The trifle of a telephone call hardly answered sent the Titanic to the bottom of the Atlantic, occasioned the greatest marine disaster in history and shocked all civilized nations.

  This, at least, is the tale told by sailors of the ill-starred Titanic, brawny seamen who only lived to tell it because it happened in the line of their duty to help man the boats into which some of the Titanic's passengers were loaded.

  But the telephone call that went unanswered for probably two or three minutes, none can tell the exact time, was sent by the lookout stationed forward to the first officer of the watch on the bridge of the great liner on the maiden voyage.

  The lookout saw a towering "blue berg" looming up in the sea path of the Titanic, the latest and proudest product of marine architecture, and called the bridge on the ship's telephone.

  When after the passing of those two or three fateful minutes an officer on the bridge of the Titanic lifted the telephone receiver from its hook to answer the lookout it was too late. The speeding liner, cleaving a calm sea under a star-studded sky, had reached the floating mountain of ice, which the theoretically unsinkable" ship struck a crashing, if glancing, blow with her starboard bow.

  Had the officer on the bridge, who was William T. Murdock, according to the account of the tragedy given by two of the Titanic's seamen, known how imperative was that call from the lookout man, whose name was given as Fleet, the man at the wheel of the world's newest and greatest transatlantic liner might have swerved the great ship sufficiently to avoid the berg altogether or at the worst would have probably struck the mass of ice with her stern and at much reduced speed.

  For obvious reasons the identity of the sailormen who described the foundering of the Titanic cannot be divulged. As for the officer, who was alleged to have been a laggard in answering the lookout's telephone call, harsh criticism may be omitted.

  Murdock, if the tale of the Titanic sailor be true, expiated his negligence, if negligence it was, by shooting himself within sight of all alleged victims huddled in lifeboats or struggling in the icy seas.

THE "UNWRITTEN LAW" OF THE SEA.

  The revolver which the sailors say snuffed out Murdock's life was not the only weapon that rang out above the shrieks of the drowning. Officers of the Titanic, upon whom devolved the duty of seeing that the "unwritten law" of the sea — "women and children first" — was enforced, were, according to the recital of the members of the great liner's crew, forced to shoot frenzied male passengers, who, impelled by the fear of death, attempted to get into the lifeboats swinging from their davits.

  The sailors' account of the terrific impact of the Titanic against the berg that crossed the path was as follows:

  "It was 11.40 P.M. Sunday, April 14. Struck an iceberg. The berg was very dark and about 250 feet in height.

  "The Titanic struck the berg a glancing blow on the starboard bow. The ship, which was traveling between twenty and twenty-three knots an hour, crashed into the berg at a point about forty feet back of the stem.

  "The Titanic's bottom was torn away to about fore bridge. The tear was fully fifty feet in length and was below the water line."

  Regarding the state of the sea and the character of the night the sailors declared:

  "It was a perfect night, clear and starlight. The sea was smooth. The temperature had dropped to freezing Sunday morning. We knew or believed that the cold was due to the nearness of bergs, but we had not even run against cake ice up to the time the ice mountain loomed up. The Titanic raced through a calm sea in which there was no ice into the berg which sank her."

  Continuing, their joint account the two men of the Titanic's crew further said:

  "The first officer of the watch was Murdock. He was on the bridge. Captain Smith may have been near at hand, but he was not visible to us who were about to wash down the decks. Hitchens, quartermaster, was at the wheel. Fleet was the outlook."

  It is characteristic of sailors that they make no effort to learn the baptismal names of a ship's officers.

  "Fleet reported the berg, but the telephone was not answered on the bridge at once. A few minutes afterwards the telephone call was answered, but it was too late.

THE SHIP HAD STRUCK.

  "The ship had struck. Murdock, after the ship struck the berg, gave orders to put helm to starboard, afterwards he ordered the helm hard to port and the ship struck the berg again.

  "Afterwards Murdock gave an order for the carpenter to sound the wells to learn how much water the ship was taking in. The carpenter came up and told Murdock the Titanic had seven feet of water in her in less than seven minutes." Keeping on with their narrative the sailors, whose nerves had not been broken by their experiences declared:

  "Then Captain Smith, who had put in an appearance, gave orders to get the boats ready.

  "There was less than ten minutes between the time the Titanic first struck the berg and the second crash, both of which brought big pieces of ice showering down on the ship.

  "Orders came to the crew to stand by the boats. The boats were got out. There were twenty- two boats all told."

  At this juncture the sailors described without apparent prejudice or bitterness how J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the Board of Directors of the White Star Line, was the first to leave the Titanic.

  "Ismay," the sailors asserted, "with his two daughters and a millionaire, Sir Cosmo Duff- Gordon, and the latter's family, got into the first accident or emergency boats, which are about twenty- eight feet long, and were always ready for lowering under the bridge. The boat in which Ismay and Sir Cosmo left was manned by seven seamen. There were seventeen persons in the boat.

  "This boat pulled away from the ship a half hour before any of the lifeboats were put into the water.

  "There were thirteen first-class passengers and five sailors in the emergency boat. Both boats were away from the ship within ten or fifteen minutes of the ship's crashing into the berg."

FIRST BOATS TO GET AWAY.

  Asked to explain how it was possible for two boats to be put over the ship's side into the water without being subjected to a rush on the part of the great ship's passengers, the Titanic seamen said: "Ismay and those who left in the two emergency boats occupied cabins de luxe. The two boats were swinging from davits ready for lowering. We have no idea who notified Mr. Ismay and his friends to make ready to leave the ship, but we do know that the boats in which they were got away first."

  The sailors' seemingly unvarnished tale then went on as follows:

  "It was perhaps a half hour before the first of the lifeboats was ready for lowering. Not a man was allowed in one of the lifeboats so far as we could see, only women and children. The boats were all thirty-six feet long and carried about sixty passengers. There were about thirty-five or forty passengers to a boat when they were lowered, but two sailors went in each boat. Besides the sixteen lifeboats and the two emergency boats, four collapsible boats, each with a carrying capacity of forty passengers were put over the sides of the Titanic, every boat on the ship was put into the water.

  "One of the collapsible boats filled with water. The women and children in the boat were mostly third-class passengers. The boat turned keel and nearly two score persons clung to it. Many of these were rescued by the lifeboats."

  The spokesman for the sailors here asserted: "We want to make it plain that the officers and crew of the Titanic did their duty. Not a male passenger got into the lifeboats. During the early excitement men tried to force their way into the boats, but the officers shot them down with revolvers. I saw probably a half dozen men shot down as the lifeboat to which I was assigned was being filled. The men shot were left to die and sink on the upper deck of the Titanic."

  The Titanic's sailors described how frail women, steeled by a desperate emergency, seized oars and labored with the seamen to get the lifeboats at a safe distance from the great liner, sinking deep and deeper under the weight of water.

WOMEN HELP WITH THE OARS.

  "There were ten oars to each lifeboat," the sailors said. "The women seized the sweeps and helped us to get the boats clear of the ship. We got away about 100 yards from the ship and waited to see what would happen. The liner was sinking fast, but the lights continued to shine through the black night.

  "The end came at 2.30 on Monday morning. The lights on the ship did not go out until ten minutes before the liner sank. The inrushing seas reaching the after fires produced an explosion, which sundered the big liner. The forward half of the Titanic dived gently down. The after part of the ship stood on end and then disappeared.

  "The force of the explosion blew, it seemed to us watching from the lifeboats, scores of passengers and sailors into the air."

  "That there were stout hearts on the Titanic, even in the last moments of an unprecedented catastrophe, that refused to quail was proven by the rough seamen's further testimony.

  "The band on the promenade deck," they declared, "played 'Abide With Me' and 'Eternal Father, Strong to Save,' and other hymns as the ship sank."

  The Titanic sank at 2.30, almost at the spot where she collided with the mountain of ice.

  It was an hour later when the Carpathia was sighted by the thinly-clad occupants of the lifeboats and it was 4.30 before the first of the Titanic's passengers set foot on the deck of the Cunarder. It was 8 o'clock on Monday morning, April 15, before the last of the half-clad suffering passengers of the Titanic were taken aboard the Carpathia, a not difficult feat, as the sea continued smooth.

  The Carpathia's run from the Newfoundland banks to New York was uneventful except for the burial at sea of five persons. Four of the five, according to the sailors, were consigned to the deep at about 4 P.M. on Monday, April 15. One of the four was a sailor, one a fireman and two male passengers of the third class.

TELEPHONE CALL DOUBTED.

  The alleged negligence of Murdock, the first officer of the watch, who is blamed, as stated above, by some of the sailors for the wreck in not responding immediately to a telephone call from the lookout giving warning of the iceberg ahead, is doubted by a naval man who has had a long experience on transatlantic liners.

  "I cannot help doubting, in fact, absolutely disbelieving, that an officer of the watch could be negligent in either responding to a call from the crow's-nest or even failing to discover anything in the course of his vessel as soon as the lookout. Especially considering the fact that the vessel had been warned of ice several times.

  "The position of the senior officer of the watch is on the windward side of the bridge. He does not depend on the lookout, that man is only a check upon him. Usually any object in the course of the vessel is discovered by both at the same time. The 1ookout's signal was not a telephone call when I was on the seas, but a horn blast. Three blasts, object dead ahead; one blast, object on port bow; two blasts, object on starboard bow.

  "That Murdock did not see the berg as soon as his lookout, seems improbable; that he did not see it immediately after his lookout, seems impossible; that he did not answer any signal from the lookout immediately is impossible, unless he was dead. Murdock knew his responsibility, and he wasn't shirking. He wouldn't have been on the watch, or on the Titanic, if he ever shirked.

  "Could a vessel the size of the Titanic change its course sufficiently to avoid the berg within three minutes supposed to have elapsed during which Murdock didn't answer his lookout's call? It could. I never sailed a vessel the size of the Titanic, but I unhesitatingly say that the Titanic's course could be changed in considerably less than a mile. Why, by putting the wheel hard-a-port and stopping the engines on that side the vessel could be turned so quickly that it would list fifteen degrees in swinging around. I have steered a transatlantic liner in and out among fishing smacks and they are easier to hit than an iceberg."

QUESTIONED ABOUT CONDITIONS ON MOONLESS NIGHT.

  Two other seafaring men of long experience, who have many nights sat in the crow's-nest of a liner and watched the course, were asked how far an iceberg the size of the one that the Titanic struck could be seen on a clear night without a moon, a condition on which all of the survivors seem to agree was present the night the Titanic was sunk.

  One of these men said at least one mile, the other at least two miles. So the fact remains that Murdock was supposed to be on the bridge keeping a strict lookout and not depending on the crow's-nest; that he could have seen the iceberk when it was at least a mile from the vessel, and that the Titanic could have been easily turned sufficiently in her course to avoid the berg within a mile.

  The surviving passengers are unanimous that the "unbelievable" happened. The voyage had been pleasant and uneventful, except for the fact that it was being made on the largest and most magnificent vessel that ever sailed and for the keen interest which the passengers took in the daily bulletins of the speed.

  The Titanic had been making good time and all accounts agree that on the night of the disaster she was apparently going at her usual rate of from 21 to 25 knots an hour.

  J.H. Moody, the quartermaster, who was at the helm, said that the ship was making twenty-one and that the officers were under orders at the time to keep up speed in the hope of making a record passage.

  These orders were being carried out in face of knowledge that the steamer was in the vicinity of great icebergs sweeping down from the north. That very afternoon, according to the record of the hyrographic officer, the Titanic had relayed to shore a wireless warning from the steamer Amerika that an unusual field of pack ice and bergs menaced navigation off the Banks.

OFFICERS CONFIDENT EVEN IN THE FACE OF DANGER.

  But it was a "clear and starlight night," as all the survivors described the weather, and the great ship sped through the quiet seas with officers confident that even though an iceberg should be seen the vessel could be controlled in ample time, and the passengers rested in full confidence that their temporary quarters in the largest and most magnificent vessel ever constructed were as safe as their own homes.

  This confidence is emphasized in the tales of nearly all the survivors that when the crash came there was almost no excitement. Many who felt anxious enough to go on deck to inquire what had happened were little perturbed when they learned that the ship had "only struck an iceberg." It appeared to be a glancing blow and at first there was no indication of a serious accident.

  A group of men at cards in the smoking room sent one of their number to look out of the window, and when he came back with the announcement that the boat had grazed an iceberg, the party went on with the game. It was never finished.

  The stoppage of the engines was noticed more than the collision, the effect being, as one survivor put it, like the stopping of a loud ticking clock.

  The over-confident passengers were not brought to the slightest realization that the collision might mean serious danger until the call ran through the ship, "All passengers on deck with life-belts on."

  Captain Smith, it is said, was not on the bridge when the collision occurred, but when hurriedly summoned by his first officer, he took charge of what seemed a hopeless situation in a manner which the passengers praise as calm, resolute and efficient to the highest degree.

  One of the most stirring narratives of action and description of scenes that followed the collision was told by L. Beasley, a Cambridge University man, who was one of the surviving second cabin passengers.

THE CREWS ALLOTTED TO THE BOATS.

  "The steamer lay just as if she were awaiting the order to go on again, when some trifling matter had been adjusted," he said. "But in a few minutes we saw the covers lifted from the boats, and the crews allotted to them standing by ready to lower them to the water.

  "Presently we heard the order, 'All men stand back and all ladies retire to the next deck below' — the smoking room deck or 'B' deck. The men stood away and remained in absolute silence, leaning against the end railing or pacing slowly up and down.

  "The boats were swung out and lowered from A deck. When they were to the level of B deck, where all the ladies were collected, the ladies got in quietly with the exception of some, who refused to leave their husbands. In some cases they were torn from them and pushed into the boats.

  "All this time there was no trace of any disorder; no panic or rush for the boats, and no scenes of women sobbing hysterically. Everyone seemed to realize so slowly that there was imminent danger. When it was realized that we would be presently. in the sea with nothing but our life-belts to support us until we were picked up by passing steamers, it was extraordinary how calm everyone was and how complete the self-control.

  "One by one the boats were filled with women and children,

  "Presently we heard the order, 'All men stand back and all lowered and rowed away into the night. Presently the word went around among the men, 'The men are to be put in boats on the starboard side.' I was on the port side and most of the men walked across the deck to see if this was so. Presently I heard the call, 'Any more ladies?'

  "Looking over the side of the ship I saw boat No. 13 swinging 1evel with B deck, half full of women. I saw no more come, and one of the crew said then: 'You'd better jump.' I dropped in and fell in the bottom as they cried 'lower away.'"

  Beasely said that the lifeboat was nearly two miles away from the Titanic less than two hours later, when they made out that the great liner was sinking.

SHIP APPARENTLY BREAKS IN TWO.

  Other survivors who were nearer to the sinking liner told of hearing the strains of "Nearer, My God, to Thee" played as the liner sank, and some of those in the lifeboats blended their voices in the melody. Suddenly there was a mighty roar and the ship, already half submerged, was seen to buckle and apparently break in two by the force of an explosion caused when the water reached the hot boilers.

  The bow sank first and for fully five minutes the stern was poised almost vertically in the air, when suddenly it plunged out of sight. With the last hope gone of seeing their loved ones alive, many women in the lifeboats seemed to be indifferent whether they were saved or not. They were nearly 1000 miles from land and had no knowledge that a ship of succor was speeding to them. Without provisions or water, there seemed little hope of surviving long in the bitter cold.

  There were sixteen boats in the forlorn procession which entered upon the terrible hours of suspense.

  The confidence that the big ship, on which they had started across the sea, was sure to bring them safely here was now turned to utter helplessness. But the shock of learning that their lives were in peril was hardly greater than the relief when, at dawn, a large steamer's stacks were seen on the horizon, and eager eyes soon made out that the vessel was making for the scene.

  The rescue ship proved to be the Carpathia, which had received the Titanic's distress signals by wireless.

  By 7 o'clock in the morning all the Titanic's sixteen boats had been picked up and their chilled and hungry occupants welcomed over the Carpathia's side. The Carpathia's passengers, who were bound for a Mediterranean cruise, showed every consideration for the stricken, and many gave up their cabins that the shipwrecked might be made comfortable.

  The rescued were in all conditions of dress and undress, and the women on the Carpathia vied with one another in supplying missing garments.

  On the four days' cruise back to New York many, who had realized that their experiences would be waited by an anxious world, put their narratives to paper while their nerves were still at a tension from the excitement of the disaster they had barely escaped.