Expressions of Power

The half hour between 12:30 and 1 AM was pivotal the rescue of Third Class passengers on Titanic. It was marked by a confluence of three heretofore separate elements of the rescue. By 12:30 to 12:45 AM, 200-300 Third Class men from the forward end had arrived in the stern. Second, by 12:30 preparations were underway on the after Boat Deck and A Deck to load and launch the eight lifeboats from the after end; Lifeboats 9 and 10 were the first to depart, at 1 AM (see table 6). The third element was a change in Smith's view and that of the senior officers as to the nature of the rescue. Over this half hour it was becoming clear that contact would not be made with Califomian. By the same token, due to the unusually calm water the lifeboats would remain intact long enough for the next-nearest ship, Carpathia, to rescue the occupants.

A question posed in almost all the popular accounts is whether, and to what degree, Third Class passengers were prevented by the authorities from reaching the after Boat Deck and A Deck when these lifeboats were launched. That few Third Class passengers reached the boats is indisputable. But when it comes to the issue of the authorities’ intentions, the evidence generally adduced has been to the two confrontation set pieces discussed in chapter 1, the Buckley and Farrell incidents. The power of the authorities, it is implied, was telling only when it burst through civil discourse; that is, when it was expressed in violence or the immediate threat of violence. Something of an exception to this conventional view have been cursory suggestions by Brown and Davie that the authorities, in the personage of Captain Smith, intentionally misled passengers into thinking the ship was not going to go down before they were rescued.