by Tim Maltin
That’s when the people left on board went into the water. There were 1,500 to 1,700 left on the ship and most of them were thrown into the water by this explosion. Then a horrible shriek went up, cries for help and weird shouts. You can imagine what it was like, 1,500 of them. If you’re ever been around when they were feeding a kennel of dogs, that’s the only thing I can think of that it sounded like—and that kept up for half an hour, growing fainter and fainter as the minutes passed. There was no other sound—just the crying of the people.
The ship quietly sank out of sight without a sound. We could see black spots of wreckage and hundreds of people struggling in the water. Some of the boats were near enough to help and pull some of the people in. One of the women in our boat wanted us to go back, but we wouldn’t do it. Had we gotten in among that crowd struggling in the water it might have meant the end of us. With twenty of them grabbing the boat on one side it would have swamped us in a minute. It was awful, but there was nothing to do but wait. I won’t forget those shrieks. The women in our boat crouched down and murmured. No one spoke. For half an hour we could hear those cries for help. Some of those left on the boat had managed to get on bits of wreckage. Some were on rafts so loaded down that they were partly under water. Some of the women in our boat started to move around. We had to keep them quiet, for with their shifting about we might have gone over.
Gradually those voices died away, and in something like half an hour everything was quiet and dark. We could see the other boats drifting about and kept close to them. Every now and then we passed a body floating on the water.
Just as it was getting light, a few hours later, I don’t know just how many, we saw the lights of the Carpathia. We hadn’t suffered any, because we kept warm by rowing. Every man that was saved was in one of the boats. The cold water killed the others. No one could stand the water for six or seven hours. Every one of the bodies had on a lifebelt. We didn’t try to pick them up; what was the use? We had all we could tend to with the living without bothering about the dead ones. The women in our boat didn’t see the bodies. They were too far down in the bottom of the boat. They kept talking quietly, just as though they were still on the ship.
In some of the boats, I heard later, there was a lot of weeping, but not in ours. I guess those must have been Continentals. The women in our boat were mostly English stock, and they’re a braver sort. The kind makes a big difference.
By the time we started to row toward the Carpathia—we didn’t know it was she until later; we thought it was the Olympic—it was getting light enough so we could look about us. Then, for the first time, we saw that there were big icebergs all about us. We counted fifteen or sixteen big bergs. They loomed up through the light, which wasn’t strong yet, like sailing craft, and they were shaped like schooner sails, too. In all my sailing I’ve never seen so many icebergs in one place. A little farther off was a big ice floe; I guess it must have been ten to fifteen miles long. There was a cold, freezing wind blowing toward us from this shoal.
When we got up to the Carpathia they were all ready for us. The men climbed on board up a rope ladder. The women were hoisted up in a bo’sun’s chair and the children were put in sacks.
After we got on board and the strain was over I felt weak for the first time. [illegible] . . . a lot of the women became hysterical. The people on the Carpathia were surprised that there were so few of us left. They had expected to pick up everybody. If they had I guess there wouldn’t have been room enough on board to stand up. The passengers were distributed all about and we were told to bunk wherever we could. After the Carpathia had got us all on board from the lifeboats she started to cruise about. Bodies were floating all around and bits of wreckage. I saw chairs, cushions and pillows floating on the water. The Californian came along a short time after we were on board the Carpathia. The Carpathia cruised among the wreckage until 9 or 10 o’clock. We didn’t pick up anyone. All those that were alive were in the boats. And several of the men in the boats that had been fished up out of the water were dead. They dropped them over the side a little later. Nobody could have lived long in that cold water.
On board the Carpathia things were pretty crowded. The passengers were put wherever there was room in the steerage and anywhere. The Titanic crew waited on the Titanic passengers. Many of the women stayed in their rooms during the whole trip. I heard that Mr. Ismay stayed in his cabin all the time. I didn’t see him. Orders came to us that no news of any kind was to be given out. The captain handled all the news that was received or sent out. The first thing some of the passengers tried to do after getting on the Carpathia was to send wireless messages telling their people they were safe, but they weren’t allowed to do it.
They kept asking questions, but they weren’t told anything. These were the orders: Don’t give any information. I suppose a lot of the Titanic’s passengers on the Carpathia knew less about the accident than anyone else. They took all our names soon after we got aboard. But a lot of them were never sent ashore. My name wasn’t sent in and my sister Ruth didn’t know I was safe until I went to see her at 16 East Eleventh street, where she is working. My brother Frank came down to the boat to see if I was there, but he missed me.
Whatever news may have come to the ship we didn’t know anything about it. All the news went to the captain through the Marconi man. We were a sorry looking lot on the Carpathia. You wouldn’t have known them to be the same people that were on the Titanic. All the clothes anyone had were those they wore in the boats. Some of the women only had on their nightdresses and their outer coats which they put on when they came up on deck. A lot of the men, like myself, threw on their clothes over their pajamas. I’m still wearing mine.
After we got on board the Carpathia we heard all sorts of experiences that others had had. I was told of one woman who took off her coat and insisted on giving it to a man who had been pulled out of the water into one of the boats. One man who was saved had jumped down 150 feet into the water from the stern of the ship just after the explosion. The baker, who was also picked up by a boat, jumped from one of the top decks into the water just before the big explosion.
As to the cause of the accident, I think someone must have been careless. There was no excuse for their not seeing the berg. We who were below knew there were icebergs about and the officers of the ship must have known of it. The collision must have torn out the bottom of the ship beyond the first line of watertight bulkhead doors. She must have had hundreds of tons of water in her forward part to make her propellers stick up out of the water the way they did.
There were a lot of life rafts aboard the Titanic that were not used. If the people on board had only realized that. Some of the men did throw the life rafts into the water and jumped in after them. Then they climbed up on them and some of them were afterwards picked up by the small boats.
All the engineers were drowned—thirty-two or thirty-six of them. Not one was saved. The Marconi man who was saved was hurt about the legs. They had to carry him to the wireless room on the Carpathia, but he worked most of the time. Some of the men picked up by the boats died after they got on board the Carpathia. I think there were three or four. They were buried on Monday. The Carpathia didn’t meet any ships until we were off Sandy Hook this afternoon. Then we were met by a couple of newspaper tugs. But orders were given to allow no communication and a couple of bo’suns manned the rail to see that the order was carried out. I was surprised the way they let us through. No quarantine stop and no bother with the customs. I didn’t expect that they would let us members of the crew off the ship. But I just walked off and no one interfered with me. Now I guess I’ll have to start in and look for another job.
The Tragic Home-Coming
* * *
Logan Marshall,
The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters
CHAPTER XV
Jack Thayer’s Own Story of the Wreck
SEVENTEE
N-YEAR-OLD SON OF PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD OFFICIAL TELLS MOVING STORY OF HIS RESCUE—TOLD MOTHER TO BE BRAVE—SEPARATED FROM PARENTS—JUMPED WHEN VESSEL SANK—DRIFTED ON OVERTURNED BOAT—PICKED UP BY CARPATHIA
One of the calmest of the passengers was young Jack Thayer, the seventeen-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. John B. Thayer. When his mother was put into the life-boat he kissed her and told her to be brave, saying that he and his father would be all right. He and Mr. Thayer stood on the deck as the small boat in which Mrs. Thayer was a passenger made off from the side of the Titanic over the smooth sea.
The boy’s own account of his experience as told to one of his rescuers is one of the most remarkable of all the wonderful ones that have come from the tremendous catastrophe:
“Father was in bed, and mother and myself were about to get into bed. There was no great shock. I was on my feet at the time and I do not think it was enough to throw anyone down. I put on an overcoat and rushed up on A deck on the port side. I saw nothing there. I then went forward to the bow to see if I could see any signs of ice. The only ice I saw was on the well deck. I could not see very far ahead, having just come out of a brightly lighted room.
“I then went down to our room and my father and mother came on deck with me, to the starboard side of A deck. We could not see anything there. Father thought he saw small pieces of ice floating around, but I could not see any myself. There was no big berg. We walked around to the port side, and the ship had then a fair list to port. We stayed there looking over the side for about five minutes. The list seemed very slowly to be increasing.
“We then went down to our rooms on C deck, all of us dressing quickly, putting on all our clothes. We all put on life-preservers, and over these we put our overcoats. Then we hurried up on deck and walked around, looking out at different places until the women were all ordered to collect on the port side.
SEPARATED FROM PARENTS
“Father and I said good-bye to mother at the top of the stairs on A deck. She and the maid went right out on A deck on the port side and we went to the starboard side. As at this time we had no idea the boat would sink we walked around A deck and then went to B deck. Then we thought we would go back to see if mother had gotten off safely, and went to the port side of A deck. We met the chief steward of the main dining saloon and he told us that mother had not yet taken a boat, and he took us to her.
“Father and mother went ahead and I followed. They went down to B deck and a crowd got in front of me and I was not able to catch them, and lost sight of them. As soon as I could get through the crowd I tried to find them on B deck, but without success. That is the last time I saw my father. This was about one half an hour before she sank. I then went to the starboard side, thinking that father and mother must have gotten off in a boat. All of this time I was with a fellow named Milton C. Long, of New York, whom I had just met that evening.
“On the starboard side the boats were getting away quickly. Some boats were already off in a distance. We thought of getting into one of the boats, the last boat to go on the forward part of the starboard side, but there seemed to be such a crowd around I thought it unwise to make any attempt to get into it. He and I stood by the davits of one of the boats that had left. I did not notice anybody that I knew except Mr. Lindley, whom I had also just met 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.
THOUGHT SHIP WOULD FLOAT
“The list to the port had been growing greater all the time. 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 make the boats that were lying off from the ship, but each time Long got hold of me and told me to wait a while. He then sat down and I stood up waiting to see what would happen. Even then we thought she might possibly stay afloat.
“I got a sight on a rope between the davits and a star and noticed that she was gradually sinking. About this time she straightened up on an even keel and started to go down fairly fast at an angle of about 30 degrees. As she started to sink we left the davits and went back and stood by the rail about even with the second funnel.
“Long and myself said good-bye to each other and jumped up on the rail. He put his legs over and held on a minute and asked me if I was coming. I told him I would be with him in a minute. He did not jump clear, but slid down the side of the ship. I never saw him again.
“About five seconds after he jumped I jumped out, feet first. I was clear of the ship; went down, and as I came up I was pushed away from the ship by some force. I came up facing the ship, and one of the funnels seemed to be lifted off and fell towards me about 15 yards away, with a mass of sparks and steam coming out of it. I saw the ship in a sort of a red glare, and it seemed to me that she broke in two just in front of the third funnel.
“This time I was sucked down, and as I came up I was pushed out again and twisted around by a large wave, coming up in the midst of a great deal of small wreckage. As I pushed my hand from my head it touched the cork fender of an overturned life-boat. I looked up and saw some men on the top and asked them to give me a hand. One of them, who was a stoker, helped me up. In a short time the bottom was covered with about twenty-five or thirty men. When I got on this I was facing the ship.
“The stern then seemed to rise in the air and stopped at about an angle of 60 degrees. It seemed to hold there for a time and then with a hissing sound it shot right down out of sight with people jumping from the stern. The stern either pivoted around towards our boat, or we were sucked towards it, and as we only had one oar we could not keep away. There did not seem to be very much suction and most of us managed to stay on the bottom of our boat.
“We were then right in the midst of fairly large wreckage, with people swimming all around us. The sea was very calm and we kept the boat pretty steady, but every now and then a wave would wash over it.
SAID THE LORD’S PRAYER
“The assistant wireless operator was right next to me, holding on to me and kneeling in the water. We all sang a hymn and said the Lord’s Prayer, and then waited for dawn to come. As often as we saw the other boats in a 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 none of us were able to move around to keep warm, the water washing over her almost all the time.
“Toward dawn the wind sprang up, roughening up 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 on our boat on the bow 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. We had an officer’s whistle and whistled for the boats in the distance to come up and take us off.
“It took about an hour and a half for the boats to draw near. Two boats came up. The first took half and the other took the balance, including myself. We had great difficulty about this time in balancing the boat, as the men would lean too far, but we were all taken aboard the already crowded boat, and in about a half or three-quarters of an hour later we were picked up by the Carpathia.
“I have noticed Second Officer Lightoller’s statement that ‘J. B. Thayer was on our overturned boat,’ which would give the impression that it was father, when he really meant it was I, as he only learned my name in a subsequent conversation on the Carpathia, and did not know I was ‘junior.’”
CHAPTER XVI
Incidents Related by James McGough
WOMEN FORCED INTO THE LIFE-BOATS—WHY SOME MEN WERE SAVED BEFORE WOMEN—ASKED TO MAN LIFE-BOATS
Surrounded by his wife and members of his family, James McGough, of Phila
delphia, a buyer for the Gimbel Brothers, whose fate had been in doubt, recited a most thrilling and graphic picture of the disaster.
As the Carpathia docked, Mrs. McGough, a brother and several friends of the buyer, met him, and after the touching reunion had taken place the party proceeded to Philadelphia.
Vivid in detail, Mr. McGough’s story differs essentially from one the imagination would paint. He declared that the boat was driving at a high rate of speed at the time of the accident, and seemed impressed by the calmness and apathy displayed by the survivors as they tossed on the frozen seas in the little life-boats until the Carpathia picked them up.
The Titanic did not plunge into the water suddenly, he declared, but settled slowly into the deep with its hundreds of passengers.
“The collision occurred at 20 minutes of 12,” said Mr. McGough. “I was sleeping in my cabin when I felt a wrench, not severe or terrifying.
“It seemed to me to be nothing more serious than the racing of the screw, which often occurs when a ship plunges her bow deep into a heavy swell, raising the stern out of water. We dressed hurriedly and ran to the upper deck. There was little noise or tumult at the time.
“The promenade decks being higher from the base of the ship and thus more insecure, strained and creaked; so we went to the lower decks. By this time the engines had been reversed, and I could feel the ship backing off. Officers and stewards ran through the corridors, shouting for all to be calm, that there was no danger. We were warned, however, to dress and put life-preservers on us. I had on what clothing I could find and had stuffed some money in my pocket.
