Quotes from Walter Lord

Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.

Someone once told me the one thread that runs through them all is a premium on personal courage - not intellectual courage, but just plain physical courage.

The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the "unsinkable ship" -- perhaps man's greatest engineering achievement -- going down the first time it sailed. But it went beyond that. If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else? If wealth mean so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?

Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor - that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.

The night was a magnificent confirmation of "women and children first," yet somehow the loss rate was higher for Third Class children than First Class men.

Overriding everything else, the Titanic also marked the end of a general feeling of confidence.

Before the Titanic, all was quiet. Afterward all was tumult. That is why, to anybody who lived at the time, the Titanic more than any other single event marks the end of the old days, and the beginning of a new, uneasy era.

The clock in the wireless shack said 12:45 A.M. when the Titanic sent the first SOS call in history.

But legends are part of great events, and if they help keep alive the memory of gallant self-sacrifice, they serve their purpose.

I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.

This was the era when gentlemen formally offered their services to "unprotected ladies" at the start of an Atlantic voyage.

It would be nice to say the rich people, the fancy people, all behaved like bastards and the poor slobs all came through like heroes. But as a matter of fact, sometimes the poor slobs behave like slobs and the great, noble, privileged characters come off very well, indeed.

Try and get off with Major Butt

If wealth meant so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?

and PWD was soon on the air again. Beyond the perimeter, Snowy Rhoades took charge of mopping up the scattered Japanese. Learning that a small party was hiding up a river near the southeast coast, he loaded a barge with eighteen U.S. infantry and ten armed natives and went after them. They

Never again would men fling a ship into an ice field, heedless of warnings, putting their whole trust in a few thousand tons of steel and rivets. From then on Atlantic liners took ice messages seriously, steered clear, or slowed down. Nobody believed in the "unsinkable ship.

They were dining-saloon stewards, indulging in the time-honored pastime of all stewards off duty--they were gossiping about their passengers." 

But most of the women entered the boats--wives escorted by their husbands, single ladies by the men who had volunteered to look out for them. This was the era when gentlemen formally offered their services to "unprotected ladies" at the start of an Atlantic voyage. Tonight the courtesy came in handy.

An almost eerie quiet hung over Washington; it had been that way ever since the British left. Pennsylvania Avenue stood broad and empty, with Joe Gales's type still scattered over the 7th Street intersection. General Ross's horse still lay, legs stiff in death, outside the ruins of Robert Sewall's house. The rubble of the Capitol still smoldered quietly in the sun.

Suddenly he was amazed to see a lifeboat floating near the starboard side. He phoned the bridge—did they know there was a boat afloat? An incredulous voice asked who he was. Rowe explained, and the bridge then realized he had been overlooked. They told him to come to the bridge right away and bring some rockets with him.

The bulkhead between the fifth and sixth compartments went only as high as E Deck. If the first five compartments were flooded, the bow would sink so low that water in the fifth compartment must overflow into the sixth. When this was full, it would overflow into the seventh, and so on. It was a mathematical certainty, pure and simple. There was no way out.

Robertson called his ship the Titan; the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic. This is the story of her last night.

Gentry crept out. There, stuck in the slime a few feet away, was a huge unexploded bomb. It was about the size of a household refrigerator, shaped like a cigar, with its tail fins sticking up. A large pig slowly waddled across the barnyard and began licking it. On

Mrs. George Widener was met not by automobile but by a special train—consisting of a private Pullman, another car for ballast, and a locomotive.