Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  The sensation to me was as if the ship had been seized by a giant hand and shaken once, twice then stopped dead in its course. That is to say there was a long, backward jerk, followed by a shorter one. I was not thrown out of my berth and my husband staggered on his feet only slightly. We heard no strange sounds, no rending of plates and woodwork, but we noticed that the engines had stopped running. They tried to start the engines a few minutes later but after some coughing and rumbling there was silence once more.

  Our cabin was so situated that we could follow this clearly. My husband and I were not alarmed. He said that there must have been some slight accident in the engine room and at first he did not intend to go on deck. Then he changed his mind, put on his coat and left me. I lay quietly in my berth with my little girl and almost fell asleep again. In what seemed a very few moments my husband returned. He was a bit excited then. ‘What do you think,’ he exclaimed. ‘We have struck an iceberg, a big one, but there is no danger – an officer just told me so.’ I could hear the footsteps of people on the deck above my head. There was some stamping and queer noises as if ships’ tackle was being pulled about. ‘Are the people frightened?’ I asked quietly. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think the shock woke up many in the second cabin, and few of those in the saloons have troubled to go on deck. I saw the professional gamblers playing with some of the passengers as I went by. Their cards had been jerked off the table when the boat struck, but they were gathering them up and had started their game again before I left the saloon.’ The story reassured me. If these people at their cards were not worried, why should I be?

  I think my husband would have retired to his berth but suddenly we heard hundreds of people running along the passageway in front of our door. They did not cry out, but the patter of their feet reminded me of rats scurrying through an empty room. I could see my face in the mirror opposite and it had grown very white. My husband too was pale and he stammered when he spoke to me. ‘We had better go on deck and see what’s wrong,’ he said. I jumped out of bed and put a dressing gown over my night-dress. I hurriedly tied my hair back with a ribbon. By this time although the boat had not made any progress, it seemed to have tilted forward a little. I caught up my daughter just as she was in her nightgown, wrapped a White Star cabin blanket around her and started out of the door. My husband followed immediately behind. Neither of us took any belongings from the cabin and I remember that he even left his watch lying on his pillow. We did not doubt for an instant that we would return. When we reached the second cabin promenade deck we found a great many people there. Some officers were walking up and down. My husband stepped over to an officer – it was either Fifth Officer Harold Lowe or First Officer Murdoch – and asked him a question. I heard him shout back: ‘No, we have no searchlight but we have a few rockets on board. Keep calm! There is no danger.’

  Our party of three stood close together. Suddenly there was a commotion near one of the gangways and we saw a stoker come climbing up from below. He stopped a few feet away from us. All the fingers of one hand had been cut off. Blood was running from the stumps and blood was spattered over his face and over his clothes. The red marks showed very clearly against the coal dust with which he was covered. I went over and spoke to him. I asked him if there was any danger. ‘Danger?’ he screamed at the top of his voice. ‘I should just say so! It’s hell down below. This boat will sink like a stone in ten minutes.’

  He staggered away and lay down fainting with his head on a coil of rope. At this moment I got my first grip of fear – awful sickening fear. That poor man with his bleeding hand and his speckled face brought up a picture of smashed engines and mangled human bodies. I hung on to my husband’s arm and although he was very brave, and not trembling, I saw that his face was as white as paper. We realized that the accident was much worse than we had supposed, but even then I and all the others about me of whom I have any knowledge did not believe that the Titanic would go down.

  The officers were running to and fro shouting orders. I saw First Officer Murdoch place guards by the gangways to prevent others like the wounded stoker from coming on deck. How many unhappy men were shut off in that way from their chance of safety I do not know, but Mr Murdoch was probably right. He was a masterful man, astoundingly brave and cool. I had met him the day before when he was inspecting the second cabin quarters, and thought him a bull-dog of a man who would not be afraid of anything. This proved to be true. He kept order to the last, and died at his post. They say he shot himself. I do not know.

  Those in charge must have herded us towards the nearest boat deck for that is where I presently found myself, still clinging to my husband’s arm, and with little Marjorie beside me. Many women were standing with their husbands and there was no confusion. Then above the clamour of the people asking questions of each other, there came the terrible cry, ‘Lower the boats! Women and children first.’ Someone was shouting these last few words over and over again. ‘Women and children first! Women and children first!’ They struck utter terror into my heart and now they will ring in my ears until the day I die. They meant my own safety but they also meant the greatest loss I have ever suffered – the life of my husband.

  (Semi-Monthly Magazine, May 1912)

  Young Marjorie Collyer, Charlotte’s daughter, later gave her version of events to her local paper in England.

  The night the Titanic hit the iceberg I was asleep. I didn’t feel the bump and the ship started to back like a train, and I heard my mother say to my father that she guessed the works had stopped. I could hear feet on the decks. Then mother dressed me, took me by the hand and led me upstairs. I had a big dollie that I got two Christmases before, and we were in such a hurry that I left it behind. I cried for my dollie, but we couldn’t go back.

  The decks were full of people. Some of them were crying. An officer said we should all put on life preservers, and my mother put one on me, and then fastened one around herself. Papa put one on too.

  I was crying for my doll, but nobody could go back and get her. Then someone said we should get into a boat and two men lifted me up and put me in a boat. My father raised me in his arms and kissed me, and then he kissed my mother. She followed me into the boat.

  (Leatherhead Advertiser, 18 May 1912)

  New Jersey leather manufacturer Charles Emil Henry Stengel, who was travelling in a first-class cabin with his wife, was one of the first to sense that a tragedy might be about to unfold before his eyes.

  We retired about 10 o’clock. We had attended a concert and we knew that the captain was entertaining and dining his friends, among whom was Bruce Ismay, until 10 o’clock. Please say for me, in justice to Captain Smith, that he had not been drinking. He smoked cigarettes, but he did not drink.

  I had been sleeping but a short time and was having a terrible dream, which I cannot fully remember, when I felt a shock. This was no greater than one caused by the propeller coming above the surface of the water. I thought, nevertheless, that I would go on deck and ascertain if there was any trouble. There I found but few persons. No one seemed to fear danger.

  The first inkling that I had of danger was when I saw the serious face of Captain Smith as he talked to George Widener, of Philadelphia. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if I hadn’t seen Captain Smith’s face. Then I knew we were in danger.

  (Newark Star, 19 April 1912)

  As she recounted in a letter to her local paper, English passenger Nellie Walcroft was startled by the collision in her second-class cabin.

  On the Sunday night we went to our state room about 10.30. We had not been asleep long when suddenly a crash came and I was nearly thrown out of my berth. I woke my friend, Miss Cameron, who did not hear anything unusual, and then I heard the noise of footsteps along the corridor.

  I waited very anxiously to hear what was the matter because the engines had stopped. Immediately the steward came down and said, ‘Go back to your beds. No danger!’ But I heard whisperings of icebergs and then suddenly we heard ver
y loud hammering as if they were closing heavy iron doors. Five minutes later the steward came in and said: ‘Will you dress and go on deck with your lifebelts on as quickly as possible. It’s only a precaution.’

  My friend and I dressed. There were full instructions how to put the lifebelts on in the state room, but we were too nervous to read them. People were going up on deck so we both went, carrying our belts from E deck. A man took the lifebelts from us and put them over our heads, and tied them on.

  The order was for women and children to go on the lower deck but there was such a lot he told some to go up on the boat deck, so we went. We walked round, thinking there was no hurry, when suddenly rockets went up! We then began to realize the danger we were in.

  (Maidenhead Advertiser)

  Bertha Mulvihill, aged twenty-four, was travelling third-class from her native Ireland to meet up with her fiancé, Henry Noon, of Providence, Rhode Island. She lost her trousseau in the sinking.

  It was about 11.45. I was in bed and was just getting to sleep.

  Then came a heavy jar. I lay still for several minutes, not knowing what was the matter. Then I slipped on a heavy coat over my nightgown, pulled on my shoes and went out into the passage.

  The people were rushing up the stairways and way down in the steerage. I could hear the women and men shrieking and screaming. The women called for their children. The men cursed. I knew they were fighting.

  Then I hurried back into my room, stood up on the wash stand and took down a lifebelt. This I adjusted about me, and hurried out into the passage.

  At the top of the passage I met a sailor with whom I had become acquainted on my passage across. I asked him what the matter was.

  ‘There is no danger, little girl,’ he replied to me. ‘We have hit an iceberg.’

  ‘We’re lost, we’re lost,’ I cried, but he took me by the arm and told me to follow him. The people already were running to the sides of the boat to get into the lifeboats.

  Some of the Italian men from way down in the steerage were screaming and fighting to get into the lifeboats. Captain Smith stood at the head of the passageway. He had a gun in his hand.

  ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘you’ve got to do your duty here. It’s the women and children first, and I’ll shoot the first man who jumps into a boat.’

  But this didn’t seem to have much effect on them, for they still fought to get into the boats. But the captain – oh, he was a good captain and a brave man – stood guard and wouldn’t let the men get in before the women.

  There were two Catholic priests aboard. They were coming to America from Ireland. After we got off, I was talking with Eugene Ryan, a boy from my home town in Athlone, and he told me the priests went among the men on the Titanic as the vessel was sinking and administered the last rites of the church. And they stuck to it, too, until the water was up to about their knees.

  My sailor friend told me to follow him and he would try to get me into a lifeboat. We climbed up bolts and cleats until we got to the next deck. Nearly every woman had left the ship then, I guess, and only two boats remained.

  Beside me there was a family named Rice consisting of the father and mother and six children. The father was not permitted to leave the ship, but the mother and her six children could leave if they wished. She was crying and weeping. She wouldn’t go into the lifeboat and leave her husband to perish. ‘I can’t go and leave my husband,’ she cried to the officers. ‘Let him come with me. Oh, please let him come with me,’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t want to live if he can’t come. There will be nobody to earn bread for my little children,’ she wailed.

  But the officers wouldn’t let the father go.

  ‘I’ll stay with my husband then,’ the woman cried. I saw her clinging to her husband and children just before I left the vessel. That was the last I ever saw of her. The whole family went down together.

  (Boston Post, 20 April 1912)

  American industrialist’s wife Mrs William T. Graham shared a state room with her daughter Margaret, aged nineteen. Both paid tribute to the quiet heroism of forty-eight-year-old Howard Case, the American-born managing director of the Vacuum Oil Company of London, and thirty-one-year-old Washington A. Roebling II from New Jersey whose uncle was one of the builders of the Brooklyn Bridge. Both men died in the sinking.

  My daughter and I had a state room on the port side, near the stern, and we were awake, although in bed, when the iceberg was struck. It was a grinding, tearing sound. We didn’t regard it as serious. I dressed lightly, but my daughter tried to go to sleep.

  With us, in an adjoining bedroom, was my daughter’s companion, Miss E. W. Shutes, a teacher. She was the only other member in our party and was later saved with us. She got up, too, but my daughter insisted that the danger was imaginary and told us to go to sleep.

  Shortly after there was a rap at the door. It was a passenger we had met – Washington A. Roebling II. He told us that it would be best to be prepared for an emergency. I looked out of my window and saw a big iceberg. We lost no time in getting into the saloon. In one of the passages I met an officer of the ship. ‘What is the matter?’ I asked him. ‘We’ve only busted two pipes,’ he said. ‘Everything is all right. Don’t worry.’ ‘But what makes the ship list so?’ I asked. ‘Oh, that’s nothing,’ he replied, and walked away.

  On the deck we met Howard Case. We had been introduced to him. We had had many pleasant talks with Mr Case and I asked his advice, because I had already seen one boatload of passengers lowered and I wanted to know if it would be safer to stay on board. Mr Case advised us to get into a boat. ‘And what are you going to do?’ we asked him. ‘Oh,’ he replied, ‘I’ll take a chance and stay here.’

  Just at that time they were filling up the third lifeboat on the port side. Then Mr Roebling came up too. He told us to hurry and get into the boat. Mr Roebling and Mr Case bustled our party of three into the boat in less time than it takes to tell it. They were both working hard to help the women and children. The boat was fairly crowded when we three were pushed into it. A few more men jumped in at the last moment, but Mr Roebling and Mr Case stood at the rail and made no attempt to get into the boat.

  They shouted goodbye to us, and – what do you think Mr Case did then? He just calmly lighted a cigarette and waved us goodbye with his hand. Mr Roebling stood there too – I can see him now. I am sure that he knew that the ship would go to the bottom. But both just stood there.

  (Trenton Evening Times, 20 April 1912)

  Swedish steerage passenger Carl Jonsson described the impact on the third-class quarters.

  There was no crash, only a slight jar and creaking, which particularly awakened me. There was no excitement in the steerage, and I paid no attention to the occurrence. I was asleep again when two of the ship’s officers passed through the steerage, awakening the passengers. They told us to dress and come on deck – that there had been an accident, but that there was no danger.

  When I started to dress I noticed that there was water creeping up about my feet. At first it came very slowly, but after a time it was around my ankles. In the compartment where I was sleeping the water was at an even depth everywhere, and the boat did not seem to have the slightest pitch to starboard or port, indicating that she was settling slowly and steadily and that the bottom had been ripped out. The upper air compartments kept the water from coming in very fast at first and no one seemed to think that she was going to sink.

  When I got on deck I saw the first sign of panic among the passengers. Women were screaming with terror and men were rushing this way and that. Then I noticed that the boat had begun to settle in the bow, where I was standing. All the lights on the vessel were still going, however, and were still lighted when they began to lower the first lifeboats. As the second boat swung from the davits, the water reached the dynamos in the engine room, and we were suddenly plunged into darkness save for the cold, clear light of the heavens.

  (US press, 19 April 1912)

  Gunnar Isidor Tenglin, aged twe
nty-five, was another Swede travelling third-class.

  It was not a hard shock, but my friend and myself, finding the engines stopped thought we would go up and investigate. I put on all my clothes but my shoes, and we went to the forward deck. The deck was covered with particles of ice. We asked an officer if there was any danger and he said: ‘No. Go back to your berths and go to sleep.’

  We did not go back, however, but walked to the rear deck. There a scene of panic prevailed. The English, Swedish, Irish and German passengers were the most composed, but the Italians were greatly excited. They were swarming up on deck, in all stages of undress, carrying baggage of every description. They were crying, praying and wringing their hands. As we were perfectly sure the boat would not sink, their antics seemed amusing to us. In fact we stood around about an hour or more watching them.

  Seeing that everybody was donning lifebelts, we thought we would go to our state room and procure one. We descended to the gangway, but were met with a rush of water that compelled us to retreat to the upper deck again. We could feel the boat gradually sinking and as they had commenced to launch the lifeboats, we set about thinking of our own safety.

  (Burlington Daily Gazette, 25 April 1912)

  Mariana Assaf was travelling from her native Syria to Canada. Her two sons had wanted to go with her, but she insisted that they stay at home. She told of the terrifying scenes in the steerage section.

  Although it did not seem to be much at first and we did not feel very much except a jar, some of us wanted to go on deck to see what happened. We were told that everything was all right, and we did not think there was a danger. But when the ship did not go on, some of us began to think they were not telling us the truth and that we might be sinking. I think somebody must have said the boat was going to go down for suddenly there was great confusion and everybody tried to rush the deck. There were many in steerage who tried to rush the boats and at those some of the officers fired revolvers and some of them were shot dead. The rest were driven back. They were not given a chance to escape. As for me, when I thought the ship might sink, I forgot everything and rushed away from the steerage and up to the deck where the first-class passengers were. I could not think of anything. I never saw any of my relations so I do not know what became of them. The last I saw of them was when we were all in the steerage.