Voices from the Titanic (30 page)

We walked along from one lifeboat to another, but officers and crew were keeping the men back and loading the women and children. I noticed a number of boats that had been loaded on the upper deck stop at the second deck to take on women there. In many of these boats were men, but the officers made them get out and give place to the women.

The lifeboats all gone, it looked to us as if we were doomed to perish with the ship, when a collapsible lifeboat was discovered. This boat would hold about fifty people and we had considerable trouble getting it loose from its fastenings. The boat was on the second deck and the ship settled the question of its launching as the water suddenly came up over the deck and the boat floated.

There must have been fully 150 people swimming around or clinging to the boat and we feared it would capsize or sink. We had no oars, or anything else to handle the boat with and were at the mercy of the waves, but the sea was calm. There was no way to sit down in the boat and we stood up knee-deep in ice-cold water while those on the edges pushed the frantic people in the water back to their fates, it being feared that they would doom us all.

The shock of the cold water and the fright caused many to succumb. I do not know how many died on that lifeboat. One big Swede was kept busy throwing the corpses overboard as we desired to make the boat as light as possible to increase its buoyancy. One woman was stark crazy, her mania taking the form of embracing the men. There were three men insane, but they made no attempt to jump overboard. It seemed to us as if we had been standing up in that boat for a week, when it was in reality only about six hours. I was numbed with the cold. I had no feeling in my hands or feet, as I did not put on my shoes when I left my room, although I had on my overcoat. It could not have been twenty minutes after we launched our life raft from the deck of the
Titanic
that the big liner sank.

When we were picked up by the
Carpathia
there were only twelve of us left. The lifeboats got pretty well separated during the night, as some left from the port side and some from the starboard side of the ship, pulling away in different directions.

The
Carpathia
remained on the scene for about two hours, picking up the lifeboats and moving slowly about among the wreckage and the ice. It appeared to us as if the ocean was carpeted with dead.

I saw Captain Smith only once during the voyage and that was the day before the accident. He came into the third cabin quarters and told some of the crew who had been loafing there to keep out, and threatened to impose a fine of $5 on each member of crew who was found among the passengers.

While I was still on the ship I saw two Swede girls who were in a lifeboat jump overboard when they observed some of their friends who had been left behind. One old man named Lindahl, when he became convinced the boat was sure to sink, said: ‘It's no use trying to get away. I'm an old man and I will not be missed. I will go down to my berth and wait the end.' I guess he did as he disappeared in the direction of the sleeping apartments. One big fellow, also a Swede, became literally paralyzed with fright. He stood with one arm extended like a statue, unable to move a
muscle. I know of one Swedish woman who, with her four children, was lost. Another woman lost her husband, brother, son and uncle. These folks were all steerage passengers. I think there were more of the crew saved than the steerage people.

We in the steerage did not know anything about being among icebergs until the
Titanic
hit one. I lost everything I had. I had about $30 in a suitcase, concealed well, as there had been several robberies among passengers the day before the accident. When we got to New York we got $25 from some relief committee, $5 from a man who was giving away money right and left, and $10 from the Salvation Army. We were also fitted out with clothing. I got a suit of clothes, overcoat and other attire, and a first-class ticket to Burlington, which had been my destination, my ticket having been lost with my other effects.

It was a terrible experience and when I look back at it, I can scarcely believe my good luck in getting away as there were so many chances against me.

(
Burlington Daily Gazette
, 25 April 1912)

I asked my brother-in-law if he could swim and he said no. I asked my cousin if he could swim and he said no. We could see the water coming up, the bow of the ship was going down, and there was a kind of explosion. We could hear the popping and cracking, and the deck raised up and got so steep that the people could not stand on their feet on the deck. So they fell down and slid on the deck into the water right on the ship. We hung on to a rope in one of the davits.

My brother-in-law said to me, ‘We had better jump off or the suction will take us down.' I said, ‘No. We won't jump yet. We might as well stay as long as we can.' It was only about five feet down to the water when we jumped off. It was not much of a jump. My brother-in-law took my hand just as we jumped off,
and my cousin jumped at the same time. When we came into the water, we went under and I swallowed some water. I got a rope tangled around me, and I let loose of my brother-in-law's hand to get away from the rope. I thought then, ‘I am a goner.' But I came on top again, and I was trying to swim. There was a man – lots of them were floating around – and he got me on the neck and pressed me under, trying to get on top of me. I said to him, ‘Let go.' Of course, he did not pay any attention to that, but I got away from him. Then there was another man and he hung on to me for a while, but he let go. Then I swam for about fifteen or twenty minutes. I saw something dark ahead of me. I did not know what it was, but I swam towards that, and it was one of those rafts or collapsible boats. When I got on they did not try to push me off, and they did not do anything for me to get on. All they said was, ‘Don't capsize the boat.' So I hung on to the raft for a little while before I got on. Some of them were trying to get up on their feet. They were sitting down or lying down on the raft. Some of them fell into the water again. Some of them were frozen, and there were two dead that they threw overboard.

(US Inquiry, 3 May 1912)

The crew and passengers had faith in the bulkhead system to save the ship and we were lowering a collapsible boat, all confident the ship would get through, when she took a terrible dip forward and the water rushed up and swept over the deck and into the engine rooms.

The explosions were caused by the rushing-in of the icy water on the boilers. A bundle of deck chairs, roped together, was blown off the deck with me, and struck my back, injuring my spine, but it served as a temporary raft.

The bow went down and I caught the pile of chairs as I was washed up against the rail. Then came the explosions and blew me 15ft.

After the water had filled the forward compartments the ones at the stern could not save her. They did delay the ship's going down. If it wasn't for the compartments hardly anyone would have got away.

The water was too cold for me to swim, and I was hardly more than 100ft away when the ship went down. The suction was not what one would expect and only rocked the water around me. I was picked up after two hours. I have done with the sea.

(
New York World
, 19 April 1912)

Shortly after the lifeboats left, a man jumped overboard. Other men followed. It was like sheep following a leader. I saw one of the stewards shoot a foreigner who tried to press past a number of women and enter a lifeboat.

Captain Smith was washed from the bridge into the ocean. He swam to where a baby was drowning and carried it in his arms while he swam to a lifeboat which was manned by officers of the
Titanic
. He surrendered the baby to them and swam back to the steamer. About the time Captain Smith got back, there was an explosion. The entire ship trembled. I had secured a life preserver and jumped over. I struck a piece of ice and was not injured. I swam about sixty yards from the steamer when there was a series of explosions. I looked back and saw the
Titanic
go down bow first. I was in the water two hours, clinging to a piece of wreckage when I was picked up by a lifeboat.

I was awakened by a strange thumping and pounding from the interior of the steamer, and I didn't know what to make of it. I lit the light and looked at my watch, and saw that the hands pointed to 3.30. Then I heard some people talking outside and saying something about a sinking steamer and icebergs, so I got up and dressed.

At four o'clock I came on deck. Dawn had not begun to break, and the air was terribly cold. The steamer was tearing through the water at a great rate. Up in the bow there was a little crowd of people, and just as I started towards them, two or three of them shouted and pointed straight ahead. When I joined them I saw a little flickering light in the distance. It was that at which they were pointing.

As soon as this light was sighted the
Carpathia
slowed down. Her regular speed is 13 knots an hour, but when our wireless operator learned that the
Titanic
was sinking, her speed was increased by more than one third so that she was making 17 knots an hour. The speed at which she was running was responsible for the thumping and pounding which had awakened me.

Ahead of us, and on every side of us, the water was filled with ice cakes and icebergs. It was so dark at first that I could not see how far away this ice extended. The ship's surgeon who came down and stood beside me just after the light was sighted, said that he had been on the bridge for two hours with the captain and that for every minute of that time, we had been running through ice fields.

As we got nearer and nearer to the little flickering light, the sky began to grow very grey, and we were able to see a little.

The sky got greyer and greyer and finally the east showed a tinge of pink and yellow. Then all of a sudden we saw two little boats among the ice cakes. We looked and looked, and then away
beyond the first two we saw two more. As the day grew brighter and brighter we kept discovering more and more boats, until we had located all of them, scattered ahead of us over two or three square miles of ocean.

The first boat seemed to creep to us and we thought it would never reach us. We didn't know what had happened or how many had been saved or anything at all about the accident; but when the little boat was close up against our side and we could look down into her we knew that the accident had been a terrible one.

The men and women who were huddled into the boat's bottom were only half dressed. Until I saw their faces I never knew what the word ‘haggard' meant. They had been exposed to the biting cold for so many hours that they could scarcely move. Some of them were so frozen that they couldn't even look up or move from the bottom of the boat when it came their turn to come aboard the
Carpathia
.

Our captain had made the sailors get chairs on the ends of ropes and big bags on the ends of ropes and fix them around the rails so that they could be used in unloading the boats. It was lucky that he did, for the poor women were so frozen that when they were helped up from the positions that they had been cramped in for so many hours, they could do nothing except fall back into the bottom of the boat. So the chairs were used to get the women up on deck, and the bags were used for the children.

It was really terrible to see the poor women stagger out of their chairs, and fall into the arms of the people who were so anxious to help them. The experience they had been through was such a horrible one that they were completely dazed by it. I was helping one girl when she was hoisted out of a boat, and she turned her face towards me with a smile, and said in a perfectly unemotional, conversational tone: ‘My husband's drowned, isn't it awful?' There was as much expression in her face and voice as if she had said: ‘I've forgotten my handkerchief. Isn't that terrible?'

The children could not appreciate what they had been through, of course. When the first sack was hoisted on deck we all crowded
around it while it was being opened. When the mouth was finally undone, a little four-year-old boy was blinking at me. We pushed the bag down around his feet, and then we saw that he had a wooden soldier in his hand. He put the head of the wooden soldier in his mouth and sucked it, and didn't make a sound. Poor little boy. He'd lost his father and mother.

Nobody could watch those poor people come aboard without crying. Everyone was crying. I cried fearfully. In fact, I simply howled. Men were crying, too, and they weren't ashamed of it. I saw one sailor carrying deck chairs away from one part of the deck and stacking them up in another. He had seen the women coming aboard and heard them asking for their husbands and fathers and as he carried the chairs down the deck, the great big tears rolled out of his eyes and dropped down on his jersey.

For four hours those little boats were creeping up to our side, and survivors were coming aboard. In one of the boats there was only one man, and he was afraid. He steered the boat and the women rowed. While they rowed the man kept telling them that they would never get away alive. He was a steward. When these women got aboard, their hands were blistered fearfully from swinging the heavy oars for so many hours.

All of us aboard the
Carpathia
either gave our state rooms to the survivors or took them into our cabins. I took in Miss Dorothy Gibson of New York.

I asked her what had happened. In common with almost every survivor she said the shock of hitting the iceberg was so light as to be almost imperceptible. She had just gone down from the deck to her cabin to get an overcoat when it occurred so she went right back on deck again.

Not only Miss Gibson, but many other survivors, told me that many more persons could have been put into the boats. I saw every one of them come up to the side of the
Carpathia
and there were only one or two of them that were really crowded.

(
Boston Post
, 20 April 1912)