Engineers of the Titanic

There were many heroes aboard the Titanic. It seems that there were many men who worked hard to get women and children into boats, and then there were the ones who ventured down into third class to bring up more women and children who were trapped, there was also the ones who lowered the boats, the officers who worked hard to carry out orders, and the wireless operators who stayed calling for help until the Marconi room began to take on water, and the band members who calmed passengers down with their music till the very last second. But the ones who have received the least credit of all are the engineers who fearlessly remained in the belly of the ship, pumping water and keeping the electricity running. Undoubtedly, if they had left their posts and let the lights go out, there would have been mass panic, for the night was dark and moonless (by most accounts). They kept the lights on for almost three hours, from the time the Titanic hit the ice berg, until her stern reared up, broke in half, and plunged into the bottom of the ocean, “…the engineers…still at work as she [the Titanic] heeled over and flung them with their engines down the length of the ship”*. They were never acknowledged by the survivors after the sinking. The editors and staff of the respected Scientific American wrote the following editorial in an attempt to honor the Titanic’s brave engineering crew and right what they saw as a grave injustice.

A Tribute To The Engineers Of The Titanic
April 27, 1912

There is a world of heroic and tragic significance in the fact that the survivors’ stories of the last hours of the Titanic make no reference whatever to the thirty-five officers of the engineer force. Of the officers of the deck there is frequent mention and many of them are among the survivors. This is natural and proper, for they were standing at their posts of duty. We read also of farewells between them and other officers whose duties were concerned with the welfare of the Titanic passengers; but in all the records of the final eventful hours there is not mention of any one of the band of men whose duties called for their presence far down in the deepest recesses of the ship. In the roll of the saved there is not the name of a single certified engineer. Why this literal silence of the grave? There can be but one answer. Every man of the engineer watch stuck to his post to the very last and went down with the ship. Furthermore, this devotion to duty leads us to believe that such engineers as were not on watch may have voluntarily gone below to render what assistance they could in the sudden and frightful emergency. This heroic devotion on the part of a little recognized body of professional men, the importance of whose duties on board ship is overlooked by the average trans-Atlantic passenger, will make an even greater impression upon our minds if we remember that they, above everybody else on that ship, must have known that she had received her death wound and that the hour of her sinking might be delayed, but not by any possibilities averted. While those above deck, conscious of the enormous magnitude of the Titanic were exclaiming “You cannot sink he,” these men standing on the double bottom may possibly have seen the submerged edge of the iceberg come ripping through the sides of the ship, opening up boiler room after boiler room to the savage inrush of water! The bunkers, we learn, were arranged transversely to the ship. Hence if the bilges of side plating were ruptured, the inrush of water must have occurred before the very eyes of the engineers; and to the seafaring man there is no sight before which his courage will quail so quickly as this. Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe that not a man flinched from his trial. Steam was maintained in such boiler rooms as were not invaded by the water; the powerful bilge pumps were kept going to the very last minute; and the electricity lighting plant was watched over, evidently with careful solicitude. It is certain the pumps alone must have very materially delayed the sinking of the ship; and the value, in that hour of terrible stress, of the work done by the electrical engineers in keeping the lights going until the last trace of the ship disappeared, is impossible to overestimate.**

How scary it must have been for them, trapped in the very bottom of the ship, knowing that their death was approaching and yet working all the while to keep the power on, and keep the pumps manned all the while as the water kept coming in, filling the holds where they worked, filling slowly up to their neck…and then she sank, carrying them all to the very bottom along with her. That is what I call a true hero.


* Lawrence Beesley, The Loss Of The S.S Titanic
**Thanks to Stephen Spignesi, The Complete Titanic