| The ship's wireless room had received many ice warnings, not all of which, apparently, made it to the bridge. Lowe would later claim that his only forewarning of the icefield towards which Titanic was steaming was a chit of paper with the word "ice" written on it and a set of coordinates that he sighted in the Officers' Chart Room. He made a quick calculation and concluded the ship would not reach the position while he was on duty: "I ran this position through my mind, and worked it out mentally, and found that the ship would not be within the ice region during my watch, that is, from six to eight." (British Inquiry) |  |
| At 8.00pm Lowe was relieved by Sixth Officer Moody and went to bed between 8.15 and 8.30, apparently exhausted. The question was put to him at the British Inquiry as to whether it would be better to change from 4 hours on / 4 hours off watches to 8 hour alternating watches for the junior officers, an arrangement already in place for the seniors. Lowe viewed the idea favorably, saying "we would have more time to ourselves, naturally." (British Inquiry)
Not only would the junior officers have gained "more time to themselves", but they would have no doubt benefited from getting more than the normal 4 hours or so of sleep at a time. This taken into consideration, it's understandable why Lowe would sleep through the 11.40pm collision with the iceberg:
Smith: "You did not feel the impact?" (US Senate Inquiry)
Following the collision, Fourth Officer Boxhall was dispatched to wake the off-duty deck officers. He found Lightoller and Pitman already awake, but does not seem to have realized that Lowe slept through his wake up call - "Mr Boxhall, the Fourth Officer, told me that he told me that we had struck an iceberg, but I do not remember it…It must have been while I was asleep. You must remember that we do not have any too much sleep and therefore when we sleep we die." (US Senate Inquiry)
Lowe would later be unable to determine what time he did wake up, and his sense of the chronology of events remained nebulous throughout the sinking, saying when questioned on this point that "I have not the remotest idea of the time throughout." (British Inquiry), explaining that he "had Greenwich time on me, and I did not look at my watch" (US Senate Inquiry). However, as he saw passengers were wearing lifebelts and the boats had been prepared for lowering, it may be conjectured that he awoke some time after 12.30 am (somehow managing to sleep through the steam emissions as the ship's engines were shut down).
He described what awakened him: "I was half awakened by hearing voices in our quarters, because it is an unusual thing, and it woke me up. I suppose I lay down there for a little while until I fully realized, and then I jumped out of bed and opened my door a bit and looked out, and I saw ladies in our quarters with lifebelts on." (British Inquiry)
Arriving on deck he found that not only were people wearing lifeboats, but also that "they were busy getting the boats ready to go overboard" (US Senate Inquiry). He was told that the ship had struck a berg, and he "could feel by my feet that there was something wrong". (US Senate Inquiry). He later estimated that she was "about 12 degrees or 15 degrees by the head". (US Senate Inquiry).
Ascertaining what had happened and the fact that the ship was down by the bow, Lowe's first action was to return to his cabin to retrieve his private firearm, a Browning automatic. When asked later why he did so, his response was "You never know when you will need it". (US Senate Inquiry)
It was at approximately this time that he saw the last of Captain Smith - "The last time I saw the captain was just after I got out of bed." (British Inquiry). In his own words, he began to help "everybody all around", first going to Lifeboat #7, walking abaft the second funnel.
First Officer Murdoch and Lowe worked their way forward on the forward starboard boats, from #7 through to #5, #3 and #1. He would testify that he feared that the boats would not stand being filled to capacity - "The dangers are that if you overcrowd the boat the first thing that you will have will be that the boat will buckle up like that [indicating] at the two ends, because she is suspended from both ends and there is no support in the middle" (US Senate Inquiry)
At #5 he would have an encounter with the managing director of the White Star Line, J. Bruce Ismay, that would become notorious. |
 | Smith: Did your order Mr. Ismay away from the boat? Lowe: I did, sir. Smith: What did you say to him? Lowe: This was on the starboard side. I don't know his name but I know him by sight. He is a steward. He spoke to me on the boat, the Carpathia. He asked me if I knew what I had said to Mr. Ismay. I said, "I don't know Mr. Ismay." "Well," he said, "you used very, very strong language with him." I said, "Did I?" I said, "I cannot help it if I did." He said, "Yes, you did," and he repeated the words. If you wish me to repeat them I will do so; if you do not I will not. Smith: I will first ask you this; what was the occasion for your using this harsh language to Mr. Ismay? Lowe: The occasion for using the language I did was because Mr. Ismay was overanxious and he was getting a trifle excited. He said, "Lower away! Lower away! Lower away!" I said- well, let it be- (US Senate Inquiry) |
| At this point in the proceedings the committee began to debate whether or not to allow Lowe's 'harsh' language in the record. It was Bruce Ismay who suggested that the offending language be written down on a piece of paper. Lowe complied, and after examining the paper, Senator Smith reached the conclusion that it could be included.
Lowe: I told him, "If you will get the hell out of that I shall be able to do something." (US Senate Inquiry)
E. Wheelton, the Steward who witnessed the exchange and who later informed Lowe to whom he had delivered a dressing down, confirmed Lowe's version of events in his own testimony.
His excitable employer aside, matters were still comparatively orderly at this stage of the evening. "Everything was quite quiet and calm. The only thing – and of course you would expect that – was that people were messing up the falls, getting foul of the falls, and I had to halloo a bit to get them off the falls. Everything else went nicely, very nicely; quietly and orderly." (US Senate Inquiry)
Although the crew conducted themselves quite well with regards to discipline, confusion over boat assignments and the need to man and lower 20 boats without having been drilled in the procedure led to difficulties. "The discipline could not have been better, and what I mean to say is that you must remember that we did not have one boat to lower away; we had and we put 19 over, and when you come to split up 16 men between 19 boats, you have not got many men to juggle with. Then they are scattered all over the place" (US Senate Inquiry)
He worked at #5, which was lowered at 12.55am with approximately 39 people aboard:
Lowe: Everything went all right, sir, and it could not have been worked better. (US Senate Inquiry)
Lowe, like his fellow officers, exhibited no class bias in loading women and children into boats once they arrived at the boat deck (the reason so many steerage women and children were lost was the difficulty they faced in reaching the upper decks): "You say 'select'. There was no such thing as selecting. It was simply the first woman, whether first class, second class, third class, or sixty-seventh class. It was all the same; women and children were first." (US Senate Inquiry)
By this time Fourth Officer Boxhall had commenced launching the distress rockets. They were, as Lowe later phrased it, going off "incessantly". It was in the sudden illumination of these flares that he turned to see a silent Bruce Ismay standing beside him.
One of the difficulties the officers encountered, as Lowe outlined in his testimony regarding the loading of Lifeboat #3, was finding people willing to leave their husbands, brothers and sons and the safety of the big, illuminated liner.
Smith: Did you have any difficulty in filling No 3? (US Senate Inquiry)
Murdoch and Lowe loaded the starboard emergency cutter, Lifeboat #1, a boat that was to become controversial due to its low occupancy and the question of whether or not some of its occupants bribed crew not to return to the site of the sinking for people struggling in the water. With a capacity of 45, only 12 people boarded the boat, including Sir Cosmo and Lady Duff Gordon, who was accompanied by her maid. They were the only two women aboard. Lowe offered his own reason for not loading more people into the boat at the British Inquiry:
Q. You mean to say that when you took the people into No.1 there were no people left on the deck? (British Inquiry)
It was a point - supported by his fellow surviving officers - that Lowe stressed throughout his testimony at both inquiries: "It was not the launching of the boats that took the time. We got the whole boat out and in the water in less than ten minutes. It was getting the people together that took the time." (British Inquiry)
|