the President’s lost friend
Theirs was a friendship which had begun a dozen years before, when President Taft and Archie Butt had served together in the Philippines.
And in this time, Taft had come to love Archie as a younger brother.
At Taft’s suggestion, President Theodore Roosevelt had hired Archie as his White House aide.
Charming, jovial and a master at organization, Archie had proven indispensable to Roosevelt and when Taft followed Roosevelt into the White House, Archie had stayed on to serve him.
By the time of the Titanic disaster, late at night on Sunday, April 14, 1912, Archie had become Taft’s ‘inseparable companion.’
Archie was aboard the Titanic that night, as she made her maiden voyage across the Atlantic, returning to the US from a European trip.
While the news of the Titanic’s collision with the iceberg in the North Atlantic had shocked the nation, the initial news reports were reassuring.
All passengers were reported as safe, having escaped the sinking ship in lifeboats.
So, when Taft went to the theater that next evening, he believed that Archie, and all the other Titanic passengers and crew, had survived.
But as Taft sat in the theater with his wife, waiting for the curtain to go up, a White House messenger arrived with an envelope which was carried to their private box.
Within minutes, Taft left the theater, went to the telegraph office in the Executive Office Building and began reading the latest press reports.
The afternoon newspapers had been wrong.
The truth — that many Titanic passengers were unaccounted for — had begun to reach the public at 6:16 p.m. that evening.
Taft telegraphed the New York office of the White Star Line, owners of the Titanic, shortly after midnight: “Have you any information concerning Major Butt? If you communicate at once I will greatly appreciate.”
The White Star Line replied, “Sorry to say we have no definite information. Soon as receive it will notify you.”
Then came a second telegram:
“The White Star Line Company has searched its list of survivors for the name of Maj. Archibald Butt.
“We regret to say that his name does not appear up to the present time among those known to be saved.”
In despair, Taft left the telegraph office and retired to the White House for the night, telling aides that he was to be awakened immediately with any news about Archie.
But none came.
Wireless ship-to-shore communication was in its infancy then and missed or erroneous information ruled the day.
So, Taft sent his brother, Henry, to the White Star Line’s New York office to make a personal appeal for news about Archie; but Henry learned nothing.
The Carpathia, a British ocean liner, had traveled to the Titanic disaster site upon receiving Titanic’s distress call and was said to have pulled hundreds of survivors from the sea two hours after her sinking.
So, Taft attempted to communicate directly with the Carpathia; but his wireless messages to the ship went unanswered.
Desperate for information, Taft dispatched two military cruisers equipped with the latest wireless equipment to meet the Carpathia at sea, but they telegraphed Taft that Archie was not among the Carpathia survivors.
Taft confided to a friend his hope that Archie had found refuge on a lifeboat some distance from the point where the Titanic had gone down and would be brought home to safety on some other ship.
But the other ships which had diverted from their transatlantic course to search the Titanic disaster site had found no one.
They had arrived on the scene too late and there was no one left to rescue.
Survivor accounts of Archie’s final moments on board the Titanic vary.
Most place him at the lifeboats, assisting women and children climbing inside.
Some say Archie used his side arm to threaten rowdy men who had rushed to claim women’s seats in the boats.
One account places Archie on Titanic’s deck, standing alongside Col. Jack Astor, one of the richest men in the world, as the last lifeboat pulled away from the sinking ship.
On April 30, a cable-laying ship hired by the White Star Line to recover bodies floating in the sea near the disaster site, returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia, with 190 corpses.
Taft dispatched an Army major who knew Archie to Halifax to scrutinize the bodies in hopes of finding Archie; but Archie’s body was not among the dead.
Ships would find a few more bodies in the following weeks, but none were Archie Butt.
He was never found.
Three weeks after the disaster, fifteen hundred people attended Archie’s memorial service in Washington.
As Taft began his eulogy, he was overcome with tears and could only manage a few words:
“The life of the President is rather isolated, and those appointed to live with him come much closer to him than anyone else.
“The bond is very close…
“I cannot turn around in my room without expecting to see his smiling face.”
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I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
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