In the A Deck foyer, the Countess encountered her friend Fletcher Fellows Lambert-Williams, a convivial gentleman who, earlier that evening, had overheard Captain Smith telling several passengers that the ship could be cut crosswise in three places and each piece would float.
“There is nothing to worry about,” he told the Countess. “The watertight compartments must surely hold.”
Just then an officer hurried by. “Will you all get your life belts on!” he called out. “Dress warmly and come up to Boat Deck!”
The Countess looked at Gladys. She did not speak, but she could see that her cousin was as stunned as she was.
The Countess of Rothes had been born into an upper-class life replete with all the grandeur it avails: the privileged girlhood culminating in a union with a dapper earl who presided over a thirty-seven-bedroom family estate centered on ten thousand acres of land, and who lacked for nothing other than the funds she could readily provide; the posh wedding, in the spring of 1900, at which she appeared as a vision in white satin, a crown of orange blossoms and a veil of priceless sixteenth-century Brussels lace; her presentation as a bride at Buckingham Palace, where she caught the ever-traveling eye of the Prince of Wales, who would soon become King Edward VII; the good works as the loyal patron of several charities; and the two beloved sons—the heir and the spare—to carry the line forward.
It was a glamorous and satisfying life. In the Edwardian aristocracy, where marriage and love were often unrelated, the Earl and the Countess were a rarity: a husband and wife so fond of each other that they were derided as “a most unfashionably devoted couple.”
Now the Countess was journeying on the Titanic to join her husband, who planned to purchase and operate an orange grove in California. Five days before, on the morning of the sailing, she had been sought out by a reporter, who asked how she felt about leaving London society for a fruit farm. Now, as she returned to her cabin to don her life belt, the Countess was rueful as she recalled her reply. “I am full of joyful expectation,” she had said.
Jack Phillips sent out the standard call: CQD. It meant “ALL STATIONS ATTEND: DISTRESS.” He followed it with MGY, the call letters of the Titanic.
One ship was no more than twenty miles away. It was the Californian, whose wireless operator, Cyril Evans, had tried to warn the Titanic about icebergs and had been told by Jack to shut up. For Evans, too, it had been a long, tiring day, capped off by Jack’s dismissive reply. At 11:30 p.m. he had turned off the wireless and gone to bed—forty-five minutes before the CQD was sent out.
As the Titanic’s stewards passed along the order to put on life belts, a young seaman stood on the Californian’s deck and detected a curious sight: a giant liner stopped dead in the water. He pointed the ship out to his captain.
“That will be the Titanic,” the captain said, “on her maiden voyage.”
Then he turned away, unperturbed and unhurried, as if what he had seen was not the least bit unusual.
Caroline and Natalie were about to return to their cabin when an officer approached them. “Go below and put on your life belts,” he said. “You may need them later.”
Alarmed and frightened, they rushed down to C Deck to awaken Natalie’s parents, George and Mollie Wick. They relayed the officer’s order, but Mr. Wick chided them. “Why, that’s nonsense, girls. This boat is all right. She just got a glancing blow, I guess.”
Everyone they encountered in the hallway shared his opinion, so the two women returned to their cabin to prepare for bed again. But a moment later an officer knocked at the door and told them to go immediately up to the Boat Deck. “There is no danger,” he said. “It’s just a precautionary measure.”
The first ship to respond to the Titanic’s distress call was a German liner, the Frankfurt. The message she sent back was “OK Stand by.”
The Frankfurt was 150 miles away, but from the strength of her signal, Jack Phillips was convinced that she was the ship closest to them. “Go tell the captain,” he instructed his assistant, a guileless twenty-two-year-old named Harold Bride.
Then Jack hunched over the wireless apparatus and waited anxiously for the Frankfurt’s operator to relay her position. The information didn’t come.
It had been a strange trip for Ella White, a portly, opinionated widow with a vast estate in Briarcliff, New York, and a permanent suite at the Waldorf-Astoria. Boarding the ship, Mrs. White had sprained her ankle. Throughout the voyage she had remained in her cabin, attended by her maid, her manservant, and her companion Marie Grice Young, a cultured thirty-six-year-old given to wearing hats as high as wedding cakes, who had the distinction of having been the music teacher for Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter.
But at quarter past midnight on April 15, remaining in the cabin was no longer an option. Mrs. White put on several layers of warm clothes and insisted that Miss Young do the same. They locked their trunks and bags, and Mrs. White hobbled out of the commodious suite, leaning on a brass-and-wood cane that had a small, battery-operated light mounted on the end of it.
In the coming hours, that cane would be put to use in a way she could never have imagined.