Lost at sea: Kalispell man recounts tale of family member lost on Titanic

I write this communication as a memorial to my father’s cousin, Ole Martin Olson, who at the age of 27, perished 100 years ago along with 1,500 fellow travelers when on April 15, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and sunk a few hours later. This maritime disaster has received almost unparalleled publicity with over six movies and an uncounted numbers of books recording the event.

In 1883 my grandfather, Nels Olson, and several of his brothers, including Ole’s father, Ole B. Olson, emigrated from Etna, Norway, to homestead near Langford, S.D., on adjacent farms. (It was an odd tradition among them that each family should name one son “Ole,” and one daughter “Martha.” My grandparents deviated slightly from this tradition, naming my father “Olen’, although their first daughter was named Martha. When Ole B.’s son, Ole Martin, reached adulthood, he opted to homestead on several quarter-sections of land in Saskatchewan, Canada. During the winter of 1911-1912, he decided to visit his grandmother and other relatives in Norway.

Ole’s trip back to Canada was disrupted owing to a coal strike in England, which caused many ocean liners to delay or cancel their departures. Ole seized the opportunity to get a third-class ticket on the Titanic, which must have pleased him to experience the Titanic’s maiden voyage to America, and also get him back to Saskatchewan for spring planting several days earlier. He boarded the vessel on April 10, 1912. The Titanic made stops at Cherbourg, France, and at Cobh, Ireland, then headed across the Atlantic for America.

The night of April 14 was moonless and dark; the sea was quiet. At about 11:40 p.m. the lookouts in the crow’s nest spotted an iceberg dead ahead and called out a warning to the helmsman, who made a hard turn to port. Too late; the iceberg was too close. The Titanic crunched along the iceberg, rupturing six forward watertight compartments along the starboard side out of the sixteen which the ship had. The designer of the ship, Thomas Andrews, who was also aboard, dolefully commented, “If only four compartments had flooded, the ship would remain afloat; with six ruptured, she will sink.” The forward section of the ship slowly filled with water; the bow sunk below the sea’s surface, and 2 1/2 hours after impacting the iceberg, the ship headed for the bottom, over two miles down. Out of 2,200 individuals aboard, only 710 survived. Out of 708 third-class passengers, 607 were lost, including Ole. Out of 277 in second-class, 159 were lost. Out of the 324 first class passengers, 123 were lost. In first class were many of the cream of American and British society and industry, including such notables as John Jacob Astor IV, industrialist Benjamin Guggenheim, and Isador Straus of Macy’s. Isador’s wife, Ida, turned down the opportunity to enter a lifeboat. She told her husband, “Where you go, I go.” Although the call was for women and children first, some unprincipled men sneaked into lifeboats, including J. Bruce Ismay, director of the White Star Line.

As with many disasters, it is not just one error or fact that produces a deadly result, but a series of errors and natural realities that combine to produce great destruction. Such was the case of the explosion and fire of the oil derrick, and pollution of oil in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago. Such was the cause of the Titanic disaster. Consider the following list:

1. The Titanic left with half the lifeboats needed. Of the 2,200 people aboard, there was room for only 1,100.

2. No lifeboat drill was held; passengers knew little of where to go in an emergency. Some boats left only half-filled. As a result of the chaos, 400 seats remained unused. Some passengers trusted the “unsinkable” claims and refused to enter an open boat in the dark.

3. Captain Smith had received four warnings of icebergs in the area, but ordered no slackening of the Titanic’s speed. J. Bruce Ismay, the White Star director, received one such cable. He pocketed it without delivering it to Captain Smith. They seemed determined to break the speed record for ocean liner crossings at any cost. Several other ships in the area had stopped to avoid the risk of ramming into an iceberg in the dark. One such was the Californian, which was positioned just 17 miles from the Titanic.

4: A natural phenomenon in the area may have played a critical part in the disaster, as reported in the March 2012 issue of the Smithsonian magazine. The Titanic was traveling close to the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Several ships in the area reported conditions of light refraction such as produces mirages. A false horizon above the true horizon may have kept the iceberg unseen until it was too close to miss. Had the helmsman chosen to ram the berg head on, rather than try to miss it, the Titanic would not have sunk, and most aboard would have survived.

5:    The wireless operator on the Californian, just 17 miles away, turned in for the night just before the Titanic impacted the iceberg, and his ship could have reached the stricken Titanic within an hour, well before it sunk. The Titanic’s flares were ignored, perhaps again because of the mirage, which caused the Californian’s officers to dismiss them as coming from some distant and smaller ship. Only the Carpathian, some 50 miles away, caught the SOS signal and reached the disaster scene about a half-hour after the great liner had sunk, and picked up its survivors.

6. In the first decade of the 20th century there was in the Western world a cocksure attitude that their society was on the brink of a utopian era. Such advances as automobiles, petroleum discovery, radio communication, and medical breakthroughs suggested that a rosy future lay ahead. Such self-confidence so infected Western society that Captain Smith himself commented, “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder.” Titanic’s loss first cracked that optimism, and World Wars I and II, with the Depression in between, shattered it completely.

Until the wreckage of the Titanic was found in 1985, it was presumed that the ship had slipped smoothly into the sea, bow first, and had angled down to the bottom some two miles deep and was essentially intact. The movie “Raise the Titanic!” several decades ago was produced on this supposition. What actually happened was that when the waterlogged forward compartments sunk, the stern was lifted out of the water, and so great was the strain that the hull snapped in two amidships, and the stern section was found about a third of a mile apart from the bow section.

The disaster prompted significant maritime changes to prevent such further disasters. Ships were required to maintain 24-hour wireless alertness. Enough lifeboats were mandated to hold all aboard, as were early lifeboat drills. Ice patrols were maintained to warn of icebergs drifting down from Greenland’s calving glaciers. Shortly before World War II broke out, a “Yankee Clipper,” a four-engine flying boat, ran out of fuel due to unexpected headwinds, and skimmed down on the water’s surface. All of its passengers and crew were rescued by an iceberg patrol boat.

One last personal note:

A mystery surrounded Ole’s death. His mother, Anna, on the Dakota prairies, had a powerful feeling that night of April 14 that her son, Ole, was in terrible danger, although she had no knowledge that he was even on the sea at that time. She walked the floors much of the night, sensing somehow that she would never see Ole again.

Some days later my grandfather, Nels, received a weekly newspaper telling of the disaster. Even having no report that Ole was returning on the Titanic, she was positive that he was one of those who perished, as later proved the case. Many bodies of the victims were found floating in their lifebelts, dead from hypothermia in the icy waters, but Ole’s body was never recovered.

What force brought to Anna the conviction that a fearsome threat was overwhelming her son, Ole?

John Olson, a retired pastor, is a resident of Kalispell.