Voices from the Titanic (27 page)

When we got on deck we were told to pass through the dining room to a ladder that was placed against the side of the cabins and led to the upper deck.

We were put through the portholes into the boats, and the boat that I was in had a foot of water in it. As soon as we were in we were told to sit down on the bottom. In that position we were so low that we could not see over the gunwale.

Once the boat had started away, some of the women stood up, and the seamen, with their hands full with the oars, simply put their feet on them and forced them back into the sitting position.

We had not got far away by the time the ship went down, and after that there were men floating in the water all around, and seven of these were picked up by us in the hours that followed, between that and daybreak. Some of these seven were already mad with exposure, and babbled gibberish and kept trying to get up and overturn the boat. The other men had to sit upon them to hold them down.

Two of the women picked up were so overcome with the cold of the water that they died before we reached the
Carpathia
and their dead bodies were taken aboard. One woman, who spoke a tongue none of us could understand, was picked up by the boat and believed that her children were lost. She was entirely mad. When her children were brought to her on the
Carpathia
she was wild with joy and lay down on the children on the floor trying to cover them with her body like a wild beast protecting its young, and they had to take her children away from her for the time to save them from being suffocated.

(
New York World
, 20 April 1912)

Mrs Astor, too, was in our boat. We already knew her, that is, we knew who she was. She was crying and her face was bleeding from a cut. One of the oars struck her somehow. There was a little bride in our boat with her husband. She clung to him and cried that she would not go and leave him, so the officers finally pushed them both in together. There were about thirty-five in all in our boat, mainly from the steerage.

We had gone back for our lifebelts before we got in, as the officers told us to do. I got mine on wrong side before and the officer changed it. That was the reason, perhaps, why some people couldn't sit down with them on. And we went back still another time and got some heavy steamer rugs, two of them, as the officers said it was going to be very cold on the water and we might have to stay out several hours. Even then we didn't expect the
Titanic
to go down, you see. The rugs were more than we needed, and we gave them to a poor woman who had on only a nightgown and a waterproof coat and her baby was in a nightgown only. That poor little baby! It slept through everything!

After we had pushed away a little we looked at the steamer and I said to mother, ‘It surely is sinking. See, the water is up to those portholes!' And very soon it went under. To the last those poor musicians stood there, playing ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee'.

We had only one or two in the boat who knew anything about rowing and they kept turning it this way and that and again and again it seemed as if we might be capsized. But we did get away from the
Titanic
a little distance before it went down.

We picked up eight men from the water, all third-class passengers, I think. The water was very still and the sky – so many stars! Nothing but the sea and the sky. You can't think how it felt out there alone by ourselves in the Atlantic. And there were so many shooting stars; I never saw so many in all my life. You know they say when you see a shooting star someone is dying. We thought of that, for there were so many dying, not far from us.

It was so long, such a long, long night. At last there was a little faint light. The first thing we saw we thought was one of the
Titanic
's funnels sticking out of the water. But it wasn't; it was the raft, the collapsible boat that didn't open, with twelve men on it, standing close together. They came up to us and demanded that we take them. But we thought they ought to say who they were; we were already pretty full and the water was getting rough. But they said they would jump in anyhow, so we let them come aboard, as we knew that jumping would surely capsize us. They
were all stewards and waiters, men of the service of the
Titanic
. After we took them in it got still rougher, so that we sometimes shipped water. In fact, there was nearly a foot of water in the bottom of the boat and we hadn't a basin, or dipper, not so much as a cup to dip it out with. Meanwhile the waves were rising and if we hadn't been picked up when we were, another half hour would surely have been the end of us.

I went to the bridge and looked over and saw the water climbing upon the bridge. I went and looked over the starboard side, and everything was black. I went over to the port side and saw a boat off the port quarter, and I went along the port side and got up the after boat davits and slid down the fall and swam to the boat about 200 yards. When I reached the boat I tried to get hold of the grab-line on the bows. I pulled my head above the gunwale, and I said, ‘Give us a hand in, Jack.' Foley (a storekeeper) was in the boat. He said, ‘Is that you, Sam?' I said, ‘Yes,' and him and the women and children pulled me in the boat.

After the ship sank we pulled back and picked up seven of the crew. We made for the light of another lifeboat and kept in company with her. Then day broke and we saw two more lifeboats. We pulled towards them and we all made fast by the painter. Then we helped with Boat No. 12 to take off the people on an overturned boat.

(US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

I went to my station, which was Boat No. 1, on the starboard side. I saw that lowered before I myself got there – I did not get into it as there was no room. I went over to the port side and assisted the ladies and children in getting into the boats and finally I was working on deck until the last collapsible boat was launched.

We launched the boat parallel with the ship's side, and Mr Lightoller and myself loaded the boat. When the boat was full, Mr Lightoller was in the boat with me. He said he would step out himself and make room for somebody else, and he stepped back on board the ship and asked if I could row. I told him I could, and I went away in that boat. We could not get the boat lowered from one end. The forward part of the boat was lowered, but there was nobody there to lower the after end. Mr Lightoller stepped from the boat aboard the ship and did it himself.

We lowered away and got to the water, and the ship was then at a heavy list to port. We got clear of the ship and rowed out some little distance from her, and finally we all got together, about seven boats of us, and I remember quite distinctly Officer Lowe telling us to tie up to each other, as we would be better seen and could keep better together. Then Officer Lowe, having a full complement of passengers in his boat, distributed among us what he had, our boat taking ten. We had twenty-five already, and that number made thirty-five.

Officer Lowe then returned with his crew to back to the ship to pick up all he could. We hung around then until dawn, until we
sighted the
Carpathia
, pulling now and again. We were towed up by Mr Lowe with a sail to the
Carpathia
, not having enough men in the boat to pull. There was only the quartermaster Bright and myself, two firemen, and about four gentlemen passengers, and the balance were women and children. Bright took the tiller. He was using an oar to steer by. I myself pulled with all my might. The passengers were all strangers to me. There were a number of third-class passengers, that were Syrians, in the bottom of the boat, chattering the whole night in their strange language.

Greatly to my surprise, when I got on the
Carpathia
I saw Officer Lightoller coming in the following afternoon. When he stepped from the collapsible boat, I was sure he had gone down on the ship.

There was no panic on board the ship because everybody had full confidence that the ship would float. I had great respect and great regard for Chief Officer Murdoch, and I was walking along the deck forward with him, and he said, ‘I believe she is gone, Hardy.' That is the only time I thought she might sink – when he said that. That was a good half hour before my boat was lowered.

(US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

Mr Woolner and I went to a lower deck. It was deserted, but as we wished to find out what had happened we went down a deck lower. Then for the first time we realized the seriousness of that twisting which had rent the ship nearly asunder. We saw the water pouring into the hull and where we finally stood water rose to our knees. Woolner and I decided to get out as quickly as we could and as we turned to rush upward we saw sliding down
the portside of the drowning ship a collapsible lifeboat. Most of those it contained were from the steerage.

‘Let's not take any chances,' I shouted to Woolner, and as it came nearly opposite us, swinging in and out slowly, we jumped and fortunately landed in it. I should say we jumped at least ten feet clear of the boat. The boat teetered a bit and then swiftly shot down to the water. A second later a fat man bobbed up in the water in front of the boat, and he was also dragged in. Woolner and I took oars and started to pull with all our might to get from the ship before she sank. We could see some gathered in the steerage, huddled together, as we pulled away, and then cries of fear came to us.

We hardly reached a point 100 yards away from the
Titanic
when we saw all the lights go out in a flash. Thirty seconds later there was a roar, and we saw the big boat settle a second and then plunge straight down head foremost. It was quiet for a moment, and then we saw the people who had been on the decks bob up, and there was the most terrible cry that I have ever heard in my life. It was so terribly sudden, and then there was a vast quiet, during which we shivered over the oars and the women cried hysterically. Some of them tried to jump overboard and we had to struggle in the shaky boat to hold them until they quieted down.

For about two hours we just rowed around. We rolled badly at times, but it didn't seem dangerous. Some of the people didn't have any clothes. There were women from the first and second cabins and from the steerage in our boat. About 4 o'clock in the morning we saw the lights of a big boat coming. It was the
Carpathia
. The wind was rising then and it was very cold. For a time it looked as if they wouldn't see us, but they finally did and we were taken aboard.

(US press, 19 April 1912)

I said to Steffanson: ‘There is nothing more for us to do. Let us go down to A deck again.' And we went down again, but there was
nobody there that time at all. It was perfectly empty the whole length. It was absolutely deserted, and the electric lights along the ceiling of A deck were beginning to turn red, just a glow, a red sort of glow. So I said to Steffanson: ‘This is getting rather a tight corner. I do not like being inside these closed windows. Let us go out through the door at the end.' And as we went out through the door, the sea came onto the deck at our feet.

We hopped up onto the gunwale, preparing to jump out into the sea, because if we had waited a minute longer we should have been boxed in against the ceiling. And as we looked out we saw this collapsible, the last boat on the port side, being lowered right in front of our faces. It was about nine feet out. It was full up to the bow, and I said to Steffanson: ‘There is nobody in the bows. Let us make a jump for it. You go first.' He jumped out and tumbled head over heels into the bow, and I jumped too, and hit the gunwale with my chest, which had on this life preserver, of course, and I sort of bounced off the gunwale and caught the gunwale with my fingers, and slipped off backwards. As my legs dropped down, I felt that they were in the sea.

I pulled myself up out of the water and then I hooked my right heel over the gunwale. By this time Steffanson was standing up, and he caught hold of me and lifted me in. Then we looked over into the sea and saw a man swimming in the sea just beneath us, and pulled him in.

At dawn, Officer Lowe transferred five or six from his boat, No. 14, to ours, which brought us down very close to the water. At daylight we saw a great many icebergs of different colours, as the sun struck them. Some looked white, some looked blue, some looked mauve and others were dark grey. There was one double-toothed one that looked to be of good size; it must have been about 100ft high.

(US Inquiry, 29 April 1912)