Description of sinking/Death of Jack Thayer, Jr.
JohnAFT
From: Philadelphia Enquirer, December 17, 1997
By Daniel Rubin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The sea was smooth and starlit. "Like a mill pond," Jack Thayer remembered
years later, "and just as innocent-looking."
He was all over the ship, as a 17-year-old boy would be, exploring the largest
and most splendid moving object built by man.
Palm courts. A Turkish bath. A gymnasium and swimming pool. Suites outfitted in
the style of Louis XV. A Parisian cafe.
The family's holiday over, Thayer would be returning to the Haverford School
that spring. Then, according to designs laid by his father, it would be
Princeton and apprenticeships in banking houses throughout the capitals of
Europe.
"It was planned," he wrote nearly 30 years after that chilly night, April 14,
1912. "It was a certainty."
As certain as the word that the great ship, Titanic, was unsinkable.
He was about to climb into bed at 11:40 p.m. when he felt the ship sway
slightly to port, "as though she had been gently pushed."
Nearby, in another first-class stateroom, Richard Norris Williams, 21, sensed
it as well. "Not a shock," the young man descended from Ben Franklin would
later write, "merely a jar, and the ship seemed to tremble slightly."
It was strong enough to stir Martha Eustis Stephenson from her sleep. Her
sister, Elizabeth Eustis, threw on a wrap, slippers and cap and stepped out
into the hallway. "Go to bed," a steward told them. "It's nothing at all."
Seeing a man pulling his shoes into his stateroom was all the confirmation the
sisters from Haverford needed. They decided to dress and investigate.
It's fitting that in making Titanic, James Cameron chose as his heroine a woman
from the Main Line.
Cameron may have invented Rose DeWitt Bukater and Jack Dawson, a spirited
artist up from steerage, to tell his love story aboard the ill-fated steamer,
but nearly every other detail is anchored in fact -- down to Cameron's
insistence on filming the actual wreckage, 400 miles off Newfoundland.
The events in the film that opens today are largely Philadelphian because the
story of the Titanic was largely Philadelphian, first-class Philadelphian. The
city and its surroundings produced 38 passengers, most of them socially
prominent and traveling in style. Many went down with the ship.
"Philadelphia society was a very strong presence on board," said Don Lynch,
historian for both the film and the Titanic Historical Society. "One of the
ladies, the wife of a New York theatrical producer, wrote that all these people
seemed to know each other already. They'd meet on the passenger deck as one big
party."
George Dutton Widener, the Cheltenham street-car baron whose family had part
ownership of the White Star Line, was aboard with his wife, Eleanor Elkins
Widener, and their son, Harry. They embarked in Cherbourg, France, having
selected a new chef for the Ritz Hotel, which George was building in
Philadelphia. The story back home was that after Eleanor had been invited to
leave the Bellevue Stratford for smoking in its dining room, her husband vowed
to create a better hotel across Broad Street. Harry, a Harvard-educated
bibliophile, was carrying a rare, 1598 edition of Bacon's essays.
Mrs. Charlotte Drake Martinez Cardeza was returning to Germantown with her son
Thomas, her maid and his valet, having wintered at their Hungarian chateau.
They stayed in one of the ship's two "Millionaires" suites, each with two
bedrooms, a sitting room and private promenade. Those accommodations cost the
Cardezas $3,300, nearly seven times the average American's salary in 1912. She
brought 14 trunks, containing 70 dresses, 10 fur coats and stoles, 38 large
feather pieces, 22 hat pins, 91 pairs of shoes, and one pink diamond valued at
$20,000.
The William Carters of Bryn Mawr were traveling with their two children, a maid
and chauffeur, as well as 24 polo sticks and a 25-horsepower Renault
automobile, the only motorcar in the ship's hold.
There were other familiar faces aboard: Frederick Sutton, a coffee importer
from Haddonfield, N.J.; William Crothers Dulles, a Philadelphia attorney; Dr.
Arthur Jackson Brewe; and Robert W. Daniel, a banker who was bringing home a
champion bulldog, Gamin de Pycombe. Three Gimbels buyers were traveling
first-class -- J.H. Flynn, James R. McGourgh and E.P. Calderhead -- as was Emma
Ward Bucknell, widow of the benefactor of the college of the same name.
The trip was less welcome for the Arthur Ryersons and their three children. The
week before, the steel magnate's namesake died in a Radnor motoring accident.
The family was coming home for the funeral.
"These were ordinary days, and into them had crept only gradually the airplane,
the talking machine, the automobile," Jack Thayer wrote in his 1940 memoir.
"Upon reaching the breakfast table, our perusal of the morning paper was slow
and deliberate. . . . Nothing was revealed in the morning, the trend of which
was not known the night before."
Of course, that was the view from the best seats.
Steven Biel, author of Down With the Old Canoe, a cultural history of the
Titanic, says, "This was a much, much more diverse, conflict-ridden, and
certainly not-innocent time."
It was a time, he said by phone, "that was rife with labor conflict. Race
relations may have reached their all-time low. It was also a time where gender
roles are under intense revision."
The era's portrait of grace under pressure was etched with accounts of Benjamin
Guggenheim's going into his stateroom to dress formally for his gentlemanly
death. Or of John Jacob Astor, the richest man on board, withdrawing when
informed that lifeboats were for women and children first.
But the final tally shows the odds were with those with first-class tickets.
Sixty-three percent of first-class passengers lived, compared with 42 percent
of the second cabin and 25 percent of steerage. The only children to die went
in third class.
For Philadelphians on the Titanic, death played no favorites. Ten men went
down, with names such as Widener, Thayer, Ryerson and Williams. A valet named
Keeping and a driver named Aldworth accompanied them.
A man was calling for assistance. His stateroom door had jammed, trapping him
as the ship began its two-hour-and-40-minute dive.
Richard Norris Williams -- a Swiss-born tennis star, heading to the states for
tournament play -- acted fast. He threw his shoulder into the man's door,
splintering the magnificent wood.
A steward addressed Williams sharply: "I'll be forced to report you for having
damaged the property of the company."
It was not the last time, Williams wrote later, that regulations seemed ill-fit
for the events.
He and his father, a lawyer and Chestnut Hill native named Charles Duane
Williams, watched the women and children clamber onto what lifeboats there
were. It was clear the Williams men needed something to brace themselves for
the cold.
They found a bar, long-closed, and asked the tender if he'd fill their flask
with whiskey.
It is not done, the man said. Father and son repaired to the gymnasium, where
they waited in the quiet.
Jack Thayer threw on his mohair vest, then his tweed suit and tweed vest. On
top of that, he strapped a thick, cork life preserver and then bundled his
overcoat around the layers. On "A" deck, passengers were hurrying, pushing,
crowding. The band played lively songs, but no one seemed to mind them. The
stewards ordered all the women to port side, and Thayer and his father -- the
second vice president of the Pennsylvania Railroad -- bid goodbye to his
mother, who left with her maid for the lifeboats.
"It seemed we were always waiting for orders, and no orders came," Thayer
wrote. A while later he went with his father to check on the women, and a crowd
separated the two men. He never saw his father again.
The boats were leaving half empty -- they could hold more than 60 people, but
he saw them pull away with as few as 12 passengers.
He saw J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, push his way into an
empty seat. "It was," Thayer wrote, "every man for himself."
The Williamses were standing on the sunken deck, nearly even with the frigid
sea, when the first of the four massive smokestacks broke.
"I heard the crack of a revolver shot," the son would recall. "I yelled,
'Father! Quick! Jump!' He started toward me, just as I saw one of the great
funnels come crashing down on top of him."
Williams remembers staring at the massive stack, "curiously enough, not because
it had killed my father, for whom I had a far more than normal feeling of love
and attachment; but there I was transfixed, wondering at the enormous size of
this funnel, still belching smoke."
He swam what seemed like a half mile, only to look back and realize he'd gone
but 40 feet from the ship.
"I looked back again and, suddenly, the stern began rising," he told the
Bulletin in 1948. "It went straight up and swung toward me. When I looked up,
it seemed that the ship was directly over my head. I could see her three huge
propellers. Then she went down with a vast, swirling suction. I swam until my
feet touched a half-submerged collapsible boat. I clung to it. Gradually,
others swam up and grabbed hold. Within a short time there were 22 of us
clutching the craft. As the hours wore on, we decided to 'count off' from time
to time. . . . Finally, there were only 12 of us."
Just before it went down, Thayer took in the scene: the lights still burning,
the stars shining brilliantly, the water glistening with oil. Perodically he'd
hear an explosion from deep within the ship as it pitched forward. "It was like
standing under a steel railway bridge while an express train passes overhead,
mingled with the noise of a pressed steel factory and wholesale breakage of
china."
Thayer threw off his overcoat and slid down the starboard rail, facing the
ship. About 10 seconds later, he pushed off and plunged from about 15 feet.
"The cold," he wrote, "was terrific. The shock of the water took the breath out
of my lungs. Down and down I went, spinning in all directions." His watch
stopped at 2:22 a.m.
He swam furiously under the surface, maybe for a minute. When he came up, his
lungs were bursting, but he hadn't taken in any water. The life preserver held
him up by the shoulders. The second stack lifted and started coming toward him,
shooting sparks. It missed him by 20 or so feet, but the suction drew him under
again.
When he fought back to the surface, he felt something above him -- a cork
fender from one of the collapsible lifeboats. He joined four or five men
hanging onto the upside-down boat in the 28-degree water.
From there, he watched the end. Knots of people clinging to the raised stern,
falling alone and in swarms until the ship, at a 70-degree angle to the water,
turned its deck from view "as though to hide from our sight the awful
spectacle." Then it vanished.
"Probably a minute passed with almost dead silence and quiet. Then an
individual call for help, from here, from there; gradually swelling into a
composite volume of one long continuous wailing chant, from the 1,500 in the
water all around us," he wrote. For 20 or 30 minutes the cries continued, then
they died away.
The hip flask has not been filled since that night, Quincy Williams, 38, says
from a back room at the Philadelphia Print Shop in Chestnut Hill, where he
produces the treasure, half-sheathed in alligator skin, and bearing the
inscription: "RNW on the Titanic, Monday April 15, 1912. 2 o'clock A.M."
His great-grandfather handed it to his grandfather before they went into the
water, and Richard Williams kept it safe on the half-submerged boat, where it
felt as if 1,000 needles were injected into his legs, and again on the rescue
ship Carpathia, where a doctor suggested amputation -- unless the young man
wished to walk the deck constantly. He did.
Quincy Williams says his grandfather, who died in 1968, did not talk about the
history that he lived. Quincy, however, is fascinated by it. "It wasn't hard
for him to talk about, he just didn't think it was a big event," he said. "He
didn't see it as the Titanic enthusiasts do. He was a well-known tennis star in
the teens and '20s; he didn't like talking about that either. He was a modest
man."
The Titanic cast a long shadow on the Thayers as well.
"I never could understand his complete and utter love of the sea," Charlotte
Rush Toland Thayer, 77, of Haverford, said of her late husband, John B. Thayer
Jr., the son of the 17-year-old survivor. "He was a wonderful sailor. He really
loved the water and was always fascinated by the Titanic. I sailed with him for
30-odd years and never was that crazy about the situation."
Her husband amassed a museum-quality collection of nautical memorabilia and
Titanic artifacts. His father, however, rarely mentioned the experience.
"Don't forget," she said, "in those days nobody was dealing with emotions the
way they are now."
Jack Thayer never went to Princeton. After losing his father, he chose Penn,
where his father and grandfather had studied. Then World War I began, and
Thayer joined the Army. He tried the railroad, but didn't care for it. He
worked in banking for many years before becoming treasurer at Penn.
"I just thought he was the most wonderful person in the whole world," his
daughter-in-law said. "I absolutely adored him. When he died, it was most
upsetting."
It was 1945. Jack Thayer didn't come home one night in September. That was
unusual. His body was found in his black sedan with yellow wheels, parked in
the Philadelphia Transit Co. turnaround at 48th and Parkside. He had cut his
wrists and throat.
Two years before, his 22-year-old son, Edward Cassat Thayer, had been shot down
over the Pacific. Friends said Jack Thayer never recovered.
"I think the consensus was," said his daughter-in-law, "that when his son was
shot down and presumed lost at sea, what that must have done to someone who was
on the Titanic and who had lost his father on it."