When Tragedy and Drinking Mix on the Titanic

On April 14, 1912, the R.M.S. Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. It’s been resurfacing ever since. How often and how vividly the ship reappears in the public imagination varies according to the year’s news and zeitgeist. High points were 1955, when A Night to Remember, Walter Lord’s definitive history of the Titanic, was published; 1985, when Bob Ballard reached the wreck on the ocean floor; 1997, when Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio did that cringey splayed-wing thing on the bow in the Titanic movie; and 2023, when a tourist submersible descending to the wreck failed catastrophically.

Grief plus time equals frivolity, and as such, a regular feature of April since at least the 1950s has been the appearance of the festive Titanic-themed dinner party. These range from gala fundraisers to quiet at-home soirées. (“Titanic Parties Make a Splash,” was the headline in a 1998 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story.) These typically feature dishes from the 10-course menu that was served on the voyage’s final night, hours before ship met iceberg.

So we are reacquainted annually with Punch á la Romaine, which developed minor notoriety as the “last cocktail served aboard the Titanic.” This concoction dates back to the first cocktail guide ever published, in 1862, which included a recipe for this sherbet-like concoction of lemon juice, orange, juice, white wine, rum, sugar, and egg whites. The first-class dinner menu for April 14 listed “Punch Romaine” as the sixth course, where it would have served as a refreshing palate cleanser between the lamb and the roast squab.

… The ship’s bartenders made drinks popular at the time—Martinis, Manhattans, Stingers.

No known cocktail list survived the Titanic’s sinking (spurious versions lurk around the internet). But the Titanic’s cargo manifest supports the idea that the ship’s bartenders made drinks popular at the time—Martinis, Manhattans, Stingers. Some 2,000 bottles of wine and spirits went onboard, including six cases of vermouth from George F. Dubois, 110 cases of brandy from H. Hollander, and 15 cases of Cognac from Van Renssaller. A bottle that once held Grand Marnier was found during salvage dives, as were those for Irish whiskey and Champagne.

It was nearly midnight when the ship struck the iceberg. Dinner had long since concluded. A small group of first-class passengers, including the English businessman, Hugh Woolner, left the Café Parisien and retired to the smoking room for a nightcap. They may have been sitting there when the ship shuddered and the thud echoed through the cabins. Woolner, it was reported, was drinking hot whiskey and water; others had highballs.

While modern parties recreating the pre-iceberg splendor of the Titanic’s first-class lounges are common, few as far as know have staged reenactments of drinking on and around the post-iceberg Titanic. That would be simple to do: One needs only flasks and straight spirits. Later inquests, along with interviews with and journals of survivors, suggest that drinking was very much a part of the Titanic as it sank, and survivors awaited rescuers.

Shortly after midnight, the mood aboard the ship shifted from gaiety and celebration to disbelief and survival. Lifeboats were lowered; women and children boarded first. Liquor’s role shifted from celebratory quaff to balm for the afflicted.

According to Walter Lord’s account, a 22-year-old woman named Marguerite Frölicher aboard one lifeboat was “introduced to an important piece of picnic equipment.” She grew seasick and another lifeboat passenger pulled out a silver flask with a cup top and offered a sip of brandy. “She took the suggestion and was instantly cured.” According to Lord, she had never seen such a flask in her life, and was captivated by it.

Another lifeboat plucked up a crewman bobbing in the icy water like a cork. He had a bottle of brandy in his pocket, to which he was evidently already quite familiar, as he was thoroughly soused—not an unreasonable condition, one supposes, given the circumstances. The quartermaster promptly threw the bottle overboard, and threw the drunken crewman to the bottom of the boat.

[The R.M.S. Carpathia’s] chief steward ordered his crew to have brandy and whiskey on hand for the survivors.

The first rescue ship arrived nearly four hours after the distress call went out. It was the R.M.S. Carpathia, a Cunard-line steamship en route from New York to Croatia. As the magnitude of the rescue became clear, the ship’s chief steward ordered his crew to have brandy and whiskey on hand for the survivors.

More than a century later, interest in the ship’s demise shows no signs of flagging. Atlanta saw the opening last summer of the May Peel, a bar “inspired by the indomitable spirit of author Lily May Futrelle, a Titanic survivor.”

And, naturally, there are plenty of cocktails named after the Titanic. These invariably involve a lot of ice.

One that stands out was created in 1998 by Anthony Belman, a Virginia bartender whose grandfather was a third-class passenger and wreck survivor. Belman called his drink the Titanic Iceberg, and concocted it of blue curaçao, rum, and crème de menthe, blended with ice and made into a frigid, aqua-colored slushy. Atop the drink he floated slabs of vanilla ice cream, on which he placed two Lifesavers.