Voices from the Titanic (23 page)

I watched the lowering of the boat in which my wife and child were until it was safely launched on an even keel, and I remained on the starboard side of the ship where the boats with the odd numbers from one to fifteen were being prepared for dropping over the side.

The thing that impressed me was that there was not sufficient men to launch the boats and, as a matter of fact, when the ship went down there was still one boat on the davits and one on the deck.

The peculiar part of the whole rescue question was that the first boats had no more than thirty passengers, with four seamen to row, while the latter boats averaged from forty to fifty, with hardly one person aboard who knew how to move an oar.

At this time the
Titanic
had a slight list to port, but just after the collision Captain Smith, coming hurriedly up and inquiring what the list was and finding it 18 degrees to starboard, said, ‘My God!'

I waited until what I thought was the end. I certainly saw no signs of any women or children on deck when I was told to take a seat in boat No. 13. When lowered we nearly came abreast of the three-foot stream that the condenser pumps were still sending out from the ship's side. We cried out and the flow halted. I cannot imagine how that was done.

In my boat when we found ourselves afloat, we also found that the four oars were secured with strands of tarred rope. No man in the crowd had a pocket knife, but one had sufficient strength in his fingers to tear open one of the strands. That was the only way in which we got our boat far enough away from the
Titanic
's side to escape the volume of the condenser pumps.

Here is another thing that I want to emphasize; only one of the boats set adrift from the vessel's side had a lantern. We had to follow the only boat that had one, and if it had not been for that solitary lantern possibly many other boats might have drifted away and gone down.

To show how lightly even the executive officers of the ship took the matter of the collision is proven by the fact that the officer in charge of the boat in which my wife was saved refused to let his men row more than half a mile from the
Titanic
because he would soon have orders to come back.

We saw the sinking of the vessel. The lights continued burning all along its starboard side until the moment of its downward plunge. After that a series of terrific explosions occurred, I suppose either from the boilers or weakened bulkheads.

And then we just rowed about until dawn when we caught sight of the port light of the
Carpathia
, and knew that we were saved.

If a sea had been running I do not see how many of the small boats would have lived. For instance, on my boat there were neither one officer or a seaman. The only men at the oars were stewards who could no more row than I could serve a dinner.

While order prevailed until the last lifeboat had been lowered, hell prevailed when the steerage passengers, who had been kept
below by the officers with their revolvers pointed at them to prevent them from making their way to the upper deck, came up. Many of them had knives, revolvers and clubs and sought to fight their way to the two unlaunched, collapsible boats. Many of these were shot by the officers.

Only one of the rafts floated, and even that did not float above the water's edge. From forty to fifty persons who had jumped overboard, clambered aboard it and stood upon it, locked arm and arm together until it was submerged to a depth of at least eighteen inches. They all tried to hold together, but when the
Carpathia
's boat reached them, there were only sixteen left.

The most horrible part of the story is that statement that several persons in the lifeboats saw, when the
Titanic
took her final plunge, that her four great smokestacks sucked up and carried down in their giant maws dozens of the third-class passengers, then huddled together on the forward upper deck.

(
San Francisco Bulletin
, 20 April 1912)

I was asleep when the cessation of the engines woke me. I heard no crash, but the engines were going full speed astern, and I knew something was wrong. I got up and went upstairs, but as there was no commotion I went back and dressed. A few minutes later a messenger came down and said we all had to leave our cabins, that all had to be served with lifebelts, and the cabins were to be locked. I assisted in getting up some provisions and when I got on deck I saw they were preparing to lower the boats. Though placed on the boat deck, the provisions were never used.

Mr Murdoch was in charge of my side of the ship – the starboard – and he directed the getting away of the boats without confusion. I helped to lower the boats – all the odd numbers were on my side – and I was told to get in No. 15 as one of the crew. She was the last of the starboard boats to go down from the davits. The other fellows who were not wanted to man the boats watched us. They were standing by with lifebelts on.

Before we left the ship there were several appeals as to whether there were more women and children, but none came. I saw women refuse to leave their husbands, and some decided to stand by the ship, evidently under the impression that she would not sink.

We loaded down to the gunwales and we could pull just about half a stroke. When we were being lowered away we nearly came down on No. 13 boat, which was in some difficulty in consequence of coming in front of an aperture through which water was being pumped. We shouted to the men above, ‘Hold on,' and they did. I tell you, there were cool heads above, although they knew the last boats were leaving them.

We were five or six hundred yards away from her when she went. Her propellers were far above water. Just before she was lost sight of, there was a rumbling, and I believe the boilers and engines must have broken away and crashed through the forward bulkheads. In my opinion every one of the engine room staff and firemen of the watch on duty must have been lost. There were some brave men down there that night. They kept the lights going until the vessel was under water abaft the bridge. We watched the lights go out section by section as she went down by the bows.

The worst part of the disaster was just after the ship went down. The groans were awful, and of course we could do nothing. I shall never forget it.

Some of my greatest friends have gone down. Many of us have been a lifetime together, and I feel the pick of the White Star fleet has been lost. During most of my service I have been on ships
with Captain Smith, starting when he was a junior officer. A better man never walked a deck. His crew knew him to be a good, kind-hearted man, and we looked upon him as a sort of father.

(
St Ives Times
, 3 May 1912)

My husband was by my side in an instant, and all in our night-dresses made our way to the deck to see what had happened. There was no panic, no cries, just orderly procession to learn the cause of the shock and see if there was any danger – none of us believed there really was.

With a mother's instinct, I clasped my sleeping baby to my breast and took him with me. Little Lillian followed, while my three older boys clung to their father. On deck, we found them lowering the boats and as we were near where one was being manned, with others I was told to get in. I did not want to leave my husband and children, but he said it was all right. He would come down with the boys after me, that it was only for a few minutes till they shifted the ship and then we would all be back again.

I had no clothing on to speak of and the night was bitter cold. A man from the steerage took off his coat and wrapped it around little Felix, my baby. Looking far up, I saw my husband with six-year-old Lillian in his arms. He cried out to a man in the boat with me and dropped Lillian over to him. He caught her and placed her by my side.

‘Now you come,' I cried, ‘with the boys.' But he shook his head. We pulled away. As the water came between us and the
Titanic
I still saw him standing there by the rail. Farther and farther we moved away and soon he was blotted out – but there at the rail I shall always see him, as I did in the last few minutes. There at the
rail with my three grown boys, hand in hand, smiling sweetly at me to the last.

Oh, the long hours before we were taken aboard the
Carpathia
. Thinly clad as we were, we suffered from the cold. Only the baby, wrapped in a passenger's coat, was warm. Lillian cried with the pain. She was nearly frozen when we set foot upon the steamer that picked us up, but thank God they are both well now and I still have them to live for.

I expected to find my husband and the boys on the
Carpathia
, but they were not there. Throughout the day I lived in hope that he would be picked up, and even when we docked I expected to see him standing on the pier to meet me.

There was a boy saved just the age of one of mine, who was as gallant as any man. He was Cervine Swensen, a lad of fourteen. He was all alone on the
Titanic
, travelling to his father who lives somewhere in the west. He made his way by himself to the upper decks soon after the crash came and climbed into one of the boats.

When we were on the
Carpathia
he told us that he had no one to look out for him, and he thought he had better look out for himself. His mother, he said, had told him when he kissed her goodbye in Sweden that if anything happened to run to the boats, so he did.

Then he added that he hoped he didn't prevent some woman from being saved for he knew his mother would want to do that first in spite of what she had told him.

(
Boston Post
, 20 April 1912)

I herded five boats together. I was in No. 14, then I had 10, 12, collapsible D and one other boat (No. 4), and made them tie up. I waited until the yells and shrieks had subsided for the people to thin out, and then I deemed it safe for me to go amongst the wreckage. So I transferred all my passengers, somewhere about fifty-three, from my boat and equally distributed them among my other four boats. Then I asked for volunteers to go with me to the wreck, and it was at this time that I found the Italian. He came aft and had a shawl over his head, and I suppose he had skirts. Anyhow, I pulled the shawl off his face and saw he was a man. He was in a great hurry to get into the other boat and I got hold of him and pitched him in the boat because he was not worth being handled better.

Then I went off and rowed to the wreckage and around the wreckage, and picked up four people alive. But one died, and that was a Mr Hoyt, of New York. It took all the boat's crew to pull this gentleman into the boat, because he was an enormous man, and I suppose he had been soaked fairly well with water, and when we picked him up he was bleeding from the mouth and from the nose. So we did get him on board and I propped him up at the stern of the boat. We took his collar off and loosened his shirt so as to give him every chance to breathe, but unfortunately he died. I suppose he was too far gone when we picked him up. But the other three survived.

(US Inquiry, 24 April 1912)