Maj. Archibald Butt, former Telegraph reporter and editor, aide to presidents, was hailed as hero on the Titanic
As the RMS Titanic sank slowly into the icy Atlantic, a panic-stricken man rushed toward a lifeboat loaded with women and children, only to be stopped in his tracks by Maj. Archibald “Archie” Butt.
Butt, chief military aide to the president, snatched the man by his neck, slamming his head against a rail, then gave him a stern warning.
“Sorry,” Butt said. “Women will be attended to first or I’ll break every bone in your body.”
That account given to The New York Times by survivor Renee Harris was one of several praising Butt’s actions on the doomed ship.
“When the time came for it, he was a man to be feared,” Harris said. “He was a soldier to the last.”
As reporter and then editor for The Macon Telegraph and other newspapers in the South, Butt wrote headlines. After the Titanic disaster, he made the headlines across the country, hailed as a hero whose calm and courage helped save lives on the ship.
Butt “showed men how to behave” when women and children were being loaded onto lifeboats, Harris said.
“You would have thought he was at a White House reception, so cool and calm was he. ... A dozen or so women became hysterical when something connected to a lifeboat went wrong. Major Butt stepped to them and said, ‘Really you must not act like that. We are all going to see you through this thing.’ ”
Born in Augusta, Butt graduated from the University of the South. After a career in newspapers, he joined the military as a volunteer during the Spanish-American War. He served in the Philippines and then Cuba before being named chief military aide for President Theodore Roosevelt.
When William Howard Taft was elected president, he asked Butt to stay on. Tall and distinguished-looking, he was often seen and photographed at the side of both presidents, dressed in full uniform.
In 1912, concerned about Butt’s health, his close friend, artist and writer Francis Millet, reportedly asked the president to order Butt to take a vacation. He had refused to take time off on his own.
Butt’s celebrity was apparent even before the Titanic. When he and Millet boarded a ship bound for Europe, Butt’s attire garnered media attention as a New York Times headline declared “Major Butt’s Suit A Wonder.”
The Times article described in detail the major’s copper-colored Norfolk jacket with red porcelain buttons, matching trousers and lavender tie. He also wore a derby hat and patent leather shoes with white tops.
His getup “won the admiration of every passenger on the deck of the liner, including a deaf and dumb Greek sponge merchant from Patras,” The Times reported. “His cambric handkerchief was tucked up his left sleeve like Kipling’s pukka Indian soldier man.”
Butt’s personal life also was fodder for reporters. When leaving for the Europe trip, the 46-year-old bachelor was asked if rumors that he was engaged to marry a “Miss Dorothy Williams” were true.
Butts replied, “I wish it were. This bachelorhood is a miserable existence.”
While in Europe, Butt visited Pope Pius X at the Vatican, stirring much speculation about the true nature of his trip. When he and Millet decided to return home, they booked first-class tickets on the Titanic’s maiden voyage.
Butt was said to have dined with the ship’s captain, Edward Smith, that last night. After the ship collided with the iceberg that sunk the believed-to-be unsinkable vessel, Smith reportedly confided to Butt that the Titanic was doomed.
Accounts from survivors say that Butt sprang into action and began seeing to the safety of the women and children on board.
Col. Archibald Gracie, who survived by clinging to a makeshift raft and later wrote a book about the Titanic, shared this account with The Washington Times, which ceased publication in 1939:
“My last view of Major Butt -- one that will live forever in my memory -- was with that brave soldier coolly aiding the officers of the boat in directing the disembarkation of the women from that doomed ship. The recollection of him that is seared into my very brain is impressed by his last assertion of that manliness and chivalry so peculiarly his, that stately demeanor so well known to all Washingtonians. He died like the soldier and brave man he was.”
President Taft, upon hearing that his aide and close friend had not survived, is said to have wept. At a memorial service, the president said Butt had become “like a son or a brother.”
“If Archie could have selected a time to die,” the president told mourners, “he would have chosen the one God gave him.”
Butt was not the only passenger with Macon ties aboard the ship. A Telegraph article in the days that followed the disaster noted that magazine writer Jacques Futrelle, whose mother had lived in Macon, also “perished when the leviathan went to the bottom.”
The article also corrects a report the day before that future mayor Luther Williams and his wife had died on the ship.
“Mr. Williams very cheerfully denied the rumor,” the story read.
The disaster that claimed more than 1,500 lives dominated headlines in the days and weeks that followed. Several newspapers published sensationalized accounts attributed to Marie Young, former music instructor to Theodore Roosevelt’s daughter Ethel, as the last person to see Butt alive.
Those stories gave romanticized narratives of Butt wrapping Young in a blanket and lowering her into a lifeboat. She reportedly told reporters of Butt’s last words: “‘Goodbye, Miss Young,’ he said, bravely and smilingly. ‘Luck is with you. Will you kindly remember me to the folks back home?’ ”
Young later wrote to President Taft that the supposed interview was “the invention of an officious reporter.”
Those articles were not the only works of fiction featuring Butt. He was a character in the time-travel novel, “From Time to Time,” in which he is commissioned by President Taft and former President Roosevelt to travel to Europe on a top-secret mission to stop World War I. Butt acquires the written assurances from leaders that would prevent the war and, aboard the Titanic, is warned by a time traveler that the ship will sink. The time traveler attempts to direct Butt to a lifeboat that will allow men to board, but the major refuses to leave the ship with women and children in danger.
History suggests that work of fiction accurately portrays Butt’s nature. Author and Titanic survivor Helen Churchill Candee told the Washington Herald that Butt was “one of God’s own noblemen.”
“I saw him working desperately to get the women and children into the boats,” Candee said.
To contact writer Rodney Manley, call 744-4623.
This story was originally published April 14, 2012 at 9:37 PM with the headline "Maj. Archibald Butt, former Telegraph reporter and editor, aide to presidents, was hailed as hero on the Titanic ."