When the R.M.S. Titanic set out on the Atlantic Ocean from Queensland, Ireland on April 11, 1912, the ship carried 2,240 people—including 325 first-class passengers.
Among these travelers were some of the richest men in the world, including John Jacob Astor IV (son of society doyenne Mrs. Astor), businessman Benjamin Guggenheim, and Isidor Straus, co-owner of Macy’s.
Making his way back to New York while enjoying amenities like the first-class-only pool, squash courts, and Turkish baths was Archibald Gracie IV.
Gracie, 54 years old, independently wealthy, and unaccompanied by his family during the Titanic’s maiden voyage, was the great-grandson of a Scottish immigrant who made a fortune in shipping in 18th century Gotham—building a home on the East River known today as Gracie Mansion.
A vacation brought Gracie (at left) to Europe. He reportedly wanted to relax after finishing a book about the Civil War Battle of Chickamauga, in which his father had fought for the Confederacy. (This branch of the Gracies had migrated to Alabama in the 19th century.)
But this wouldn’t be Gracie’s only book. His story of surviving the sinking of the Titanic—going down with the ship, flailing in the icy waters of the Atlantic, and then managing to stand on an overturned collapsible with dozens of other men for hours until the Carpathia picked them up after sunrise—was the first book about the disaster from a man who lived it.
Gracie’s book, The Truth About the Titanic, starts off with an account of how he occupied himself on the day the ship hit the iceberg. Social and affable, he went to church services, read an adventure book in the ship library, chatted with Isidor and Ida Strauss, had dinner with new friends made on board, and then enjoyed coffee while listening to the Titanic’s band.
After some time in the smoking room, he retired to his first-class cabin—then was jolted awake around 11:45 p.m. Gracie threw on his clothes and overcoat and went outside across various decks to find out what happened. He saw J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the Titanic’s White Star Line, hurrying up a passageway with a crew member.
Ultimately he learned of the iceberg collision from a friend on board. The floor began to list. “Men and women were slipping on life preservers, the stewards assisting in adjusting them,” he recalled, adding that a steward urged him to go back to his cabin and put his on, which he did.
Gracie, along with other male passengers and crew, began helping women into lifeboats. The band started to play, which Gracie called a “wise provision” to counter the anxiety and worry. Word got out that the wireless officers had signaled to neighboring ships. Gracie pointed out what appeared to be the lights of a ship five miles away to John Jacob Astor IV. This ship, the Californian, ultimately never came to their aid.
Forty-five minutes had passed when Gracie spotted Mr. and Mrs. Straus (above, with their six children), who refused to part from each other, calmly sitting on steamer chairs “prepared to meet their fate.” He passed men in the smoking room who seemed oblivious to what was going on. Rocket flares were fired into the clear night sky. Gracie helped Astor get his pregnant wife into a lifeboat…and never saw him again.
With all the lifeboats launched and the ship soon to take its plunge to the ocean floor, Gracie quotes junior wireless operator Harold S. Bride (at right), who said that Captain Edward Smith announced, “Men, you have done your full duty. You can do no more. Abandon your cabin. Now, it is every man for himself.'”
Gracie, clinging to an iron railing, went down with the ship into the Atlantic. At some point he began to rise, swimming as hard as he could until he eventually came to the water’s surface amid debris from the ship.
“That the sea had swallowed her up with all her precious belongings was indicated by the slight sound of a gulp behind me as the water closed over her,” he wrote.
While in the water he described a spooky “smoky vapor” that created a supernatural affect around the spot where the Titanic had slipped under. But more terrifying were the desperate voices of passengers in the whirling waters all around him.
“The agonizing cries of death from over a thousand throats, the wails and groans of the suffering, the shrieks of the terror-stricken and the awful gaspings for breath of those in the last throes of drowning, none of us will ever forget to our dying day,” he recounted.
Gracie clung to a wood crate. Soon he saw one of the four “collapsible” canvas Englehart lifeboats overturned in the water, with a dozen men “half-reclining on her bottom,” some distance away.
When he made his way over, he grabbed the arm of one of the men and was helped up by another. A dozen more men managed to climb on top of the upturned boat, which was steered with improvised oars by two passengers, one of whom was Harold Bride, the wireless operator.
The oarsmen manuvered the half-submerged collapsible away from “the heart-rendering cries of struggling swimmers,” because they feared if more men were pulled onto the boat, it would sink and everyone would drown.
Hours of exposure to the wind, cold, and 20-degree water left the men with frostbite and exhaustion. Some could hold out no longer and fell into the ocean. “Towards the morning the sea became rougher, and it was for the two-fold purpose of avoiding the ice-cold water, and also to attract attention, that we all stood up in column, two abreast, facing the bow,” wrote Gracie.
All night the men, a cross-section of crew and passengers, chatted and prayed. Finally after daybreak, they saw two lifeboats coming toward them. The lifeboats belonged to the Carpathia, and they ferried the men on board. They were greeted with blankets, warm clothes, and hot coffee.
After reaching the Carpathia, which had plucked 705 survivors from the Titanic’s lifeboats before continuing on to New York (above photo), Gracie, suffering from hypothermia, recalls that he “felt like falling down on my knees and kissing the deck gratitude for the preservation of my life.”
That life would end eight months later in December 1912. Gracie was a diabetic, but it’s thought that the physical and mental fallout from such a grueling experience contributed to his death. His book was completed before he died but not published until 1913.
It became one of the definitive accounts of the last hours on board the “unsinkable” ship, and Gracie was heralded for saving the lives of countless passengers by assisting them into lifeboats.
He’s buried in Woodlawn Cemetery with a headstone (above) that calls him a “hero of S.S. Titanic.”
[Top image: The Truth About the Titanic; second image: Wikipedia; third image: Ships Nostalgia; fourth image: NYPL Digital Collections; fifth image: Wikipedia; seventh image: Wikipedia; eighth image: Wikipedia]
Ephemeral New York 