Andrew Wilson

In addition to the message from the Baltic, the Titanic had received a flurry of ice warnings during the course of that Sunday, and while the captain had taken heed of them—he had already plotted a course that took the ship ten miles south of the normal shipping lane so as to avoid drifting ice—it seems as though he too had been intoxicated by the air of hubris that powered the vessel.

Apart from this incident, perfect discipline seemed to prevail, remembered Behr, as each of the passengers assumed that it was simply a case that they would spend an hour or so in the lifeboat before returning to the Titanic.

Between 12:45 a.m. and 1:10 a.m., six lifeboats were lowered that contained only first-class passengers, with accompanying crew members.

At 2:05 a.m. it was launched from the ship, the last boat to be lowered from the Titanic.71

The ship would stay afloat for only fifteen minutes more. There were still around 1,500 people on board.

Mackay-Bennett, from the Commercial Cable Company to retrieve what bodies they could find from the ocean.

(There was, it seems, discrimination even in death as it was decided to preserve the bodies of all first-class passengers and bring them back to land, while those in third class, and crew members, were consigned to the depths of the ocean.)