The lost, legendary Harold Bride-shot-a-stoker story. Found

 

I almost jumped up and yelled "Eureka".

I had found the long lost, legendary interview with Titanic wireless operator Harold Bride where he admitted to shooting dead a stoker before abandoning the wireless room of the sinking ship!

But before diving in, I hesitated, wondering why it was published so deep, Page 24 of a 28 page newspaper.

Before discussing that, here's the article in question:

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The evening world (New York, N.Y.), April 19, 1912, (Final Edition-Extra)  Page 24

 

SHOT MAN DEAD WHO TRIED TO KILL WIRELESS CHIEF

About to stab Phillips to get life preserver when assistant fired

The body of one black coward-- a member of the Titanic's crew--- lies alone in the wireless "coop" on the highest deck of the shadowy bulk of what was once the world's greatest ship, two miles down in the dark of unplumbed ocean depths. There is a bullet hole in the back of his skull.

This man was shot by Harold Bride, the second wireless man aboard the Titanic and assistant to the heroic Phillips. Bride shot him from behind just at the instant that the coward was about to plunge a knife into Phillips's back and rob him of the life preserver which was strapped under his arm-pits.

He died instantly and Phillips, all unconscious at that instant that Bride was saving his life, had but a brief little quarter of an hour added to his span by the act of his assistant, and then went down to his death.

This grim bit of tragedy, only a little interlude in the whole terrible procession of horror aboard the sinking boat, occurred high above the heads of the doomed men and women who waited death in the black galleries of the decks.

High above the murmur of voices in prayer, the harsh treble of voices in shrieks of fear, between black sky and black water, Harold Bride, the assistant wireless man worked justice upon a coward as God gave him light to do so.

WOULD-BE MURDERER'S BODY IN WIRELESS COOP

"I had to do it," was the way Bride put it when an Evening World reporter found him alone for a few brief moments on the Cunard pier this morning. "I could not let that coward die a decent sailor's death, so I shot him down and left him alone there in the wireless coop to go down the the hulk of the ship. He is there yet--the only one in the wireless room, where Phillips, a real hero, worked madly to save the lives of two thousands and more people.

Here is the outline of this little story of grim justice, worked between man and man in the ultimate moment of disaster.

One hour and then two had passed after that instant at 11:45 o'clock when the Titanic was slit open along the whole of its starboard side. Phillips, at the Captain's orders, had sent out the stabbing call for help through the darkness and had heard from the Carpathia that she was turning in her course and racing back over the miles that intervened to give assistance.

STRIVING TO KEEP THE WIRELESS SPARK ALIVE

Phillips and Bride had been together in the little wireless room high up on the boat deck and just behind Capt. Smith's cabin. Together they had been striving to keep alive the wireless spark, the only thing that linked them with the world beyond the circle of the ghostly bergs.

Phillips, with the two rubber discs at his ears, was bending over his table straining his ears to read aright the messages of hope that came through the night. He worked intently: all of his heart and soul were centered in those two little hard rubber shells that were clapped over his ears.

A message came from the Carpathia seeking again for the exact location of the wounded Titanic. Phillips scribbled this message on a piece of paper and gave it to Bride to carry to Capt. Smith.  He made his way through the throngs of passengers who were being marshalled in orderly procession before the out-swinging boat davits.  He heard women whispering final farewells to their husbands, saw men lifting their loved ones over the gunwhales of the lifeboats.

The noise of a pistol shot from somewhere back in the darkness came to Bride's ears, but, as he told the Evening World reporter this morning, he thought little of that. He had some sort of an idea that ship's officers used revolvers to keep back cowards when the lives of women and children were being saved.

ASSISTANT OPERATOR BRIDE'S STRAIGHTFORWARD STORY

Then---but let Harold Bride tell the story just as he told it simply and with straighforward frankness on the Cunard pier this morning. The blue eyes of this blonde young Englishman and his fresh, ruddy cheeks are those of a boy; he talks as a boy, with simplicity and a direct choice of words.

"Toward the end I was busy every few minutes carrying messages from Phillips to the captain. They were messages from the Carpathia telling how she was coming about and making all speed for our position and there were messages from other ships, also, though Phillips did not tell me their names.

"One time I came back and Phillips told me the wireless was getting weaker. Capt. Smith said the water was getting in the engine room and that the spark would soon be gone. The water was pretty close by this time and all of the boats that could be launched were already out.

"I heard the band somewhere down below playing 'Nearer, My God, To Thee' and I knew that we were pretty near. I remembered that every member of the crew ought to have a special life preserver in his room and I went and got it. Then I put on a pair of boots and an extra jacket, for I knew how bloody cold that water would be when we hit it.

AT HIS INSTRUMENT UNTIL LAST MOMENT

Then I came back to the wireless coop. There was Phillips still sticking to his instrument. He was nursing it like a woman would nurse a baby, trying to get the last spark to do all the work that had to be done.  He had the Olympic then and was telling it where we were and to hurry up or we'd all be at the bottom.

Then I went out again to see what was doing. There was a great running about and I heard some men cursing.  I thought they were cursing to keep some men back from the boats until the women should have a chance. There was a collapsible boat over near the funnel. Twelve men were trying to lift it and put it in shape. They wanted to hoist it down to the boat deck.  I helped them and it went down with a scramble.

I went back then to the wireless room and strapped a life preserver around Phillips's shoulders after putting his overcoat on. He was still at the key, doing his best to make the feeble spark carry. The spark was nearly gone and he told me so. He laughed when I was putting the preserver on. I went out again.

"Then I came back when the last thing that could float was overboard. It was dark. There was a sound of singing down on some of the decks below. I heard the noise of people crying, too. There were little wabbles (sic. wobbles) all through the hull, which told me we were ready to go down.

"Just as I entered the wireless room in the dark I saw a big fellow--he looked like a stoker or a fireroom man--and he was stealing up on Phillips with a knife. He had no life preserver on. Phillips had.

SHOT HIM THROUGH BACK OF HEAD

"I don't know how it happened that in a flash I got it. I got it that this fellow was going to kill Phillips for his life belt. So I pulled my gun and shot him through the back of the head. I was very close to him. He went down quickly with a kind of a grunt. Phillips and I ran out together.  Phillips ran down aft and that was the last I ever saw of the gallant chap."

How Bride was saved is a marvel which he himself cannot well explain. He says that he lost sight of Phillips he ran to the boat deck where he had last seen men struggling with the collapsible boat. They were still at it, seemingly not knowing how to get it over the side.  Just as Bride started to lend a hand a wave came right over the boat deck, the Titanic then being in its final plunge, and the boat floated clear.

He held onto an oarlock and after what seemed an interminable time he found that he could breathe. But he was under the collapsible boat, which was overturned. He got out from under and swam. He heard the band on the slanting deck of the ship playing. He saw a stream of spark shoot from the after stacks. A hand reached out and pulled him to some floating buoy. It was the edge of the collapsible boat and men were clinging to it.

Somebody suggested a prayer and they took a poll of the religions of the pitiful little group of desperate men. One was a Methodist, one a Roman Catholic. They decided upon the Lord's prayer and in chorus they repeated that simple appeal of Man to his maker.

Then came a boat which was right side up. and all of the men who were fighting death on the overturned collapsible boat were taken aboard. Sp Bride, the man who killed another in doing justice, was rescued.

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The story appeared the same day as the New York Times published its exclusive interview with Bride, splashed across 90 percent of the Times front page.  The Times piece was headlined:

THRILLING STORY BY TITANIC'S SURVIVING WIRELESS MAN

Bride Tells How He and Phillips Worked and How He Finished a Stoker Who Tried to Steal Phillips's Life Belt -- Ship Sank to Tune of "Autumn"

And it was copyrighted.

But why was the Evening World story buried in the back pages? Two reasons came to mind.

First, Harold Bride was not a priority for the Evening World. He was for the New York Times which intended to make him a hero in the mould of Jack Binns.  Who, you ask?

Jack Binns was a Marconi wireless operator whose distress signals directed rescue boats to the site of a collision between two ocean liners near Nantucket Island in 1909. Almost all the passengers of both boats were saved. 

The Evening World had a different target on the Carpathia.  Carlos Hurd, a reporter for the St. Louis Post Dispatch was taking his wife on a vacation aboard the Carpathia. Before leaving, he had mentioned the trip to the editor of the World who cried hallelujah when he learned the survivors of the Titanic were on the Carpathia headed for New York City. Hurd would have three days to interview survivors before the other newspapers had a minute.

As the Carpathia approached New York, Hurd tossed a bundle of his interviews over the ship's rail to a tugboat hired by the Evening World, which raced to shore where stories were typeset and an extra was on the streets "before the Carpathia was at her dock", recalled editor Charles E. Chapin.

The New York Times, meanwhile, had to wait until the Carpathia docked to get its interviews. Newspapers had been issued only four passes apiece to have reporters on the pier. And nobody was allowed on the Carpathia until all the Titanic survivors had debarked.

But a New York Times reporter bluffed his way onto the Carpathia by accompanying Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the wireless (and Bride's boss), to the pier. Marconi was hailed as a celebrity and allowed to pass while the reporter was mistaken for Marconi's manager and permitted to go with him.

 

The reporter found Bride in the Carpathia wireless room and interviewed him on the spot in time to make the 12:30 a.m. deadline for the newspaper's first daily edition the next day, April 19. The 2500 word story  was carried in newspapers around the world.

 

I could see how the Evening World would want to match the Times' Bride story even though they had their own massive scoop the night before. But why on Page 24?

Matching a competitor's scoop is embarrassing. You try to present the information to your readers but without fanfare. So you could try to bury it. But Page 24?

Well, April 19, 1912, was a busy news day. The front page of the World carried stories about Carpathia Capt. Rostron's testimony at the Senate Inquiry, a search for the parents of the two adorable French boys rescued from the Titanic, a banner story on First Officer Murdoch's suicide as witnessed by 'Quartermaster Moody', and a criticism of the Titanic's "ocean speed mania." The story you're matching is already a day old, so you put it where there's space.

I began to read the lost Bride story, anxious to see what new information it contained.

My heart sank.

Apart from the details of the shooting of the stoker, the story was nothing but a scalped version of the New York Times story. Examples:

Evening World:  "Toward the end I was busy every few minutes carrying messages from Phillips to the captain. They were messages from the Carpathia telling how she was coming about and making all speed for our position ...

New York Times:  Every few minutes Phillips, would send me to the captain with little messages, merely telling how the Carpathia was coming our way and giving her speed.

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Evening World.  There was a collapsible boat over near the funnel. Twelve men were trying to lift it and put it in shape. They wanted to hoist it down to the boat deck.  I helped them and it went down with a scramble.

New York Times. I saw a collapsible boat near the funnel, and went over to it. Twelve men were trying to boost it down to the boat deck. They were having an awful time. Over she went, and they all started to scramble in.

Could there be any other explanation?  Only one.

If a reporter for the Evening World got some new information, the newspaper could re-top the scalped story and present it as something new. 

Anyone who has ever had to match a competitor's scoop knows the routine. First you ask the subject for an interview. Most say no, despite your appeals.

Then you ask if the story in the competing newspaper was accurate. Did they quote the subject accurately. Did the subject have anything to add?  If the answer to the first question is yes, then you can scalp the original story in good conscience knowing that the subject said it was accurate. (Okay, that may be cheating, but by then you are getting desperate.)

Finally there's a technique you learn on the job which has a technical name in journalism: Begging.

You beg the subject for a crumb. Something. Anything. I'll get fired if I don't get a story. Tell me something you didn't tell the other guy and I'll get lost. Crying helps.

Is that what happened here? The New York Times paid Bride $1000 for his story. It's unlikely he would risk that money to give his story for free to the Evening World. But something he never told the Times? That wouldn't be cheating, would it?

I went over the Bride story in the Evening World with a fine toothcomb.

"...an Evening World reporter found him alone for a few brief moments on the Cunard pier this morning. " it read. So the World wasn't claiming they interviewed Harold Bride, just that a reporter spoke with him for "a few brief moments." Just long enough to tell about shooting the stoker?

But elsewhere the story read: "let Harold Bride tell the story just as he told it simply and with straighforward frankness on the Cunard pier this morning." This implies the entire World story came from Bride on the pier on Friday, April 19, 1912. You might believe that, if it wasn't for the similarities in wording that are far too close to the New York Times interview.

So what's the conclusion?  Did the Evening World speak to Harold Bride, get an exclusive story about his shooting a stoker, then re-top a rewrite of the New York Times interview? Or did the newspaper make it all up to give a sexy new lede to the New York Times scoop.

An honest appraisal is that the story comes across as 99 percent scalped from the New York Tims, but one percent as just possibly new info topping a rewritten story.

The one nagging thread is the unexplained shifting in Bride's story of what truly happened in the wireless room.

 "I suddenly felt a passion not to let that man die a decent sailor's death. I wished he might have stretched a rope or walked a plank. I did my duty. I hope I finished him. I don't know. We left him on the cabin floor of the wireless room and he was not moving. " is how he described the denouement to the Times. Despite the teasing subhead, there were no details of how he "finished" the stoker.

 

The story changed radically with subsequent tellings.

 

In a report to the Marconi company dated April 27, 1912, Bride wrote:

 

There immediately followed a general scrimmage with the three of us. I regret to say that we left too hurriedly to take the man in question with us, and without a doubt he sank with the sip in the Marconi cabin as we left him.

A scrimmage is defined as "a confused struggle or fight", a free-for-all, a rough and tumble. If that's what took place, it was a match between Woody Allen (the slight, teenaged wireless operator) and Sly "Rocky" Stallone (the burly stoker who spent hours each day hauling heavy loads of coal).

 

To the U.S. Senate Inquiry 2 days later he told of finding a woman who fainted in the wireless room, but didn't mention a skirmish with the stoker in the wireless room. While the Senators a few times raised newspaper stories with witnesses, they asked  Bride nothing about the stoker story.

 

To the British Board of Trade Inquiry, 13 days after the New York Times interview was published, Bride testified:

 

16784. You are supposed to have hit him?

- Well, I held him and Mr. Phillips hit him.

16785. Mr. Phillips hit him?

- Yes.

By then, the tale had gone 180 degrees, from Bride defending Phillips to Phillips knocking the intruding stoker senseless and leaving him to die.

Is there an answer to the question "did Bride admit to the New York Evening World to shooting a stoker in the head?" There might be. That answer would lie in the pre-appearance depositions every Titanic survivor gave prior to testifying at the Senate Inquiry. If Bride's deposition is ever located, it may contain the real story of the assistant wireless operator and the desperate Titanic stoker.

The New York Times story was reprinted in newspapers across North America. The Evening News story disappeared into the mists of time.

The National News Association of New York, a Hearst wire-service for evening newspapers, sent out a long summary of Titanic news which included two paragraphs about Harold Bride and the stoker.

From the front page of The Richmond Palladium and Sun Telegram, April 19, 1912:

Shoots Stoker Down.

Upon returning. from the captain's

cabin with a message. Bride saw a

grimy stoker of gigantic proportions

bending over Phillips removing the

life belt. Phillips would not abandon

his key for an instant to fight off the stoker.

 

Bride is a little man (he was

subsequently saved) but plucky

Drawing his revolver he shot down

the intruder and the wireless worker

went on as though nothing had hap-

pened.

 

The "instant" book 'Sinking of the Titanic, Eyewitness Accounts' edited by Jay Henry Mowbray, and published in 1912 after the U.S. Senate hearing ended, was mostly a collection of unsourced newspaper accounts, including most of the first six paragraphs of the Evening World story.

 

Another instant book from 1912 similarly titled 'Sinking of the Titanic', by Logan Marshall, carried a fanciful retelling of the lost Bride interview:

 

"WIRELESS OPERATOR DIED AT HIS POST  On board the Titanic, the wireless operator, with a life-belt about his waist, was hitting his instrument that was sending out C.Q.D., messages, "Struck on iceberg, C.Q.D" Shall I tell captain to turn back and help?" flashed a reply from the Carpathia. "Yes, old man," the Titanic wireless operator responded. "Guess we're sinking."

 

An hour later, when the second wireless man came into the boxlike room to tell his companion what the situation was, he found a negro stoker creeping up behind the operator and saw him raise a knife over his head. He said afterwards--he was among those rescued--that he realized at once that the negro intended to kill the operator in order to take his life- belt from him. The second operator pulled out his revolver and shot the negro dead. "What was the trouble?" asked the operator. "That negro was going to kill you and steal your life-belt," the second man replied. "Thanks, old man," said the operator. The second man went on deck to get some more information. He was just in time to jump overboard before the Titanic went down. The wireless operator and the body of the negro who tried to steal his belt went down together."

And that appears to be the last anyone heard of that interview until now.