Okay, but was it really Ismay’s responsibility to die like a gentleman?
He was the ship owner, sure, but, as he claimed, was also merely ‘a passenger’.
He helped filling the boats (more or less efficiently; there’s a shitton of conflicting information so I guess no one will ever find out what really happened) and when he thought no one else was on deck anymore, he jumped in himself. From this point of view, it’s understandable (even if somehow unlikely with all the witness reports stating that there were still many people on deck). (See also Lord Mersey’s excuse in the conclusion of the British Inquiry:
“Mr. Ismay, after rendering assistance to many passengers, found “C” collapsible, the last boat on the starboard side, actually being lowered. No other people were there at the time. There was room for him and he jumped in. Had he not jumped in, he would have merely added one more life, namely his own, to the number of those lost.”)
Then, there’s another version in which Chief Officer Wilde ordered (some say even pushed) Ismay into Collapsible C. Now that’s a whole lot more believable than Ismay’s own version which I believe has been a bad excuse (like a lot of things he said afterwards). Combine that with what he later told his granddaughter Pauline Matarasso (I think it was her but I’m not too sure rn), that he was needed as an official who could tell the inquiries what had happened, and you get a pretty good story he could have told the inquiries. (It sounds also very much like an excuse, just like his official statement, but what else could he say? He needed an excuse. He couldn’t say that his urge to survive made him jump.)
And I think that’s the part he failed.
He completely failed the inquiries and press interviews, stating contradicting things (No, he never talked to Mrs Thayer and showed her the marconi with the ice warnings - oh wait, he may remember doing so now but they were alone and Mrs Ryerson wasn’t there at all. etc pp), answering a lot of questions with “I don’t know” or “I cannot remember”, and being very vague in his answers (”I believe …”, “I’m not sure”/”It could be”).
So if his “task” really had been to be the “messenger”, he completely failed. (Lightoller took that part with his descriptions and speeches and believable reports. He simply had the rhetoric (+state of mind) to do so, whereas Bruce wasn’t made for speaking out his mind. I was too complicated for him because people didn’t understand what he meant.)
Nontheless, I think people tend to forget the shock, the trauma he’s experienced. The Titanic was supposed to be his pride and joy but she went down, bringing shame on him and his name (good thing his father was already dead by that time hmm). He didn’t watch her go down. He “didn’t wish to”. “I am glad I did not”, he said in the inquiry. Just knowing must have been enough for him. And only after his jump does he realize why he’s still alive.
And the change in his behaviour was obvious. People described him as distant (even more so than before), quiet, in shock, jumpy, ‘mentally very ill’ (Capt. Rostron of the Carpathia).
Paulina Matarasso (his granddaughter) said in her memoirs:
“When he laid aside his public persona in 1913 he stood stripped to basics - a man so emotionally inhibited and so narrow in his interests as to be inapt of normal family and social life. Reclusion is the choice of those for whom the chronic pain of isolation seems preferable to the agony of rebuff. In this sense, he had long been a recluse.”
She also calls him “a corpse” later on and if that doesn’t say all.
He was a man who didn’t talk about the Titanic again after the inquiries (only in his letters to Mrs Thayer who was the only person able to understand his pain, according to Ismay); he continued his life in apathy; his state of mind was a mess; he collected every newspaper article about the Titanic, yet refused to talk about it; he stood under constant pressure from press & society. And people expect him to function?
Okay this is getting slightly out of hand. What I’m trying to say is:
People blame Bruce for jumping into Collapsible C when really, his mistake (and failure) was his presentation at the inquiries, as well as his name. I think that - had he been in the state of mind and not just lost everything - he might have gotten away way better.
I mean - who talks about William E. Carter? Who even remembers that name anymore? Right. No one.
Anyways, I think I’m starting to miss the point of the OP now.
What - in my opinion - made the Titanic sink were all these factors together. It wasn’t only the conditions. It wasn’t only the speed (and again, did Ismay order anyone to speed her up? Directly? Who can tell). It wasn’t only the fact that the marconi with the ice warnings didn’t end up on the board in the Officers’ Room where it should have been. It wasn’t only the lookouts’ fault. It was all of this and more coming together.
(Christ I sound like such an apologist rn. But honestly, defending Smith because he died? He was the Captain and he had more than enough experience to know what to do and what not to do. It were his orders that counted, not Ismay’s. People may call Ismay a ‘Super Captain’ (which I believe he was) but it should have been Smith’s responsibility to keep Ismay’s influence under control. Which either didn’t work or people are blaming Bruce wrongfully.) (Bold statement but hey. Why not.)
(Also, a lot of opinions focus on the good old “black-white/good-evil” scheme. Rostron is the hero, Ismay the villain. Lightoller a “stooge of Ismay”, keen on keeping his job. Just saying the press and especially the US Inquiry had a lot of influence on how we see these people still today.)
Ismay may or may not have made mistakes. He may or may not have jumped by his own free will. He may or may not have lied to the inquiries and press. There are so many different sources and statements that it’s impossible to find out what happened and why. We only know that the sinking of the Titanic was also Bruce Ismay’s downfall that left him broken and loathed for the rest of his life.
