The jar meant more to J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, who, in a festive mood, was going along for a ride on the Titanic’s first trip. Ismay woke up with a start in his de luxe suite on B deck—he felt sure the ship had struck something, but he didn’t know what.

Some of the passengers already knew the answer. Mr and Mrs George A. Harder, a young honeymoon couple down in cabin E-50, were still awake when they heard a dull thump. Then they felt the ship quiver, and there was ‘a sort of rumbling, scraping noise’ along the ship’s side. Mr Harder hopped out of bed and ran to the porthole. As he looked through the glass, he saw a wall of ice glide by.

The same thing happened to James B. McGough, a Gimbels buyer from Philadelphia, except his experience was more disturbing. His porthole was open, and as the berg brushed by, chunks of ice fell into the cabin.

Like Mr McGough, most of the Titanic’s passengers were in bed when the jar came. On this quiet, cold Sunday night a snug bunk seemed about the best place to be. But a few shipboard diehards were still up. As usual, most were in the first-class smoking-room on A deck.

And as usual, it was a very mixed group. Around one table sat Archie Butt, President Taft’s military aide; Clarence Moore, the travelling Master of Hounds; Harry Widener, son of the Philadelphia streetcar magnate; and William Carter, another Main Liner. They were winding up a small dinner given by Widener’s father in honour of Captain Edward J. Smith, the ship’s commander. The Captain had left early, the ladies had been packed off to bed, and now the men were enjoying a final cigar before turning in too. The conversation wandered from politics to Clarence Moore’s adventures in West Virginia, the time he helped to interview the old feuding mountaineer Anse Hatfield.

Buried in a nearby leather armchair, Spencer V. Silverthorne, a young buyer for Nugent’s department store in St Louis, browsed through a new best-seller, The Virginian. Not far off, Lucien P. Smith (still another Philadelphian) struggled gamely through the linguistic problems of a bridge game with three Frenchmen.