Titanic, First Accounts

by Tim Maltin

  It is estimated that there were between thirty and forty on the boat; no women. When it was pushed over on the Boat Deck we all scrambled down on to the Boat Deck again and were going to launch it properly when it was washed over before we had time to launch it. I happened to be nearest to it and I grabbed it and went down with it. There was a passenger on this boat; I could not see whether he was first, second or third class. I heard him say at the time that he was a passenger. I could not say whether it was Colonel Gracie. There were others who struggled to get on; dozens of them in the water. I should judge they were all part of the boat’s crew.

  I am twenty-two years old. Phillips was about twenty-four or twenty-five. My salary from the Marconi Co. is four pounds a month.

  As to the attack made upon Mr. Phillips to take away his lifebelt I should say the man was dressed like a stoker. We forced him away. I held him and Mr. Phillips hit him.

  J. Collins, cook (Am. Inq., p. 628):

  This was my first voyage. I ran back to the upper deck to the port side with another steward and a woman and two children. The steward had one of the children in his arms and the woman was crying. I took the child from the woman and made for one of the boats. Then the word came around from the starboard side that there was a collapsible boat getting launched on that side and that all women and children were to make for it, so the other steward and I and the two children and the woman came around to the starboard side. We saw the collapsible boat taken off the saloon deck, and then the sailors and the firemen who were forward saw the ship’s bow in the water and that she was sinking by her bow. They shouted out for us to go aft. We were just turning round to make for the stern when a wave washed us off the deck—washed us clear of it, and the child was washed out of my arms. I was kept down for at least two or three minutes under water.

  Senator Bourne: Two or three minutes?

  Mr. Collins: Yes; I am sure.

  Senator Bourne: Were you unconscious?

  Mr. Collins: No; not at all. It did not affect me much—the salt water.

  Senator Bourne: But you were under water? You cannot stay under water two or three minutes.

  Mr. Collins: Well, it seemed so to me. I could not exactly state how long. When I came to the surface I saw this boat that had been taken off. I saw a man on it. They had been working on it taking it off the saloon deck, and when the wave washed it off the deck, they clung to it. Then I made for it when I came to the surface, swimming for it. I was only four or five yards off of it. I am sure there were more than fifteen or sixteen who were then on it. They did not help me to get on. They were all watching the ship. All I had to do was to give a spring and I got on to it. We were drifting about for two hours in the water.

  Senator Bourne: When you came up from the water on this collapsible boat, did you see any evidence of the ship as she sank then?

  Mr. Collins: I did, sir; I saw her stern end.

  Senator Bourne: Where were you on the boat at the time you were washed off the ship?

  Mr. Collins: Amidships, sir.

  Senator Bourne: You say you saw the stern end after you got on the collapsible boat?

  Mr. Collins: Yes, sir.

  Senator Bourne: Did you see the bow?

  Mr. Collins: No, sir.

  Senator Bourne: How far were you from the stern end of the ship when you came up and got on to the collapsible boat?

  Mr. Collins: I could not just exactly state how far I was away from the Titanic when I came up. I was not far, because her lights were out then. Her lights went out when the water got almost to amidships on her.

  Senator Bourne: As I understand it, you were amidships of the bow as the ship sank?

  Mr. Collins: Yes, sir.

  Senator Bourne: You were washed off by a wave? You were under water as you think for two or three minutes and then swam five or six yards to the collapsible boat and got aboard the boat? The stern (of ship) was still afloat?

  Mr. Collins: The stern was still afloat.

  Senator Bourne: The lights were burning?

  Mr. Collins: I came to the surface, sir, and I happened to look around and I saw the lights and nothing more, and looked in front of me and saw the collapsible boat and I made for it.

  Senator Bourne: How do you account for this wave that washed you off amidships?

  Mr. Collins: By the suction which took place when the bow went down in the water. There were probably fifteen on the boat when I got on. There was some lifeboat that had a green light on it and we thought it was a ship, after the Titanic had sunk, and we commenced to shout. All we saw was the green light. We were drifting about two hours, and then we saw the topmast lights of the Carpathia. Then came daylight and we saw our own lifeboats and we were very close to them. When we spied them we shouted to them and they came over to us and they lifted a whole lot of us that were on the collapsible boat.

  J. Joughin, head baker (Br. Inq.):

  I got on to the starboard side of the poop; found myself in the water. I do not believe my head went under the water at all. I thought I saw some wreckage. Swam towards it and found collapsible boat (“B”) with Lightoller and about twenty-five men on it. There was no room for me. I tried to get on, but was pushed off, but I hung around. I got around to the opposite side and cook Maynard, who recognized me, helped me and held on to me.

  The experience of my fellow passenger on this boat, John B. Thayer, Jr., is embodied in accounts written by him on April 20th and 23rd, just after landing from the Carpathia: the first given to the press as the only statement he had made, the second in a very pathetic letter written to Judge Charles L. Long, of Springfield, Mass., whose son, Milton C. Long, was a companion of young Thayer all that evening, April 14th, until at the very last both jumped into the sea and Long was lost, as described:

  “Thinking that father and mother had managed to get off in a boat we, Long and myself, went to the starboard side of the Boat Deck where the boats were getting away quickly. Some were already off in the distance. We thought of getting into one of them, the last boat on the forward part of the starboard side, but there seemed to be such a crowd around that I thought it unwise to make any attempt to get into it. I thought it would never reach the water right side up, but it did.

  “Here I noticed nobody that I knew except Mr. Lingrey, whom I had met for the first time that evening. I lost sight of him in a few minutes. Long and I then stood by the rail just a little aft of the captain’s bridge. There was such a big list to port that it seemed as if the ship would turn on her side.

  “About this time the people began jumping from the stern. I thought of jumping myself, but was afraid of being stunned on hitting the water. Three times I made up my mind to jump out and slide down the davit ropes and try to swim to the boats that were lying off from the ship, but each time Long got hold of me and told me to wait a while. I got a sight on a rope between the davits and a star and noticed that the ship was gradually sinking. About this time she straightened up on an even keel again, and started to go down fairly fast at an angle of about thirty degrees. As she started to sink we left the davits and went back and stood by the rail aft, even with the second funnel. Long and myself stood by each other and jumped on the rail. We did not give each other any messages for home because neither of us thought we would ever get back. Long put his legs over the rail, while I straddled it. Hanging over the side and holding on to the rail with his hands he looked up at me and said: ‘You are coming, boy, aren’t you?’ I replied: ‘Go ahead, I’ll be with you in a minute.’ He let go and slid down the side and I never saw him again. Almost immediately after he jumped I jumped. All this last part took a very short time, and when we jumped we were about ten yards above the water. Long was perfectly calm all the time and kept his nerve to the very end.”

  How he sank and finally reached the upset boat is quoted accurately from the newspaper report from this same
source given in my personal narrative. He continues as follows:

  “As often as we saw other boats in the distance we would yell, ‘Ship ahoy!’ but they could not distinguish our cries from any of the others, so we all gave it up, thinking it useless. It was very cold, and the water washed over the upset boat almost all the time. Towards dawn the wind sprung up, roughening the water and making it difficult to keep the boat balanced. The wireless man raised our hopes a great deal by telling us that the Carpathia would be up in about three hours. About 3:30 or 4 o’clock some men at the bow of our boat sighted her mast lights. I could not see them as I was sitting down with a man kneeling on my leg. He finally got up, and I stood up. We had the Second Officer, Mr. Lightoller, on board. He had an officer’s whistle and whistled for the boats in the distance to come up and take us off. Two of them came up. The first took half and the other took the balance, including myself. In the transfer we had difficulty in balancing our boat as the men would lean too far over, but we were all taken aboard the already crowded boats and taken to the Carpathia in safety.”

  One of these boats was No. 4, in which his mother was.

  CHAPTER VII

  Starboard Side: Women First, but Men when There Were No Women

  I know of the conditions existing on the port side of the ship from personal knowledge, as set forth in the first five chapters describing my personal experience, while the previous Chapter VI is derived from an exhaustive study of official and of other authoritative information relating to the same side from experiences of others. I have devoted an equal amount of study to the history of what happened on the starboard side of the ship, and the tabulated statements in this chapter are the outcome of my research into the experiences of my fellow passengers on this side of the ship where I was located only during the last half hour before the ship foundered, after all passengers on the port side had been ordered to the starboard in consequence of the great list to port, and after the departure of the last boat “D,” that left the ship on the port side. During this last half hour, though it seemed shorter, my attention was confined to the work of the crew, assisting them in their vain efforts to launch the Engelhardt boat “B” thrown down from the roof of the officers’ house. All the starboard boats had left the ship before I came there.

  Many misunderstandings arose in the public mind because of ignorance of the size of the ship and inability to understand that the same conditions did not prevail at every point and that the same scenes were not witnessed by every one of us. Consider the great length of the ship, 852 feet; its breadth of beam, 92.6 feet; and its many decks, eleven in number; counting the roof of the officers’ house as the top deck, then the Boat Deck, and Decks A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and, in the hold, two more. Bearing this in mind I illustrated to my New York friends, in answer to their questions, how impossible it would be for a person standing at the corner of 50th Street and Fifth Avenue to know just what was going on at 52nd Street on the same Avenue, or what was going on at the corner of 52nd Street and Madison Avenue. Therefore, when one survivor’s viewpoint differs from that of another, the explanation is easily found.

  Consideration must also be taken of the fact that the accident occurred near midnight, and though it was a bright, starlit night, and the ship’s electric lights shone almost to the last, it was possible to recognize only one’s intimates at close quarters.

  My research shows that there was no general order from the ship’s officers on the starboard side for “Women and children first.” On the other hand, I have the statements of Dr. Washington Dodge, John B. Thayer, Jr., and Mrs. Stephenson, also the same of a member of the crew testifying before the British Court of Inquiry, from which it appears that some sort of a command was issued ordering the women to the port side and the men to the starboard, indicating that no men would be allowed in the port boats, and only in the starboard side boats after the women had entered them first. If such were the orders, they were carried out to the letter. Another point of difference, especially conspicuous to myself, is the fact that on the starboard side there appears to have been an absence of women at the points where the boats were loaded, while on the port side all the boats loaded, from the first up to the last, found women at hand and ready to enter them. It was only at the time of the loading of the last boat “D,” that my friend, Clinch Smith, and I ran up and down the port side shouting: “Are there any more women?” This too is the testimony of Officer Lightoller, in charge of loading boats on the port side.

  BOAT NO. 71

  No disorder in loading or lowering this boat.

  Passengers: Mesdames Bishop, Earnshaw, Gibson, Greenfield, Potter, Snyder and Misses Gibson and Hays, Messrs. Bishop, Chevré, Daniel, Greenfield, McGough, Maréchal, Seward, Sloper, Snyder, Tucker.

  Transferred from Boat No. 5: Mrs. Dodge and her boy; Messrs. Calderhead and Flynn.

  Crew: Seamen: Hogg (in charge), Jewell, Weller.

  Total: 28.

  Incidents

  Archie Jewell, L. O. (Br. Inq.):

  Was awakened by the crash and ran at once on deck where he saw a lot of ice. All went below again to get clothes on. The boatswain called all hands on deck. Went to No. 7 boat. The ship had stopped. All hands cleared the boats, cleared away the falls and got them all right. Mr. Murdoch gave the order to lower boat No. 7 to the rail with women and children in the boat. Three or four Frenchmen, passengers, got into the boat. No. 7 was lowered from the Boat Deck. The orders were to stand by the gangway. This boat was the first on the starboard side lowered into the water. All the boats were down by the time it was pulled away from the ship because it was thought she was settling down.

  Witness saw the ship go down by the head very slowly. The other lifeboats were further off, his being the nearest. No. 7 was then pulled further off and about half an hour later, or about an hour and a half after this boat was lowered, and when it was about 200 yards away, the ship took the final dip. He saw the stern straight up in the air with the lights still burning. After a few moments she then sank very quickly and he heard two or three explosions just as the stern went up in the air. No. 7 picked up no dead bodies. At daylight they saw a lot of icebergs all around, and reached the Carpathia about 9 o’clock. This boat had no compass and no light. (The above, given in detail, represents the general testimony of the next witness.)

  G. A. Hogg, A. B. (Am. Inq., p. 577):

  He had forty-two when the boat was shoved from the ship’s side. He asked a lady if she could steer who said she could. He pulled around in search of other people. One man said: “We have done our best; there are no more people around.” He said: “Very good, we will get away now.” There was not a ripple on the water; it was as smooth as glass.

  Mrs. H. W. Bishop, first-class passenger (Am. Inq., p. 998):

  The Captain told Colonel Astor something in an undertone. He came back and told six of us who were standing with his wife that we had better put on our lifebelts. I had gotten down two flights of stairs to tell my husband, who had returned to the stateroom for the moment, before I heard the Captain announce that the lifebelts should be put on. We came back upstairs and found very few people on deck. There was very little confusion—only the older women were a little frightened. On the starboard side of the Boat Deck there were only two people—a young French bride and groom. By that time an old man had come upstairs and found Mr. and Mrs. Harder, of New York. He brought us all together and told us to be sure and stay together—that he would be back in a moment. We never saw him again.

  About five minutes later the boats were lowered and we were pushed in. This was No. 7 lifeboat. My husband was pushed in with me and we were lowered with twenty-eight people in the boat. We counted off after we reached the water. There were only about twelve women and the rest were men—three crew and thirteen male passengers; several unmarried men—three or four of them foreigners. Somewhat later five people were put into our boat from another one, making thirty-three
in ours. Then we rowed still further away as the women were nervous about suction. We had no compass and no light. We arrived at the Carpathia five or ten minutes after five. The conduct of the crew, as far as I could see, was absolutely beyond criticism. One of the crew in the boat was Jack Edmonds,(?) and there was another man, a Lookout (Hogg), of whom we all thought a great deal. He lost his brother.

  D. H. Bishop, first-class passenger (Am. Inq., p. 1000):

  There was an officer stationed at the side of the lifeboat. As witness’s wife got in, he fell into the boat. The French aviator Maréchal was in the boat; also Mr. Greenfield and his mother. There was little confusion on the deck while the boat was being loaded; no rush to boats at all. Witness agrees with his wife in the matter of the counting of twenty-eight, but he knows that there were some who were missed. There was a woman with her baby transferred from another lifeboat. Witness knows of his own knowledge that No. 7 was the first boat lowered from the starboard side. They heard no order from any one for the men to stand back or “women first,” or “women and children first.” Witness also says that at the time his lifeboat was lowered that that order had not been given on the starboard side.

  J. R. McGough’s affidavit (Am. Inq., p. 1143):

  After procuring life-preservers we went back to the top deck and discovered that orders had been given to launch the lifeboats, which were already being launched. Women and children were called for to board the boats first. Both women and men hesitated and did not feel inclined to get into the small boats. He had his back turned, looking in an opposite direction, and was caught by the shoulder by one of the officers who gave him a push saying: “Here, you are a big fellow; get into that boat.”