Voices from the Titanic (31 page)

At midnight on Sunday, April 14, I was promenading the deck of the
Carpathia
when, hearing eight bells strike, I went below to retire for the night. I had just turned in when an urgent summons came from the chief steward, and I learned that an urgent distress message had been received from the
Titanic
.

We were then about 58 miles to the south-east of her, and Captain A. H. Rostron had already given orders for the
Carpathia
to be turned around and proceed at utmost speed in her direction. The heads of all departments were aroused and every precaution was quietly and quickly made to receive 2000 passengers.

Blankets were placed in readiness, tables laid up, hot soups and consommes, coffee and tea prepared, and the surgeries stocked and staffed. Men were mustered at the boats and given instruction to be in immediate readiness to launch and row to the
Titanic
and bring off all passengers and crew.

Within an hour every possible preparation had been made by the stewards' department, and, to their great credit be it recorded, not a single passenger of the 1000 we were carrying had been aroused. It was now only possible to wait and look for any signals from the distressed vessel. Their wireless had failed some time. We were then forging ahead at the utmost speed that could be got out of our engines, making us about 18 knots per hour as against our usual 13 to 14. No words of praise can be too great for the unsparing efforts of the engineering department and the firemen.

At about a quarter to three we got the first signal, a blue flare on our port bow. Shortly after we sighted our first iceberg, undoubtedly the cause of the disaster, a huge ghostly mass of white looming up through the darkness a few miles distant. A little later we found ourselves in a field of icebergs, large and small, and it became frequently necessary to alter our course.

It was a little before 4 o'clock when we came near enough to discern the first lifeboat, which came alongside at 4.10 a.m. She
was not much more than half-filled with women and children, and was in the charge of an officer, who reported that the ‘unsinkable'
Titanic
had foundered a little more than an hour after striking the iceberg. The survivors were taken aboard and handed over to the care of the medical staff and the stewards, under the perfect control of Chief Steward Hughes.

Day was breaking, and over an area of four miles we were able to see the other boats. We were surrounded by icebergs of all sizes, and three miles to the north was a big field of drift ice dotted with bergs. During the next two or three hours we endured the most heartrending experiences we have ever known. Some of the incidents were almost too pathetic for description.

One woman was heartbroken and uncontrollable. She cried hysterically for her husband, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could be restrained from jumping into the sea to look for him. It was necessary to resort to the subterfuge of a lie, and tell her that her husband was safe before she could be calmed.

A Colonel was brought aboard unconscious. He had been swimming in the icy water for over two hours. His mother was placed in a collapsible boat which was launched only to capsize on reaching the water. Immediately he dived from the ship to his mother's rescue.

He was unable in the darkness to find her, and commenced a frantic search among the bodies and wreckage. One after another the lifeboats endeavoured to take him aboard, but he resisted until the coldness of the water overcame him. He was hauled into a boat just as he was about to sink and join his mother in death. It is doubtful if he will recover. He has spoken to no one. His mother was about to pay a visit to three other of her sons.

Another young woman went down with the
Titanic
rather than desert her dog – a huge St Bernard, and a great favourite on board. When the lifeboats were being launched a seat was prepared for her, but she demanded that the dog be taken also.

This was impossible, human lives being the first consideration, and she was urged to sacrifice the dog and save herself. She refused, and was last seen on the deck of the vessel, clasping her pet to her bosom. Her dead body was afterwards found floating by the side of her dog.

An old lady was bewailing to a steward that she had lost ‘everything'. Indignantly he told her she should thank God that her life was spared, and not at such a time regret the loss of her property. Her reply was pathetic – steward, I have lost everything – my dear husband – and she burst into tears.

About 8 o'clock we had picked up the last boat, and got all the survivors aboard. Two were so exhausted from exposure that they died whilst being brought aboard. These, together with a sailor and steward who had perished at the oars, were buried at 4 o'clock.

The
Carpathia
's passengers behaved splendidly, giving up their cabins voluntarily, and supplying the distressed women with clothes. The captain, officers and crew also gave up their quarters, and did their utmost to alleviate the sufferings of the survivors. The saloons, library, and smoke-rooms were also utilized for sleeping quarters.

(
Daily Sketch
, 6 May 1912)

I was awakened at about half past twelve at night by a commotion on the decks which seemed unusual, but there was no excitement. As the boat was moving I paid little attention to it, and went to sleep again. About three o'clock I again awakened. I noticed that the boat had stopped. I went to the deck. The
Carpathia
had changed its course.

Lifeboats were sighted and began to arrive – and soon, one by one, they drew up to our side. There were sixteen in all, and the transferring of the passengers was most pitiable. The adults were
assisted in climbing the rope ladder by ropes adjusted to their waists. Little children and babies were hoisted to the deck in bags. Some of the boats were crowded, a few were not half full. This I could not understand. Some people were in full evening dress. Others were in their night clothes and were wrapped in blankets. These, with immigrants in all sorts of shapes, were hurried into the saloon indiscriminately for a hot breakfast. They had been in the open boats four and five hours in the most biting air I ever experienced. There were husbands without wives, wives without husbands, parents without children and children without parents. But there was no demonstration. No sobs – scarcely a word spoken. They seemed to be stunned. Immediately after breakfast, divine service was held in the saloon. One woman died in the lifeboat; three others died soon after reaching our deck. Their bodies were buried in the sea at five o'clock that afternoon. None of the rescued had any clothing except what they had on, and a relief committee was formed and our passengers contributed enough for their immediate needs.

When its lifeboats pushed away from the
Titanic
, the steamer was brilliantly lighted, the band was playing and the captain was standing on the bridge giving directions. The bow was well submerged and the keel rose high above the water. The next moment everything disappeared. The survivors were so close to the sinking steamer that they feared the lifeboats would be drawn into the vortex.

On our way back to New York we steamed along the edge of a field of ice which seemed limitless. As far as the eye could see to the north there was no blue water. At one time I counted thirteen icebergs.

(British press, 20 April 1912)

It was almost four o'clock in the morning, dawn was just breaking, when the
Carpathia
's passengers were awakened by the excitement occasioned by coming upon a fleet of life-saving
boats. At that hour the whole sea was one mass of whitened ice. The work of getting the passengers over the side of the
Carpathia
was attended by the most heart-rending scenes. The babies were crying. Many of the women were hysterical, while the men were stolid and speechless. Some of the women were barefooted and without any headgear. The impression of those saved was that the
Titanic
had run across the projecting shelf of the iceberg, which was probably buried in the water, and that the entire bottom of the
Titanic
had been torn off. Shortly afterwards she doubled up in the middle and went down. Most of the passengers did not believe that the boat was going to sink. According to their stories it was fully half an hour before a lifeboat was launched from the vessel. In fact, some of the passengers keenly questioned the wisdom of Captain Smith's orders that they should leave the big ship.

(US press, 20 April 1912)

Just as day broke a tiny craft was sighted rowing towards us and as it came closer we saw women huddled together, the stronger ones manning the oars. The first to come aboard was a nurse maid who had wrapped in a coat an eleven-months-old baby, the only one of a family of five persons to be rescued. The men and women both seemed dazed. Most of them had almost perished with the cold, and some of them who had been literally thrown into the lifeboats perished from exposure.

One of the most harrowing scenes I ever saw was the service of thanksgiving, followed by the prayers for the dead, which took place in the dining saloon of the
Carpathia
. The moans of the women and the cries of little children as their loss was brought home to them were heartrending.

How those who were saved survived the exposure is a miracle. One woman came aboard devoid of underwear, a Turkish
towel wrapped about her waist served as a corset, while an evening wrap was her only protection. Women in evening frocks and white satin slippers and children wrapped in steamer rugs became common sights. Soon the passengers were almost in as bad a plight as the rescued. Trunks were unpacked and clothing distributed right and left. Finally the steamer rugs were ripped apart and sewn into impromptu garments.

Shooting was heard by many in the lifeboats just before the ship took its final plunge, and the opinion of many was that, rather than drown, the men shot themselves.

Mrs Astor was one of the first to come aboard. She was taken at once to the captain's room. Others were distributed among the cabins, the
Carpathia
's passengers sleeping on the floors of the saloons, in the bathrooms, and on the tables throughout the ship in order to let the survivors have as much comfort as the ship afforded. One woman came aboard with a six-month-old baby she had never seen until the moment it was thrust into her arms as she swung into the lifeboat.

I saw sixteen of the
Titanic
boats picked up. The poor women were in a frightful state from exposure and anxiety and all of them were holding to the hope that their male relatives whom they had left behind had been rescued by some miracle after the small boats drew clear of the sinking
Titanic
.

In one of the
Titanic
boats a sailor, one of the
Titanic
crew that was manning one of the boats, was dead from exposure before we picked them up. Later seven of those rescued died aboard the
Carpathia
. Oh, it was terrible! Four of them, I was told, were sailors, overcome by the exposure of that terrible night, and three were passengers. They were all buried at sea. There was no ceremony for any of them that I saw and we knew of their burial only
because we saw the unmistakable canvas sacks dropped into the sea.

(
New York World
, 19 April 1912)

Just as it was about half day we came upon a boat with eighteen men in it but no women. It was not more than a third filled. All the men were able to climb up a Jacob's ladder which we threw over the port side. Between 8.15 and 8.30 we got the last two boats, crowded to the gunwale, almost all the occupants of which were women. After we had got the last load on board the
Californian
came alongside. The captains arranged that we should make straight for New York, while the
Californian
looked around for more boats. We circled round and round and saw all kinds of wreckage. While we were pulling in the boatloads the women were quiet enough, but when it seemed sure that we should not find any more persons alive, then bedlam came. I hope never to go through it again. The way those women took on for the folk they had lost was awful. We could not do anything to quiet them until they cried themselves out.

(British press, 20 April 1912)

At 5.30 Monday morning last our bedroom steward reported that the ship had stopped to rescue the passengers from the
Titanic
, which had sunk the night before. I hurried on deck, saw great icebergs about, and looking over the railing, saw some fifteen rowboats approaching us, full chiefly of women. These were drawn up on board and passed us by, most of them so stiff with cold and wet that they could not walk without being supported.
Soon the tragic news spread among us that some 1,500 people had been drowned, and for the most part only women had been saved.

My first and lasting impression was the inward calm and self-poise – not self-control, for there was no effort or self-consciousness – on the part of those who had been saved. I said to one woman, whose dress, but not her face, betrayed that she was one of those who had undergone tragic experiences: ‘You were on the
Titanic
?' She answered: ‘Yes, and I saw my husband go down.' The only hysteria displayed was after the physician had administered brandy to the half-frozen sufferers. The people struck me not as being stunned and crushed, but as lifted into an atmosphere of vision where self-centred suffering merges into some mystic meaning. Everyone reported a magnificent self-possession of the husbands when parted from their wives. Many related the cases of women who had to be forced from their husbands. Touching beyond words was the gratitude towards those of us who gave clothes and our state rooms. More magnificent than the calm of the clear dawn was the unconsciousness of any personal horror, or need to pity, on the part of those who related how they had met their fate.

One youth of seventeen told, as if it had been an incident of everyday life, that he was hurled from the deck and that as he found himself sinking he took a deep breath. When he came up and found that he was again to be drawn under, he thought it would be well again to breathe deep. Upon rising the second time, he said, he saw the upturned bottom of a canvas boat. To this he clung until he was rescued. One woman in one boat insisted that they should row back and rescue eight men clinging to wreckage, although the oarsmen feared the suction of the great steamer might endanger their lives, and the eight were thus rescued.

My feeling is that in the midst of all this horror, human nature never manifested itself as greater or tenderer. We were all one, not only with one another, but with the cosmic being that for all time had seemed so cruel.

On board the
Carpathia
there was much discussion as to the possible culpability of the captain of the
Titanic
, but there was no judgement offered. But I return again to what I say was my first and abiding impression – the self-poise that is so because the human soul is not self-centred. One young woman with whom I talked was so calm and full of the stories of the heroism and the suffering of others that I said: ‘How fortunate that you lost no friend!' Then for the first time her face changed and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, she said: ‘My brother, who was my only living relative, went down before my eyes. He scorned to disobey the discipline, so now I am alone.'

(
Outlook
, 27 April 1912)