As with the other boats, Moody requested crew to man No. 13 once the women and children had been loaded: "who can pull oars?" He then ordered Lee and Fireman George Beauchamp in No. 13, saying "Get in that boat. Lower away. That will do." The boat had some 64 passengers aboard, the majority of them third class with a few second class and crewmembers, and one first class passenger. In command was Leading Stoker Fred Barrett.
Twelve-year-old Ruth Becker, a second class passenger, had come up to the boat deck with her mother and two young siblings. Her mother had followed the two younger children into No. 11, only realizing as it was being lowered that Ruth was still on the ship. She called up to her daughter to get into another boat. Ruth moved down the deck, and saw Moody loading No. 13. She asked if she could get into the boat.
"He said 'sure', and he picked me up and dumped me in. I evidently was the last one put in that boat because they started lowering right away."
Ruth did not know the officer's name, but for the rest of her long life she would tell story of how James Moody had swiftly picked her up and placed her in the boat - an old woman recounting a story about a young ship's officer lost in the early years of the century, before the first World War.
Moody's movements between the lowering of the last of the aft starboard boats and the foundering of the ship are somewhat indeterminate. He does not appear to have been at the lowering of either C or D collapsible. It might be conjectured that, either ordered by Murdoch or Wilde or acting on his own initiative, he walked directly forward down the boat deck to where collapsible A was stored in an awkward position atop the officers' quarters. Climbing up with a party of men, he began to uncover the boat and prepare it for launching. The difficulty to be surmounted was getting the boat off the roof – oars were propped up and the boat was eased down them. Unlike its portside counterpart, collapsible B, collapsible A landed the right side up on the boat deck.
One of the last – if not the last – confirmed sightings of James Moody came at approximately 2.10 a.m. The bow of the ship had dipped very low, and water already covered the forecastle and forward well deck. Lamp Trimmer Samuel Hemming tried to pass the block and tackle for the collapsible up to Moody on the roof of the officers' quarters. Moody, from his higher position, had appraised the situation and seems to have determined that there was not enough time to lower the boat from the davits. He called back down "We don't want the block; we'll leave the boat on the deck", evidently intending to float the boat free.
Whether he was still atop the officers' quarters when the bridge and forward part of the boat deck went under, or whether he had jumped down to the boat deck and was working with other crew at detaching collapsible A from the falls, remains unknown. In a short space of time, however, he must have found himself in the water with many other screaming and floundering crew and passengers. Many of those who had been on the forward part of the boat deck, such as Second Officer Lightoller and passenger Colonel Archibald Gracie, reported being dragged down by suction at this point.
I do not remember seeing Mr. Moody that night at all, although I am given to understand, from what I have gathered since, that Mr. Moody must have been standing quite close to me at the same time. He was on top of the quarters clearing away the collapsible boat on the starboard side, whilst Mr. Murdoch was working at the falls. If that is so, we were all practically in the water together.
Moody's reasons for not leaving Titanic when he had the opportunity to do so can only be a matter of conjecture. When Lowe told him to take command of No. 16 there were still lifeboats to be launched – possibly he had every intention to "get in another boat". Other factors might have intervened – Wilde or Murdoch could have set him to work on the starboard boats. There is also an unknown psychological element - he might have been attempting to prove something to his fellow officers, his family, or even himself. More probably, the sense of duty both innate and instilled in him through his training might have prevented him leaving, even if he was ordered to do so by an officer more senior than Lowe; the same concept of duty and honor that would see tens of thousands of his generation slaughtered on the fields of Flanders a few short years into the future. Quite simply, he might have felt that staying with the ship was the right thing to do. There was nothing passive or simply stoic about his apparent acceptance of his fate – from what we know, to the very end he was engaged in trying to find practical ways to save lives and fulfill what he perceived as his duty to crew and passengers.
Dawn found the lifeboats scattered on a ice-stewn sea, a beautiful and terrible spectacle. Survivor Clear Cameron would say that "If it hadn't been for the disaster the sight of those icebergs would have been splendid for the height of them was miles and miles, such a thing is seldom seen." As the morning progressed, the cold and traumatized survivors were brought aboard the rescue ship Carpathia. Survivors on Carpathia gathered and began to comprehend their losses, some overjoyed to be reunited with friends and family they had thought lost, some realizing for the first time that their husbands, children, crewmates and friends had not left the ship.
Among them were the surviving officers, who began to assess and plan and come to terms with their own experiences. Harold Lowe, who had taken charge of No. 14 and had returned to the scene of the disaster to pick up survivors; Pitman and Boxhall, who had been ordered to take command of boats; Lightoller, who had been swept into the water and had made a miraculous escape atop overturned collapsible B.
James Moody was not among them.
Confusion in early reports led to heartbreaking misunderstandings - as late as April 19, the Daily Sketch would publish a photo of Moody with the caption "survivor". In the immediate aftermath errors would arise as a result of his tendency to run the "P" of his middle name into the "M" of his surname in his signature. Thus the "James P. Moody" of the crew signup sheets became "James Pelloody", causing uncertainty and distress to his family. The error is continued to this day in a slight variation, where it is not uncommon to find otherwise reliable sources referring to "James Pell Moody".
Moody would fade in time to become one of the lesser-known figures of the disaster. Of his fellow officers, the more senior Captain Smith, Murdoch and Lightoller would dominate the public imagination, alongside figures such as Andrews, Ismay, Astor, Guggenheim and Ida and Isador Straus. The Sixth Officer would simply become the man who answered the call from the crows nest and received the fatal ice warning. Some recognition was forthcoming at the time. Newspapers such as London's Daily Mirror featured his handsome, serene visage – the very image of an ideal steamship officer – in many of their feature articles following the disaster. General accolades were given in local and national newspapers – the Daily Mirror of April 20, 1912 featured his picture alongside Captain Smith, the wireless operators, the Strauses and Astors and Jacques Futrelle under the headline "Greater Love Hath No Man Than This, That A Man Lay Down His Life For His Friends – some of the many heroes of the terrible Titanic disaster whose indomitable courage in the presence of death was the one consoling feature of the most awful shipwreck which has ever occurred in the history of navigation." Moody's photograph had the caption "Mr. J. P. Moody, one of the gallant officers of the Titanic who went down with the ship." One of his old instructors would declare that, until the moment the order "Every man for himself, and God for us all!" released him "it is the duty of the junior officer to stand by the captain, pass on his commands, and be steadfast unto death. This Moody did."
Although it wasn't quite known what he'd done, the simple fact of his death accorded him heroic status. In a stinging rebuke to George Bernard Shaw for an article critical of the glamorization of the disaster, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Sherlock Holmes' creator - remembered James Moody: "The sixth officer went down with the captain, so I presume that even Mr. Shaw could not ask him to do more."
The full story of what James Moody did that night, beyond the general terms of "sacrifice" and "heroism", will never be known. It remains buried somewhere between the lines of eyewitness accounts – recollections only of "the officer" who loaded boats. Crewmember Beauchamp, for example, was asked at the British Inquiry about the loading of No. 13 "Have you any recollection of the name of the officer who was in charge of the deck at the time?" to which he could only respond "no, I do not know."
And so Moody remains a shadowy figure, referred to only in passing in most Titanic histories. One of the few tributes in all the many books and articles written about the disaster would come from author Geoffrey Marcus, who had contacted James's sister Margaret when writing his book "The Maiden Voyage" in the 1960s – "Wilde's efforts to avert panic, maintain order and discipline, and get the last of the boats loaded and lowered to the water were valiantly supported by the youngest of the officers, James Moody. Long before this, the latter should by rights have gone away in one of the boats along with the other junior officers. But the seamen left on board were all too few as it was for the work that had to be done. Moody therefore stayed with the ship to the end and was the means of saving many a life that would otherwise have been lost."
Moody's family would memorialize their loss in several ways, including the donation of an altar set of candlesticks and crucifix to a church in Grimsby where they are in daily use. In Scarborough a plaque was placed in his memory on the wall of St. Martin's on the Hill. Devoid of the excesses of the era's maudlin sentimentality, it states simply the fact of his death in the disaster. His actions needed no embellishment.
The manner of his death, whether through hypothermia, drowning or injuries sustained from debris, will forever remain a subject for speculation. The body of the youngest deck officer - and only junior deck officer lost in the disaster - was never recovered. |
Copyright 1999 Inger Sheil & Kerri Sundberg
*Unless otherwise noted, all photos are from the private collection of the website owners and may not be used without their permission. The owners also wish to note that their research into the life of James Moody is ongoing, and any information or comments would be appreciated.*bridgeofcr@hotmail.com
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