Voices from the Titanic (22 page)

There was only one male passenger in our boat, and that was a Frenchman who jumped in, and we could not find him. He got under the thwart and mixed with the women.

We rowed away from the ship about a quarter of a mile, then we rested on our oars according to orders. After the ship was gone down, Officer Lowe came up with us with his boat, and transferred some of his people into ours so that he would have a clear boat to go around to look for the people who were floating in the water. We had close on sixty then. Mr Lowe told us to lie on our oars and keep together until he came back to us.

While Mr Lowe was gone I heard shouts. Of course I looked around, and I saw a boat in the way that appeared to be like a funnel. We started to back away then. We thought it was the top of the funnel. I put my head over the gunwale and looked along the water's edge and saw some men on a raft. Then I heard two whistles blown.

I sang out, ‘Aye, aye. I am coming over,' and we pulled over
and found it was not a raft exactly, but an overturned boat. Mr Lightoller was there on that boat and I think the wireless operator (Harold Bride) was on there too. We took them on board the boat and we shared the amount of room that was there. They were all wet through. They had been in the water.

Mr Lightoller took charge of us and sighted the
Carpathia
's lights. Then we started heading for that. We had to row a tidy distance to the
Carpathia
because there were boats ahead of us and we had a boat in tow, besides all the people we had aboard.

(US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

Although the passengers were being taken off in the lifeboats, I did not think the
Titanic
was going to sink. It was so big, so magnificent, that I did not think it possible. I had gone to my state room and it was just before the last of twelve lifeboats put off that one of the young men in my party rushed to my state room and told me to hurry on deck, that the ship was going down.

I reached the deck with him just in time to get into the boat before it was lowered from the davits. I recall that the officer on deck shouted to the seaman in charge of the lifeboat to pull away quickly, that the
Titanic
was going down, and the suction would pull us under. A man jumped from an upper deck and landed in our boat just as we pulled away.

We had just moved a few yards from the giant ship when she was broken by the explosion of her boilers and sank in two sections. The suction did pull us back towards the great hole in the water the ship left as she plunged. But we kept afloat, a frail craft loaded with women and children, with the exception of the seaman in charge and the man who had jumped.

The greatest horror of the experience was the eight hours we spent floating about until we were picked up by the
Carpathia
. At first the sea was smooth as glass but it was literally dotted with
human forms swimming, clinging to wreckage, fighting to climb into the lifeboats. Most of them were lost.

Towards morning the wind freshened, and the boats, which had been lashed together, tossed dangerously and crashed against one another, so they were cut apart. Then the lifeboats separated and drifted in all directions.

For my part, I began to realize that I had lost nothing compared to others, who had been compelled to see their relatives and friends go down with the
Titanic
. There was a Frenchwoman there, too, who was very much possessed. I helped the seaman with the oars and did what I could to comfort the others.

Towards morning we came upon one of the collapsible canvas boats, in a sinking condition, with about twenty men on it. They were huddled together, stiff and cold, absolutely helpless. In their midst was an apparent millionaire, dressed in evening clothes and a fur coat and wearing a life preserver. He had been to a gay party in the first cabin the night before and was gloriously intoxicated. He did not seem to realize the situation and was having the time of his life.

I helped the seamen pull those twenty men into our boat, which already had more than 30 in it. We had to pile them on the bottom of the boat, like so many sacks of flour, because they were unable to do anything to help themselves. The boat was very much overloaded when the task was finished. I took off my coat and gave it to one man – I had two coats and could spare one. One of those men was virtually dead when we pulled him into our boat. Seven of them died from exposure.

It was the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. The sun came up like a great ball of fire, casting its rays on a large iceberg behind us, causing the berg to glisten like gold. And then, far off in the distance, we saw smoke, thin and indistinct at first, but gradually coming nearer. Then we made out what it was. It was a ship, answering the SOS call. It was the
Carpathia
. To me, and I guess to all of the others in that boat, that was the most wonderful ship in the world.

Then our hearts sank with terrible fear as the ship disappeared. We were sure we were lost. But it came into view again and hope revived. Several times it did that. We did not know at that time that the
Carpathia
was steaming about the ocean, picking up the survivors from the different lifeboats that had been so widely scattered.

It finally came to our boat and we were lifted on deck. They used ropes with a seat on it for the adults. The children were pulled up in rope baskets. We were given every care on the
Carpathia
, and it must have been a task for that ship to get us all back to New York, for the
Carpathia
is a small boat and was greatly overcrowded.

I got to A deck and went through the door. I went out on to the open deck and along to No. 9 boat. It was just being filled with women and children, and I assisted. I saw that lowered away and went along to No. 11 boat. After that was lowered away with women and children, I went to No. 13 boat. I saw that about half filled with women and children. They said: ‘A few of you men get in here.' There were about nine to a dozen men there, passengers and crew. I saw Mr Washington Dodge there, asking where his wife and child were. He said they had gone away in one of the boats. He was standing well back from the boat, and I said: ‘You had better get in here, then.' I got behind him and pushed him, and I followed.

After I got in, there was a rather big woman came along, and we helped her in the boat. She was crying all the time, saying: ‘Don't put me in the boat – I've never been in an open boat in my life.' I said: ‘You've got to go, so you may as well keep quiet.' Then a small child rolled in a blanket was thrown into the boat to
me, and I caught it. The woman that brought it along got into the boat afterwards. We left about three or four men on the deck, at the rail, and they went along to No. 15 boat.

The boat was lowered away until we got nearly to the water. Then two or three of us noticed a large discharge of water coming from the ship's side. The hole was about two feet wide and about a foot deep, a solid mass of water coming out from the hole. I realized that if the boat was lowered down straight away the boat would be swamped and we would all be thrown into the water. We shouted for the boat to be stopped from being lowered, and it was.

We got oars and pushed it off from the side of the ship and the next I knew we were in the water free from this discharge. In the meantime we were drifting a little aft and another boat was being lowered immediately upon us, about two feet over our heads. We all shouted again, and again they stopped lowering the other boat.

(US Inquiry, 27 April 1912)

All this time there was no trace of any disorder, panic or rush to the boats, and no scenes of women sobbing hysterically, such as one generally pictures as happening at such times; every one seemed to realize so slowly that there was imminent danger. When it was realized that we might all be presently in the sea, with nothing but our life belts to support us until we were picked up by passing steamers, it was extraordinary how calm every one was and how completely self-controlled.

One by one the boats were filled with women and children, lowered and rowed away into the night. Presently the word went
round among the men, ‘the men are to be put into the boats on the starboard side.' I was on the port side, and most of the men walked across the deck to see if this was so. I remained where I was, and presently heard the call: ‘Any more ladies?' Looking over the side of the ship, I saw the boat, No. 13, swinging level with B deck, half full of ladies. Again the call was repeated: ‘Any more ladies?' I saw none come on and then one of the crew looked up and said: ‘Any ladies on your deck, sir?' ‘No,' I replied. ‘Then you had better jump.'

I dropped in and fell in the bottom, as they cried ‘lower away'. As the boat began to descend, two ladies were pushed hurriedly through the crowd on B deck and heaved over into the boat, and a baby of ten months passed down after them. Down we went, the crew calling to those lowering which end to keep level. ‘Aft,' ‘stern', ‘both together', until we were some ten feet from the water, and here occurred the only anxious moment we had during the whole of our experience from leaving the deck to reaching the
Carpathia
. Immediately below our boat was the exhaust of the condensers, a huge stream of water pouring all the time from the ship's side just above the water line. It was plain we ought to be quite a way from this not to be swamped by it when we touched water. We had no officer aboard, nor petty officer or member of the crew to take charge. So one of the stokers shouted: ‘Someone find the pin which releases the boat from the ropes and pull it up.' No one knew where it was. We felt as well as we could on the floor and sides, but found nothing, and it was hard to move among so many people – we had sixty or seventy on board.

Down we went and presently floated with our ropes still holding us, the exhaust washing us away from the side of the vessel and the swell of the sea urging us back against the side again. The result of all these forces was an impetus which carried us parallel to the ship's side and directly under boat No. 14, which had filled rapidly with men and was coming down on us in a way that threatened to submerge our boat. ‘Stop lowering 14,' our crew shouted, and the crew of No. 14, now only twenty feet above,
shouted the same. But the distance to the top was some seventy feet and the creaking pulleys must have deadened all sound to those above, for down it came – fifteen feet, ten feet, five feet, and a stoker and I reached up and touched her swinging above our heads. The next drop would have brought it on to our heads, but just before it dropped another stoker sprang to the ropes with his knife. ‘One,' I heard him say; ‘two' as his knife cut through the pulley ropes, and the next moment the exhaust steam had carried us clear, while boat 14 dropped into the space we had the moment before occupied, our gunwales almost touching.

We drifted away easily as the oars were got out and headed directly away from the ship. The crew seemed to me to be mostly cooks in white jackets, two to an oar, with a stoker at the tiller. The captain-stoker told us that he had been on the sea twenty-six years and had never seen such a calm night on the Atlantic. As we rowed away from the
Titanic
we looked back from time to time to watch it, and a more striking spectacle it was not possible for anyone to see. In the distance it looked an enormous length, its great bulk outlined in black against the starry sky, every port-hole and saloon blazing with light. It was impossible to think anything could be wrong with such a leviathan were it not for that ominous tilt downward in the bow, where the water was by now up to the lowest row of portholes. Presently about 2 a.m., as near as I can remember, we observed it settling very rapidly, with the bow and bridge completely under water, and concluded it was now only a question of minutes before it went; and so it proved.

It slowly tilted straight on end, with the stern vertically upward, and as it did, the lights in the cabins and saloons, which had not flickered for a moment since we left, died out, came on again for a single flash, and finally went altogether. To our amazement the
Titanic
remained in that upright position, bow down, for a time which I estimate as five minutes, while we watched at least 150 feet of the
Titanic
towering above the level of the sea and looming black against the sky. Then the ship dived beneath the waters.

And then, with all these, there fell on the ear the most appalling noise that human being ever listened to – the cries of hundreds of our fellow beings struggling in the icy cold water, crying for help with a cry that we knew could not be answered. We longed to return and pick up some of those swimming, but this would have meant swamping our boat and loss of life to all of us.

Our rescuer showed up in a few hours, and as it swung round we saw its cabins all alight and knew it must be a large steamer. It was now motionless, and we had to row to it. Just then day broke, a beautiful quiet dawn with faint pink clouds just above the horizon, and a new moon whose crescent just touched the waters. The passengers, officers and crew gave up gladly their state rooms, clothing and comforts for our benefit, all honour to them.

(
New York World,
19 April 1912)