A Night to Remember

“High in the Crow’s nest of the New White Star Liner Titanic, lookout Frederick Fleet peered into a dazzling night. It was calm, clear and bitterly cold. There was no moon, but the cloudless sky blazed with stars. The Atlantic was like polished plate glass; people later said they had never seen it so smooth.”

In these opening lines of A Night to Remember, Walter Lord depicts the view from aboard the Titanic just before the ship struck the fateful iceberg that caused it to sink to the bottom of the Atlantic. This description of the conditions on the water that night crystalizes one of the many factors contributing to the disaster. Without the light of the moon—and without the typical wave breakage against the base of the icebergs in the ship’s path, which were common in rougher seas—the lookouts in the crow’s nest were at a disadvantage.

“They were just in time to see the iceberg scraping along the starboard side, a little higher than the Boat Deck. As it slid by, they watched chunks of ice breaking and tumbling off into the water. In another moment it faded into the darkness… […] About 150 yards astern he made out a mountain of ice standing black against the starlit sky. Then it vanished into the dark. The excitement, too, soon disappeared. The Titanic seemed as solid as ever, and it was too bitterly cold to stay outside any longer. Slowly the group filed back, Woolner picked up his hand, and the bridge game went on.”

One’s experience of the Titanic disaster varied greatly among those who were on board that night; depending on one’s social position and physical location on the ship at the time of the collision. Information about what was happening wasn’t uniformly shared, and the potential consequences weren’t readily appreciated. This passage illustrates that fact; some who personally saw the enormous mass of ice—considered the most significant threat to a ship that far north—as the Titanic scraped against it reacted primarily with curiosity or boredom.