to the effect that he didn’t want to hire or rely on middle age, white submariners. Arrogance can come with a price.
There seems to be some confusion in the comments about the movies. The movie which is very closely based on the book by Walter Lord is “A Night to Remember,” from 1958. It is excellent, and stars Kenneth More as Lightoller, along with several other good British actors. It’s much better and more historically accurate than the 1990’s movie “Titanic,” which I saw and which is awful. The latter portrays people of 1912 as 90’s degenerates.
The 1958 movie accurately portrays the range of behavior which occurred on the Titanic, from the great bravery and duty shown by many, of all classes, to the cowardice shown by some. Also some of the mistakes and successes of that night. It’s a harrowing movie, and I doubt if many recent filmmakers are capable of showing such things so effectively, or of considering the actual perspectives of people from 1912.
There also is another movie with Clifton Webb called “Titanic,” from 1953, of which I’ve only seen bits.
I read the Lord book, and yes, it’s excellent.
Generally the slimmed-down film of the Walter Lord book was adjudged of better cinematic quality than the one with Clifton Webb. (AT THE TIME…and for the next 20 years!) But now I’m wondering if the original one deserves another look-see.
I believe this was a Book of the Month Club selection when I was in Kindergarten. I certainly read it, or had parts read to me, by my mother.
“11:46 pm. Mr. John Jacob Astor cuts open a life vest to show his wife what it is made of.” (As recalled from memory.)
Those endpapers in that late-1950s bestseller are what made it a hit. I was barely beyond toddler-stage and couldn’t reflect that it all happened less than a half-century earlier, so existed largely in living memory.
So in some ways it wasn’t really a big deal. Our grandparents were adults. Our parents would soon be born. There were no World Wars. Lovely time.
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