Everyone’s heard of the loss of Titanic in April 1912, the world’s most famous peacetime shipping disaster. It lives on thanks to the scale of the human tragedy and a sense of hubris: the supposedly unsinkable ship that ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic.
One man’s reputation was ruined on that deadly night. J Bruce Ismay was on board as the chief executive of Titanic’s owner, the White Star Line. As the great ship set out on its maiden voyage he seemed to have it all: wealth, power and prestige. He had succeeded his late father in 1899 as head of White Star but within three years sold the company to JP Morgan’s new shipping conglomerate, International Merchant Marine (IMM). Ismay became president of IMM and masterminded the building of Titanic and its sister leviathans Olympic and Britannic, believing that these giant luxury ships would give White Star a competitive advantage over rival lines such as Cunard. (Their size also made them ideal for the thousands of people emigrating from Europe to the United States; those travelling steerage did so in greater comfort than on most rival liners.)
There are countless books and online stories about the Titanic’s fatal encounter with the iceberg, so here I’ll focus on Bruce Ismay’s dramatic fall from grace.
In the early hours of Monday 15 April 1912, Ismay stepped into starboard collapsible lifeboat C, and into infamy. He made it clear to the American Senate inquiry into the disaster that no one ordered him into the lifeboat, giving the following reason for his entering the boat:
‘Because there was room in the boat. She was being lowered away. I felt the ship was going down, and I got into the boat.’
According to most of the accounts of that tragic night, Ismay helped load the lifeboats, calling out for any remaining women to get in. He himself recalled complete calmness: no panic and no crowds of desperate passengers fearing for their lives as the last lifeboats were lowered. In reality, Titanic’s final hour was chaotic. The crew were nervous about filling the boats to capacity. So, although Titanic’s boats could carry 1,100 or the 2,340 people on board, only 705 were actually saved. Ismay’s own lifeboat had room for a few more to board, so he wasn’t condemning anyone to a freezing cold death by getting in. The White Star line boss couldn’t look as his great ship sank below the waves, accompanied by the shocking screams of those condemned to freeze to death in the ice-cold waters of the April ocean.
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