Titanic’s trail of tears

Shipwreck’s survivors started life anew at several Manhattan locales

The White Star Line, owner of the Titanic, had an office at 9 Broadway, where a Subway and a Radio Shack are now.
The White Star Line, owner of the Titanic, had an office at 9 Broadway, where a Subway and a Radio Shack are now.

— Twenty minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912, the ocean liner Titanic hit an iceberg off the coast of Newfoundland and sank two hours and 40 minutes later at 2:20 a.m. An estimated 1,500 of the 2,229 people on board perished. But not all vestiges of that tragedy are at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Some are in Manhattan — most of them south of 18th Street.

Some of these landmarks look ordinary now. They don’t blare “Titanic!” As you stand before them, you have to know what happened there to feel the frisson of that historic night and the days that followed. Then look around. A Titanic pilgrimage in Manhattan takes visitors to some interesting places — a shrine for the first American-born saint, the South Street Seaport, an oldfashioned hotel where the bellmen wear 1930s regalia, lower Broadway with its famous statue of a charging bull and the gorgeous Hudson River Park with its gardens, fountains and five-mile promenade along the river.

One of the most evocative Titanic sites is at the entrance to Pier 54 on the Hudson River near West 13th Street where the rusted ironwork still bears the words “Cunard White Star Line” in faded paint. This was the pier to which the Cunard ship, Carpathia, brought the survivors of the Titanic, docking there on April 18, 1912. A few blocks north, at Pier 59 in what is now the Chelsea Piers sports complex, the Carpathia stopped off at the White Star moorings to deposit the lifeboats that had saved the lives of 705 people.

Then around 100 members of the bedraggled, exhausted crew of the Titanic were taken down Manhattan’s west side to the American Seamen’s Friend Society Sailors’ Home and Institute, now The Jane hotel at 113 Jane St., where they received clothing, food and lodging.

The exterior of The Jane, built in 1908, probably looks much as it did then. The interior has been revamped, but two items in the lobby recall the Titanic and its time — an ornate, marble fountain that was there when the survivors arrived and a metal plaque that was subsequently placed in front of it, so worn that the inscription can no longer be read.

HOTEL’S HISTORY

What is now the ballroom and bar of the hotel on the right side of the lobby was at that time a little assembly hall. The surviving crew gathered there on April 19, 1912, to pray for those who had been lost. An article published the next day in The New York Times described the service. The men cried as they prayed. Then, accompanied by Miss Josephine Upham on the piano, they sang “Nearer My God to Thee” and “Rock of Ages.”

Afterward, over coffee and sandwiches, some of the crew talked about their experiences. They said that they had never had a dress rehearsal with the lifeboats from the time the ship left Southampton, England, on April 10. In fact, it emerged subsequently that there were only enough lifeboats for about half the people on board and many of these weren’t filled to capacity before they were lowered into the ocean.

They also talked of horrors beyond the sinking of the ship itself. “One told of hearing as many as 20 shots fired amid all the groans and cries that rose as the Titanic went down,” the article said. “He thought the shots were suicide shots. One told of a frantic swim for the raft that was soon so crowded that they had to beat men off. One who climbed aboard had on a soldier’s uniform. He lay down on the raft and died and they pushed him off to make room for the living.”

Among those who survived the sinking was J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, who secured a place for himself in a lifeboat and was socially ostracized for the rest of his life because of that. Only one-third of the men traveling in first class were saved. The rest elected to give their places to the women and children. Col. John Jacob Astor, one of the richest men in the United States if not the world, was among those who drowned. He is buried in the cemetery of Trinity Church at 155th Street and Broadway.

Others who drowned included two Catholic priests. They boarded the Titanic in Queenstown, Ireland, and spent most of their time in steerage, ministering to the Irish immigrants on the ship. The Times reported, “George M. McGough, an able seaman on the Titanic who manned one of the lifeboats, told yesterday [April 19, 1912] at the Catholic Seamen’s Mission at 422 West St.” that the two priests “spent their last two hours consoling the people of the steerage and finally went down with the ship.”

Some of the people in steerage survived. The women were taken to the Mission of Our Lady of the Rosary at 7 State St. in Lower Manhattan. Among the Irish immigrants was a young woman named Ellen Shine. One of the most powerful politicians in New York, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, is her granddaughter. Today, the mission is known as the Parish of Our Lady of the Rosary and shares space with the St. Elizabeth Seton Shrine, which houses an exhibit about the mission and its work.

PAINFUL STORIES

Stories about the Titanic are a mixture of horror and heroism. The heroes would have to include Harold Bride and Jack Phillips — the Marconi (wireless) operators aboard the ship. Wireless radio was relatively new at that time, and of course, the Titanic was equipped with the newest technology. When the Titanic’s captain, Edward J. Smith, realized that the ship was sinking, he told Bride and Phillips to send messages to neighboring ships to ask for help. Between 12:15 a.m. and 2:17 a.m., the increasingly desperate messages went out and then abruptly ceased. Bride was saved. Phillips perished.

A memorial in Battery Park to maritime wireless operators who died in the line of duty is inscribed “Jack Phillips, S.S. Titanic, April 15, 1912, Atlantic Ocean.” Because of extensive construction in the park, the memorial is currently in storage, but it will return to the park.

The first reports of the sinking of the Titanic appeared in newspapers on April 15. Aching for up-todate news, thousands of people swarmed around the White Star office at 9 Broadway, across from Bowling Green park. The news came in by wireless radio. One of the receiving sites was on top of the tall John Wanamaker department store at Eighth Street and Broadway, where American Marconi had a station. A young man named David Sarnoff was the manager. As he later told the story, “It happened that I was on duty at the Wanamaker station in New York and got the first message from the Olympic, 1,400 miles out at sea, that the Titanic had gone down.” He said that he stayed at his station for 72 hours as the news emerged. “I passed the information on to a sorrowing world.” Sarnoff, himself an immigrant from Belarus, was promoted after the Titanic disaster — a steppingstone in a career that culminated in the presidency of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and the founding of the NBC radio and television networks.

MEMORIAL LIGHTHOUSE

At the corner of Fulton and Water streets in the South Street Seaport, is a lighthouse that once stood on top of the Seamen’s Church Institute at the corner of South Street and Coenties Slip. It was erected by public subscription in 1913 as a memorial to those who had died on the Titanic. From 1913 to 1967, a ball at the top of the lighthouse dropped down a pole every day at noon to signal the time to the ships in the harbor. The time ball was activated by a telegraphic signal from the National Observatory in Washington. In July 1968, the Seamen’s Church Institute moved to 15 State St. and the Titanic Memorial Lighthouse was donated to the South Street Seaport Museum. It was erected on its present site in May 1976.

No matter how many times the Titanic story is told, it doesn’t lose its haunting power.

Editor’s note: Historians differ on the exact number of people who were on the ship and on the number who survived. Various accounts say the ship carried 2,223-2,229 and that 705-713 survived.

Travel, Pages 50 on 05/27/2012

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