It was dry in the other boiler rooms further aft, but the scene was pretty much the same—men picking themselves up, calling back and forth, asking what had happened. It was hard to figure out. Until now the Titanic had been a picnic. Being a new ship on her maiden voyage, everything was clean. She was, as fireman George Kemish still recalls, ‘a good job… not what we were accustomed to in old ships, slogging our guts out and nearly roasted by the heat’.

All the firemen had to do was keep the furnaces full. No need to work the fires with slice bars, pricker bars and rakes. So on this Sunday night the men were taking it easy—sitting around on buckets and the trimmers’ iron wheelbarrows, gossiping, waiting for the twelve-to-four watch to come on.

Then came that thud… the grinding, tearing sound… the telegraphs ringing wildly… the watertight doors crashing down. Most of the men couldn’t imagine what it was—the story spread that the Titanic had gone aground just off the Banks of Newfoundland. Many of them still thought so, even after a trimmer came running down from above shouting, ‘Blimey! We’ve struck an iceberg!’

About ten miles away Third Officer Charles Victor Groves stood on the bridge of the Leyland liner Californian, bound from London to Boston. A plodding 6,000-tonner, she had room for forty-seven passengers, but none were being carried just now. On this Sunday night she had been stopped since 10.30 p.m., completely blocked by drifting ice.

At about 11.10 Groves noticed the lights of another ship, racing up from the east on the starboard side. As the newcomer rapidly overhauled the motionless Californian, a blaze of deck lights showed she was a large passenger liner. Around 11.30 he knocked on the Venetian door of the chart room and told Captain Stanley Lord about it. Lord suggested contacting the new arrival by Morse lamp, and Groves prepared to do this.