Voices from the Titanic Page 18
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)
After seeing his wife and son off in boat No. 5, Dr Washington Dodge chanced his luck in No. 13.
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)
BOAT NO. 15
With a passenger load composed almost entirely of women and children from steerage, boat 15 was launched with seventy people on board. Among the crew members was long-serving chief bathroom steward Samuel Rule, a Cornishman from Hayle.
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 f
ather.
(St Ives Times, 3 May 1912)
Mrs Selma Asplund from Sweden was a steerage passenger on board the Titanic. She and two of her children – Lillian, aged six, and baby Felix – were saved but her husband Carl and her three boys (aged eight, ten and fourteen) all drowned. Of the crash, she said:
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)
Irish steerage passenger Bertha Mulvihill, travelling to meet her sister, Mrs Norton, in America, and her fiancé, took her chances in No. 15 although there were a few more boats left than she thought at the time. She had just witnessed a mother with six children refuse to get into a lifeboat because it meant the woman being parted from her husband.
Only two boats remained. One of these pushed off. I stood directly over the other. ‘Jump,’ said the sailor. I jumped and landed in the boat. Then a big Italian jumped and landed on me, knocking the wind out of me.
The Titanic was going down slowly, yet surely. I had marked in my mind’s eye the two portholes on the vessel. I watched the water come to them, pass them and swallow them from sight. I was fascinated.
Then the lights on the Titanic began to glimmer and go out. A few minutes later there were two heavy explosions.
The big vessel quivered and seemed to settle. Then she leaned over on the other side a little and slowly sank to her grave. I think I heard the band playing.
The sailors rowed hard, thinking the suction from the big vessel would pull us down. But the explosions threw the water away from the vessel, so the small boats were able to get away all right.
Then began the long vigil for the rescuing ship. All night we bumped among the ice cakes out there on the Atlantic. From midnight till dawn of the morning we wept and moaned on the face of the ocean.
All the boats that had left the port side of the vessel had clustered together and all the boats that left the starboard side clustered in another little bunch a little distance away.
At 11 o’clock the Carpathia took us aboard. Everybody was kind to us. They had hot whisky and brandy for all of us. They wrapped us up in blankets and gave us food. A physician came and visited all of us. Then the passengers let us sleep in their beds.
The first-class passengers aboard the Titanic had first-class accommodations on the Carpathia, as near as possible. I was in the third class because I decided on the spur of the moment to visit my sister here and it was impossible to get anything else until June, so far ahead were the passengers booked.
So we herded in the steerage until we crept up New York harbour. I sent a wireless message off to my mother in Ireland to reassure her.
I am afraid I always will see that mother clinging to her husband and six children.
(Boston Post, 20 April 1912)
BOAT NO. 14
This was launched on the port side five minutes after boat 12. Among the sixty passengers was an Italian stowaway.
Fifth Officer Harold Lowe was the officer in charge. His decision to tie five boats together in a flotilla undoubtedly saved many lives that night.
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)
Able Seaman Joseph Scarrott recounted how Fifth Officer Harold Lowe fired warning shots to deter unwelcome foreign boarders from steerage.
The port side boats were got ready first and then the starboard ones. As the work proceeded passengers were coming on deck with lifebelts on. Then we realized the situation. Every man went to his station. There was no panic, everybody was cool, and when the boats were ready the usual order was given, ‘Women and children first.’ That order was carried out without any class distinction whatever. In some cases we had to force the women into the boats as they would not leave their husbands.
The men stood back to allow the women to pass, except in one or two cases where men tried to rush, but they were very soon stopped. This occurred at the boat I was in charge of, No. 14. About half a dozen foreigners tried to jump in before I had my complement of women and children, but I drove them back with the boat’s tiller. Shortly a
fterwards the Fifth Officer, Mr Lowe, came and took charge of the boat. I told him what had happened. He drew his revolver and fired two shots between the boat and ship’s side into the water as a warning to any further attempts of that sort.
The sight of that grand ship going down will never be forgotten. She slowly went down bow first with a slight list to starboard until the water reached the bridge, then she went quicker. When the third funnel had nearly disappeared I heard four explosions, which I took to be the bursting of the boilers. The ship was right up on end then. Suddenly she broke in two between the third and fourth funnel. The after part of the ship came down on the water in its normal position and seemed as if it was going to remain afloat, but it only remained a minute or two and then sank. The lights were burning right up till she broke in two. The cries from the poor souls struggling in the water sounded terrible in the stillness of the night. It seemed to go through you like a knife. Our officer then ordered all the boats under his charge to see if we could pick up anybody. Some of our boats picked up a few. I cannot say how many. After that we tied all our boats together so as to form a large object on the water which would be seen quicker than a single boat by a passing vessel. We divided the passengers of our boat amongst the other four, and then taking one man from each boat so as to make a crew we rowed away amongst the wreckage as we heard cries for help coming from that direction. When we got to it the sight we saw was awful. We were amongst hundreds of dead bodies floating in lifebelts. We could only see four alive. The first one we picked up was a male passenger. He died shortly after we got him in the boat. After a hard struggle we managed to get the other three.