Part III

Miss Bertha Moran remembered:

    Continuing the prayers, he led us to where the boats were being

lowered. Helping the women and children and he whispered to them words of

comfort and encouragement.

    After helping to load the lifeboats Fr. Byles was again asked to get

in. Again he refused. Miss Helen Mary Mocklare said:

    Fr. Byles could have been saved, but he would not leave while one was

left, and the sailor's entreaties were not heeded. After I got in the boat,

which was the last one to leave, and we were slowly going further away from

the ship, I could hear distinctly the voice of the priest and the responses

to his prayers.

    Another man who refused to leave was Thomas Andrews, the architect of

Titanic. He stood alone in the first class smoking room, ignoring requests

to put on a lifebelt. His eyes were fixed on a painting entitled "The

Approach of the New World." He was left alone with his thoughts, and went

down with the ship.

    So did Captain Smith, who was last seen at the bridge around 2am,

watching Titanic's bow disappear under the black water. The lifeboats were

all gone, and the remaining passengers ran uphill to the stern, which was

raising high out of the water as the bow sank further down. Fr. Thomas

Byles continued to hear confessions, and then began the Rosary again. There

was a tremendous crack as Titanic split in half. The front half of the ship

completely disappeared and the lights went out.

    The stern settled down in the water, and floated until its

compartments filled with water. Then the stern rose up from behind until it

was almost perpendicular to the water, the rudder pointing at the stars.

Most of the remaining passengers slid, fell, or jumped off. The stern

remained straight up for a minute or two, a silent salute from the

vanquished to the victor. Then it began sinking straight down, like an

elevator, picking up speed as it went down, down, more than two miles to

the bottom of the North Atlantic, off the coast of Newfoundland. It sits

there today, as nature continues its slow victory by eating away at the

remains of the "Ship of Dreams."

Aftermath

    After Titanic disappeared all was quiet except for the screams, which

one survivor likened to "the chanting of locusts." These died away after

half an hour, as those in the water succumbed to hypothermia in the 28°F

water. There were so many bodies that the lifeboats had trouble getting

through them to the rescue ship that arrived a few hours later.

    The iceberg that hit Titanic was seen later that morning. It had a

long red streak of paint across it. It was not a large berg, at least the

part above the water. For the next few days, as rescue operations

continued, other passenger ships heading for America passed by bodies

floating in the water. Preserved by the cold, they could be seen in all

their horrible detail, including the evening gowns and tuxedos. Many

passengers of Titanic, like Fr. Thomas Byles, were never found. Some sank,

others drifted hundreds of miles away.

    In New York, William went ahead with his wedding as scheduled. A

substitute priest performed the ceremony. After being married the bride and

groom went home, changed into black, and came back to St. Paul's Church

that afternoon for a Solemn High Requiem Mass for the soul of Fr. Thomas

Byles. Later that year William and his wife traveled to Rome and had an

audience with Pope Pius X, who called Fr. Byles a martyr for the Church. In

a letter to his mother-in-law, William recalled his brother leading the

Rosary on the doomed ship, writing:

Can you see all those poor people saying the Rosary, and Our Lady at the

other end of the Rosary pulling some of them into lifeboats, and others to

hear the happy command: "Enter thou into the Joy of the Lord"?

    If life can be likened to a shipwreck, eternally happy are those who

heed Fr. Byles's advice: do not abandon the spiritual life or the practice

of the true religion. They are more secure than lifebelts and lifeboats,

and safer than any "ship of dreams" we may have booked passage on. 

___________________________________

Mark Fellows is an itinerant Catholic writer who has appeared in several

Catholic publications. He lives in South St. Paul, Minnesota, with his wife

and expanding family.

Sources

1. The main source for the life of Fr. Thomas Byles is from a [former]

website managed by Fr. Scott Archer.

2. Lynch, Don. Titanic: An Illustrated History. New York: Hyperion Press,

1992.

3. Wels, Susan. Titanic: Legacy of the World's Greatest Ocean Liner. Tehabi

Books and Time-Life Books, 1997.

4. Marcus, Geoffrey. The Maiden Voyage. New York: The Viking Press, 1969.

5. Geller, Judith B. Titanic: Women and Children First. New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, 1998.

(The above article is from "The Angelus" -- May 2004:

http://angeluspress.org/)