Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, First Class Passenger
Occupation: Author, Retired military
Married to: Constance E. Schack, 2 children
Left from: Southampton, England
Lifeboat Collapsible "B"
Died: December 4, 1912, age 53
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| Archibald Gracie, 1858-1912 |
Most readers will see the year 1912 in his date of death and think that he died aboard Titanic, but Archibald Gracie IV didn't die in the sinking. He died eight months later from the physical effects of that disastrous night in freezing waters, coupled with his diabetes.
Archibald Gracie IV attended the US Military Academy and joined the 7th New York Militia, rising to the rank of Colonel, a title that followed him for the rest of his life. His father served in the Confederate Army reaching the rank of Brigadier General, serving at the Battle of Chickamauga and he was killed in action during the Siege of Petersburg in 1864, at age 32.
Young Archibald IV was only seven years old when his father died. He spent most of his formative years learning all he could about the Battle of Chickamauga and the Civil War.
In 1890 Archibald Gracie IV, age 31, married 39-year old Constance Elise Schack, the daughter of the wealthy Danish Minister to the US. They had four children. A son and a daughter died in childbirth. Two daughters survived - Constance Julia, born in 1891, and Edith born in 1894.
On June 8, 1903, while the family was on vacation in Paris, Constance Julia, age 12, was crushed to death in an elevator shaft in a Paris hotel.
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| Gracie child killed |
*****
From 1909 to 1911, Archibald Gracie IV wrote a book called "The Truth About Chickamauga" which was published in 1911. Promoting the book was exhausting and he thought himself in need of a holiday but his wife and daughter Edith didn't want to go. In February 1912, he sailed to Europe on the RMS Oceanic. On the voyage, he befriended a ship's officer, Herbert Pitman. On his return home in April 1912, he booked first class accommodations on the RMS Titanic and again met Herbert Pitman who served as Third Officer on Titanic.
Archibald Gracie met three elderly sisters who were friends with Gracie's wife, and with them was their friend Miss Edith Corse Evans (who did not survive the sinking). The three sisters were Charlotte Appleton, Malvina Cornell, and Carolina Brown, all of whom would survive the sinking. They were traveling from England to America after attending the funeral of their sister, Lady Victor Drummond. Since they were unaccompanied by a gentleman, he spent most of the voyage chaperoning them, enjoying their company at dinner, reading in the library, and discussing books. He regaled first class passengers with his many stories about Chickamauga, the Civil War, and his books. He also enjoyed discussing the Civil War with Macy Department Store owner Isidor Straus. A writer's group was organized by Helen Churchill Candee and he was invited to join along with Edward Kent, Edward Pomeroy Colley, Hugh Woolner, J. Clinch Smith, and Mauritz Bjornstrom-Steffansson.
On Saturday, April 13, just before he retired for the night, Archibald arranged with his steward Charles Cullen to awaken him early on Sunday morning because he had a full schedule: to play squash with the racquet attendant, Frederick Wright; then a workout in the gym with T W McCawley; and lastly a swim in the six foot heated salt water pool. Then he would have his breakfast.
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| Titanic's Pool |
On Sunday April 14, he attended morning religious services, had an early lunch, and put in some exercise time in the gym and in the swimming pool. After dinner, he socialized for a short time with dinner companions Clinch Smith and Edward Kent, then had their coffee in the Palm Room to listen to live music. He again went to bed early so he could be well rested for another squash session the next morning.
In his interviews, Gracie said at 11:45pm ship's time, he was awakened by a jolt. He said when he sat up in bed, he did not hear the engines, then realized the ship was not moving. Putting on a jacket over his nightclothes, he went to the Boat Deck to see what was going on. He heard the sound of escaping steam and saw that the ship was listing slightly. But there were no officers about and he said he saw no reason for concern. He went back to his cabin to put on his life jacket.
On his way back to the deck, he saw some men passengers who were also awakened by a jolt, followed by the stillness of the ship. He learned from them that the ship had collided with an iceberg and that the mailroom was flooded. The postal clerks had water up to their knees as they tried to salvage 200 bags of first class mail and registered letters. It was no use because the water was quickly rising. The situation was worse than they thought. Gracie returned to his cabin to pack all his possessions in his three large travelling bags to have them ready to transfer to another ship if possible. He took off his life jacket and put his long overcoat on, but forgot to put on his life jacket again. When his steward Charles Cullen saw he wasn't wearing it, he insisted that Gracie go back to his cabin for his life jacket.
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| A First-Class cabin suite |
When he returned to A Deck, he met up with Clinch Smith and they ran into Helen Candee, Charlotte Appleton, Malvina Cornell, and Caroline Brown. The order was given to load the lifeboats. Gracie escorted the four ladies to Boat Deck, but the crew wouldn't allow any men to approach the lifeboats. Gracie handed over care of the ladies to Sixth Officer Moody.
Gracie's friend and dinner companion Clinch Smith was helping Second Officer Charles Lightoller to fill the lifeboats with women and children. Gracie met Frederick Wright, the racquet coach, and they joked saying their 7:30am lesson was cancelled.
Gracie also ran into his steward Charles Cullen and together they quickly found extra blankets to put in all the lifeboats so the women could warm themselves against the freezing cold weather and water.
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| J Clinch Smith |
"Friends and first class passengers, Clinch Smith, Bjornstrom-Steffansson and Woolner put Mrs. Candee in Lifeboat #6, Mrs. Straus was to get in Lifeboat #8 but opted not to go because her husband wasn't going. They went and sat together on deck chairs. At that moment a group of men tried to take over Lifeboat #2. Just then Second Officer Lightoller jumped into the boat and threatened them with his gun to drive them out. Clinch Smith and I helped him load 36 women and children into the lifeboat and it was lowered at 1:45 with Fourth Officer Boxhall in charge."
Gracie and Smith continued to help Officer Lightoller load women and children into the next boat, Lifeboat #4. He tried to remove 13-year old John Ryerson but was persuaded by the boy's father to let him stay. One of the ladies was the pregnant teen wife of John Jacob Astor. With Quartermaster Perkis in command, Lifeboat #4 left at 1:55am.
"When the last lifeboat was launched at 1:55am, Smith and I assisted Officer Lightoller and others in freeing the four Collapsible Lifeboats, both A and B were lashed upside down on the roof of the top of the crew quarters. They had been attached to the roof by heavy cords. I lent Lightoller a penknife so he could free the boats and we were able to launch Collapsible boats "A," "C" and "D." While we were freeing Collapsible "B" from its place, suddenly the bridge became flooded with water.
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| Second Officer Charles Lightoller |
Collapsible Lifeboat "D" was lifted and placed where Lifeboat #2 had been. The crew formed a circle around the lifeboat and allowed only women and children to pass. The lifeboat could hold 47 but after 15 women were loaded, there were no more women waiting in line. Officer Lightoller then allowed men to fill the vacant seats. When Gracie looked around the deck he found Mrs. Caroline Brown and Miss Edith Evans still on deck, so he escorted them to the lifeboat. The men stepped out and made way for them but only Caroline Brown got in and the boat left Titanic at 2:05am with Quartermaster Bright in charge. Miss Edith Evans never got in and she drowned when the ship went down.
"My friend Clinch made the proposition that we should leave the ship and go toward the stern. But there arose before us, coming up from the decks below, a mass of steerage passengers who were converging on the Boat Deck and blocking our way to the stern. These people were not hysterical or in a panic. They just wanted to get through the locked gate that kept steerage passengers separated from the other two classes; they wanted to get off the ship."
As Collapsible D was lowered, two men climbed over the rail and jumped from the flooded A deck into the lifeboat as it was descending into the sea. They were Gracie's dinner companions Woolner and Bjornstrom-Steffansson. Gracie and Smith saw the bridge dip under at 2:15am.
Gracie said he saw a wave coming, the Titanic took a great plunge forward. Gracie caught hold of a rail and pulled himself up to the roof of the ship's bridge and jumped, followed by Clinch. Officer Lightoller jumped off the ship around the same time.
As Titanic went under, the forward funnel broke loose and toppled toward the men in the water, missing Gracie, Clinch and Lightoller. The sinking of the ship caused an undertow that pulled Gracie down under the water. When he finally came up to the surface near the overturned Collapsible Lifeboat "B," he found a few dozen men holding on to the slick surface in the freezing water.
Second Officer Charles Lightoller, wireless operators Jack Phillips and Harold Bride and first-class passenger Jack Thayer III were among the men holding on to it. Suddenly his friend Clinch disappeared under the surface, unable to stay on the surface any longer. His body was never found. Wireless operator Jack Phillips who was holding on to the overturned lifeboat, slipped off and died.
Gracie said there were dozens of people swimming in the water around them looking for something large enough to hold on to so they could stay afloat. As they moved closer, Officer Lightoller realized that the Collapsible Lifeboat "B" was in danger of being swamped by them. After talking to Harold Bride to determine how far away other rescue ships were, he was told the Carpathia was the closest, so Lightoller figured it would be about dawn when Carpathia arrived.
Collapsible Lifeboat "B" was sinking. Lightoller ordered the men to slowly paddle away from the swimmers, ignoring the pleadings of swimmers who wanted to get on board.
The surface of the overturned lifeboat was slick and slippery. The men had a hard time holding on and they kept slipping back into the water. Over half of the men had either died from exhaustion, the cold, or they had slipped off the lifeboat during the night.
When dawn broke around 4am, they were able to clearly see other lifeboats. Lightoller used his whistle to attract the attention of Lifeboats #4, #10, "D" and #12. He strung them together in a line then started to transfer the survivors of his overturned lifeboat before it went under.
Archibald Gracie was so tired after all the strenuous activity, that he wasn't able to jump. He crawled but needed to be pulled into the overcrowded Lifeboat #12. It had a 65 person capacity and there were 75 people on board. Then Officer Lightoller left the overturned lifeboat and got in Lifeboat #12.
By 8:15am, all boats were accounted for on the Carpathia. Lifeboat #12 was the last to be rescued and Officer Lightoller was the last survivor taken aboard the Carpathia.
Carpathia's passengers and crew worked tirelessly to help the survivors, feed them, give medical attention and clothing. They set Archibald Gracie up on a sofa in the dining room and put a pile of blankets on top of him trying to chase away the chill. His clothes were placed in the ship's bake oven to dry. He was given food, medical attention for hypothermia, some cuts on his legs and torso and a wound on his head, all of which caused complications with his diabetes.
He returned to New York with over 700 other survivors on the RMS Carpathia. Gracie immediately started to write a book about his experiences on Titanic and on Collapsible Lifeboat "B." To date, his book carries the most detailed account of all the books written about Titanic, possibly because he spent months verifying who was in each lifeboat and the times when certain events took place.
After testifying at the Senate Inquiry, he spent much of his time traveling on the lecture circuit. The public was interested in everything about Titanic and the survivors. However, this took time away from working on his book.
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Colonel Gracie was very interested in debunking some of the claims made by survivors. He said that most of them only wanted to get their names in the newspapers or to have their names forever associated with Titanic's last hours.
In November 1912, Colonel Archibald Gracie addressed the University Club in New York, talking about his time on Titanic, jumping from the sinking ship into the sea, the people who didn't want to let the women and children go first, the rescue, and his book which was titled "The Truth About The Titanic."
He reiterated what most people already knew from the April 1912 American Inquiry, the May 1912 British Inquiry investigations of the disaster, and newspapers. He was heavily critical about the accounts written by reporters for their newspapers, saying they fabricated stories when they had none, because they were struggling to provide information for their newspapers.
It's a trend that continues to this day - When in doubt, make it up. Colonel Gracie said, that's what they did.
Colonel Gracie especially addressed the stories that the orchestra played until the ship went down, and that they slid off the deck into the ocean while still playing their instruments. He said they never played "Nearer My God To Thee." He said none of it ever happened.
He said the musicians only played hymns during church services. They didn't dare play hymns during the evacuation was because it was not the right venue. He said: "The men would have had plenty to say about it because they were trying to console their wives and children so they would leave the ship on a somewhat cheerful note, not amid gloom and doom. Playing such a hymn would have made it an even more trying time, full of tears and hysterics."
He also told the University Club members that even though there were some survivors who said the musicians had gone to their deaths still performing, the majority agreed with him that they actually had stopped playing nearly an hour before the ship sank when Captain Smith was making his rounds relieving each person of their duty and advising them to get off the ship.
There were some musicians who had strapped their instruments onto their person for safekeeping but others leaned them in an out-of-the-way corner.
A case in point: Chief Musician Hartley's body was recovered with his instrument strapped to his back so that if he were rescued, it would also be saved.
Gracie told the audience that from the time he felt the jolt: "It took two hours and twenty minutes for the Titanic to sink. I was in my berth at the time of impact, and when I dressed and went on deck, nothing seemed to be wrong except there was a continuous roar of escaping steam and the ship was starting to list. I knew the listing meant something bad, that the ship was in danger of sinking."
Several crew members verified that during the last hour or hour and a half, the Captain had gone from deck to deck, relieving the engineers, victuals staff and any remaining crew of their duty, telling them to make their way to the lifeboats so they could get off the ship. The musicians would have been among the first because he would have seen them before he went below deck to relieve the other crew.
In his speech, Gracie also had a few words of criticism about the lack of response of other ships, especially the officers of the California. He said their not attempting to come to the aid of Titanic was one of the most horrible things about the disaster.
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Eight months after the sinking, Archibald Gracie died on December 4, 1912 of complications from diabetes. He was the first adult survivor to die since the sinking. His funeral was well attended by survivors and family members of the dead. He was buried in the Gracie family plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in New York City. |
| From a Count to a Cook |
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| Constance Gracie de Urbino |
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| Constance Gracie |
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