Sink or Swim

Millivina Dean lived the life of a celebrity when she became the worldrsquos last Titanic survivor lsquoSomeone said of me that I am a tough old birdrsquo she said before her death on May 31 2009 at the age of ninetyseven An undated artist impression showing the April 1415 1912 shipwreck of the British luxury passenger liner Titanic off the NovaScotia coasts during its maiden voyage PicAFP Photo She along with 74 others were the last of a slice of history A painful one mdash so to speak They survived an accident that scarred their lives in different ways and through diverse manifestations Read this exclusive extract from the life of J Bruce Ismay a troubled soul who became in the words ofu00a0his granddaughter ldquohelliplike a frozen corpserdquo The World39s Most Willing Whipping Boy Pgs 187189 Bruce Ismay twisted round in the lifeboat and turned his back on the Titanic as it sank deeper into the water He could not bear to see the luxurious liner mdash which he described as lsquothe latest thing in the art of shipbuilding39 mdash disappear below the waves Yet he had no choice but to listen to the awful screams of the dying a sound that would stay with him for the rest of his life During the course of the next five or so hours the managing director of the White Star Line mdash a man who had been called lsquoKing of the Atlanticrsquo mdash stared into the darkness as he rowed wishing he could disappear Pic CourtesyGetty Images By the time his lifeboat collapsible C drew up alongside the Carpathia at around 615 am he had already become so tortured that he could no longer communicate with the outside world one witness described him as looking lsquopitiablersquo Suffering from a form of traumatic shock so extreme that today it would almost be treated as a type of dissociative disorder Ismay had to be confined to the doctorrsquos cabin where he was prescribed mindnumbing opiates Ismay slipped further into a state of nervous collapse with each piece of bad news First there was the incomprehensible statistic the loss of over 1500 lives and then the slow torture of individual messages relating to the deaths of those close to him his butler John Richard Fry his secretary William Henry Harrison the Titanicrsquos Captain Edward Smith the shiprsquos chief designer and builder Thomas Andrews who was alsou00a0the nephew ofu00a0the chairman of Harland and Wolff Lord Pirrie and Dr OrsquoLoughlin who had worked with the White Star Line for thirty years and who had dined with Ismay the night ofu00a0the collision On the 15 April Ismay managed to compose a short telegram which was sent to the White Star Line It read lsquoDeeply regret advise you Titanic sank this morning after collision iceberg resulting serious loss life Full particulars laterrsquo However by the time seventeenyearold Jack Thayer knocked on the door of his cabin just as the ship was approaching New York Ismay had entered what can only be described as a fugue state lsquoHe was seated in his pajamas on his bunk staring straight ahead shaking all over like a leafrsquo observed Thayer He did not register the presence of the boy in the cabin and neither did he respond when Thayer tried to reassure him that it was right that he had taken a place in one of the last lifeboats to leave the ship Instead the fortynineyearold man who normally dominated a room with his sixfootthree frame continued to stare straight ahead as if looking into an abyss lsquoI am almost certain that on the Titanic his hair had been black with slight tinges of grayrsquo said Jack Thayer lsquobut now his hair was virtually snow white I have never seen a man so completely wrecked Nothing I could do or say brought any responsersquo Ismayrsquos selfimposed isolation mdash which appears to have been borne out of an instinctive desire for selfpreservation rather than any sense of shame or fear mdash did not earn him many friends aboard the rescue ship A small group of recentlywidowed firstclass women started to talk amongst themselves about how outrageous it was that they who had been forced to sleep on blankets in public places on the Carpathia had lost their husbands while Ismay cosseted away in the comforts of a cabin had survived the disaster Little did Ismay or anyone else for that matter realise at this stage how a few snide comments would mutate and grow into an international hate campaign against him At issue was the fact that while he had survived a total of 111 women and 54 children had died along with the 1327 men Ismayrsquos trauma regarding this issue was witnessed at close quarters by Second Officer Lightoller lsquoI may say that at that time Mr Ismay did not seem to me to be in a mental condition to finally decide anythingrsquo he told the American inquiry lsquoI tried my utmost to rouse Mr Ismay for he was obsessed with the idea and kept repeating that he ought to have gone down with the ship because he found that women had gone down I told him there was no such reason I told him a very great deal I tried to get that idea out of his head but he was taken with it mdash and I know the doctor tried too mdash but we had difficulty in arousing Mr Ismay purely owing to that wholly and solely that women had gone down in the boat and he had notrsquo Despite his delicate mental state Ismay had no choice but to try and pull himself together People started asking questions of him they needed decisions to be made and as the managing director of the White Star Line one of the most high profile survivors he had to assume a certain level of responsibility However at times he was uncertain not only what he should say but also who he was mdash as a result of the trauma his identity was fragmenting his powers of reason were eluding him and his memory was beginning to fail To the outside world he appeared to display occasional moments of clarity mdash for example as the Carpathia approached New York he signed a telegram using the personal coded signature of lsquoYamsirsquo to the White Star Line39s New York office asking that the companyrsquos ship the Cedric be held in port until he arrived so that he together with the crew could use it to return to Britain lsquoPlease send outfit of clothes including shoes for me to Cedricrsquo he added lsquoHave nothing of my ownrsquo Inside The Mind Of J Bruce Ismay J Bruce Ismay whose father created the White Star Line built the Titanic as an act of hubris His survival of the sinking brought about his destruction Within days of the disaster one newspaper ran a fullpage cartoon of Ismay showing him in a lifeboat with the sinking ship in the distance and accompanied by the caption lsquoThis Is J Brute ismayrsquo ismayrsquos marriage to his wife Florence was far from happy Pic CoutseyLibrary Of Congress She suffered from an early menopause at the age of thirtyseven and their relationship became a sexless one Perhaps as a consequence of this Ismay became obsessed with fellow Titanic survivor Marian Tahyer to whom he wrote a series of impassioned letters lsquoI never want to see a ship again and I loved them sorsquo he wrote to her lsquoWhat an ending to my life Perhaps I was too proud of the ships and this is my punishmentrsquo Did You Know A woman is seen behind an iceberg at an exhibit on the Titanic in Athens PicAFP Photo Silent screen star Dorothy Gibson made the first film Saved from the Titanic about the ship within four weeks of the disaster She starred as herself wearing the same dress she had worn that night Once during the making of the film shooting had to be halted when Dorothy seemed to experience some sort of existential crisis lsquoShe had practically lost her reasonrsquo wrote one observer lsquoby virtue of the terrible strain she had been under to graphically portray her partrsquo Shadow of the Titanic Andrew Wilson Simon amp Schuster Rs 499 Available at leading bookstores from April 9 onwards