Clifford Ismay

There was a lot of pressure on him at that time to perform. His father's shoes were very big shoes to fill. I sometimes wondered if Bruce perhaps felt that he wasn't quite the man to follow in his father's footsteps.

The White Star line was his father's baby, and Bruce fought off the takeover bid as best that he could, but unfortunately the shareholders couldn't resist the high prices that were being offered for the shares.

He didn't want to do that. He didn't want to be president of this huge American organization responsible for so many other shipping companies. However, he didn't want to lose the White Star Line. So I think it was thrust into a position that he didn't really want, but he felt that he had to take it.

I think a lot of people feared him because he had this abruptness. If one of the staff had an appointment with him in the office, if it was at, say, 12 noon, they couldn't knock on the door one minute before 12. They couldn't knock one minute past 12. It had to be exactly 12 o'clock. I often wondered if he might have had a little bit of autism going on there. He was a very complicated man.

When Thomas came home and realized what had happened, it was absolutely livid. It wasn't just the fact that the horse had to be destroyed afterwards. It was the fact that Bruce shouldn't have done it without his father's permission.

It was a very rough crossing. The child was sick when they left New York. However, the doctors didn't seem to think it was much of a problem and advised that the baby was well enough to travel. During the voyage, the baby's health declined day by day. Once they arrived back in Liverpool, Thomas looked at the baby and he just said, that baby is not well. Sent for a doctor straight away.

And it was only a few days after that, sadly, they lost the first child.

It was the third class passengers that made the bulk of the profit for the White Star Line. Though they were paying the least amount of money for the tickets, they were in much larger numbers. And again, White Star Line was very popular because even with the third class, the facilities that were available on the Titanic were far superior for the third class than was available on any other ship.

Bruce didn't really know that much about the workings of lowing lifeboats. He'd never been trained for it. So he was trying to help. Well, it was kind of getting in the way. So one of the crew members started shouting at him, what do you think you're doing? Get away from this lifeboat at once. We'll manage much better without your help. He used some colourful language, I believe.

Well, of course, that poor seaman didn't know who Bruce was.

She wasn't getting on the lifeboat. And Bruce looked at her and said, why aren't you getting on this lifeboat? You should be on it now. And she replied to him, but I'm a stewardess. I'm only a stewardess. And Bruce replied to her, you are all women now. Get on board this lifeboat.

It was collapsible lifeboat C, which was the last lifeboat to be successfully lowered from the starboard side, just before the ships later slipped under the water.

He looked around and there was no one else about. Of course, he couldn't see who was on the port side at that time, but he believed that everyone had gone from the port side as well.

Should I stay on board the ship and go down with the ship? Or should I get on board the lifeboat?

Who else would have been saved if he hadn't got onto the lifeboat? No one else, because there was no one else there, and there were spare seats. So it wasn't as if he was going to take anyone's place. Plus, of course, he had wife and children at home. He didn't want to die if he didn't have to.

Would Captain Smith have issued different orders? I think that's something we would never know. No captain can be on the bridge all of the time. He needs his personal time, his sleep time. Had Captain Smith actually been on the bridge at that particular point, who knows what difference it would have made.

So the doctor took Bruce back to his own private cabin, which also doubled up as a surgery, and Bruce spent the rest of the voyage in that cabin.

Jack Thayer was taken to the cabin by the doctor in the hope that Thayer would be able to bring Bruce back into the world, as it were, because Thayer and Bruce were acquainted. But even young Jack Thayer, he couldn't get anything out of Bruce at all.

You could say the chairman of the White Star Line had the luxury and warmth of the doctor's cabin while the other passengers were on the deck. And I'm sure many of the passengers would have been in the same situation. And I think it was probably the fact that the doctor had realized that Bruce was the chairman of the White Star Line that brought his attention to Bruce's condition.

However, he did end up in the doctor's cabin where he was given opioids to calm him down, and he just sat there staring."

Again, what if? What if they added more watertight compartments? What if they had more lifeboats? What if anything? And I think he was probably very troubled by the fact that he survived when he realized that there were still women and children on board the Titanic when she went down. He probably did have to survive his guilt over that.

I mean, how do you live with something like that? Realizing that you had escaped the Titanic when afterwards you'd learned women and children had still been on board.

I didn't really know much about the Titanic until I was about eight or nine years old. I was in the sitting room with my father and there was this movie about the Titanic came on TV, black and white. It wasn't in those days, of course. And I saw at the end this scene of this cowardly-looking gentleman very, very sheepishly climbing into a lifeboat, hoping not to be seen.

And I thought, what's happened to my relative? Did he really do that? It's difficult to know what was going on in Bruce's mind. He wasn't in a state of deep depression. I wonder if he ever had any suicidal tendencies.

Maybe the ship's doctor saw something like that and he maybe thought this man should be confined to the cabin, keep an eye on him at all times, just in case he were to do anything silly. And that's probably another reason why he was given opioids, to keep him calm.

There was a huge outrage in America, of course, because most of America's wealthiest citizens had gone down with Titanic as well. People demanded answers.

The problem was Bruce realized that a lot of the sailors and officers, they weren't being paid. The pay stopped as soon as Titanic slipped under the water.

Once Carpathia was nearing New York, there was an escort of ships sent out to make sure no one left the vessel until it reached the harbourside in New York.

Before Bruce left the ship, Senator Smith boarded to subpoena Bruce to attend the investigation. So basically, at that point, Bruce couldn't leave New York, couldn't leave American shores. And the same applied to what was remaining of the certain year officers.

Bruce would have liked to have got back to Britain. In fact, he did send a letter to Senator Smith saying, will you allow me to return to England to see my family, my loved ones? And if you would like me to come back to America to attend the American inquiry, I shall do so voluntarily at your discretion.

However, Senator Smith denied that request, so Bruce was basically grounded in America until he'd answered all the questions on the American inquiry.

Bruce was among the last passengers to be taken aboard. Once he was aboard, he kind of stood with his back to the bulkhead of the ship. One of the stewards came and offered him some soup. And he just kept saying, I'd rather not, I'd rather not. He offered him some hot tea, just the same as he did with all the other passengers. And all Bruce could say was, I'd rather not.

And he was just staring into the water. Obviously, Titanic was long gone then. And we were just staring out at the water, probably thinking about all those lives that had been lost. And I think at that point, that's when the PTSD was first hitting him. The Carpathians doctor was walking around everyone, and I think he realized with Bruce that there was something serious going on here.

So technically he was a passenger. Technically he had no control over what happened on board the ship in terms of navigation, et cetera, et cetera. However, Bruce Ismay, like his father before him, always tried to travel on the maiden voyage of any of the White Star Line's ships.

What he would do was walk around speaking to the first class passengers, second and third class passengers and see how they felt about the ship.

These days we'll call them a secret shopper. It wouldn't be listed as part of the White Star Line, it'd be listed as a passenger. He did find a few problems.

So as soon as Thomas learned of these problems, he immediately had them rectified and issued letters to all of the captains of the White Star Line, advising them of the problems that they'd found, also upgrading certain parts of the ships as well.

There was talks that Captain Smith may have been drunk at the time that Titanic hit the iceberg. Well, he was in his cabin. He was retired. I don't believe for one moment that he was drunk. He will have had a drink with the passengers, there's no doubt about it. Maybe had a couple of drinks. But one might say the commander of the ship is always in command even when he's off duty.

That was one of the stipulations in the White Star Line handbook, that sobriety must be maintained at all times by all members of the crew, especially the captain. They had to be congenial with the passengers, and it would be very rude of the captain to refuse to drink with them, I guess.

But exactly how much, whether it would influence the captain's decision making at sea, I think any captain worth his salt would have avoided putting himself in that situation.

In hindsight, you'd say they should have stopped it on the night. They didn't. If they had, then obviously it would have been a totally different story. But I think he just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

Every action they undertook was within the guidelines of the White Star Line. The rule was that if a ship was in the vicinity of ice, it should proceed at its normal speed or maybe even increased speed to get out of that area as quickly as possible.