Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  Luckily the women in our boat did not see the sinking of the Titanic. It was too dark, and when the day dawned they saw a few sticks and timber floating on the water, and only then did they realize that something terrible had happened.

  The Titanic was no longer visible above water, and all around us we could see dead bodies floating.

  For the first time the women became terrified, and many wept bitterly, while others seemed dazed. Fortunately we soon sighted the Carpathia, and the survivors were quickly taken aboard.

  (Daily Chronicle, 20 April 1912)

  Senior stewardess Sarah Stap owed her life to a young cabin boy. On being told to get into boat 11, she heroically suggested that the cabin boy go instead as he was younger and had his whole life ahead of him. The boy responded by simply picking her up and putting her in the boat.

  I was helped into the boat and had charge of a baby, whose father and mother were lost. I nursed the little mite for several hours.

  Although the night was starry, it was bitterly cold and everyone was nearly starved. We were all huddled up together. It was awful. We could see the lights of the ship slowly disappearing beneath the waves, one by one, until there alone remained the masthead light. Then suddenly the great ship gave a lurch and disappeared gracefully out of sight.

  All this time the people on board were shrieking in their death agonies, and the passengers were under the impression that it was the other people in the boats cheering. Only the members of the crew knew what it was and we dared not say.

  After the ship had gone an explosion rent the air. The shrieks of the dying were positively awful. During the time we were in the lifeboat we passed about six or seven icebergs. We could hear the music of the band all the time. They were heroes if you like. They were not asked to play, but did it absolutely on their own initiative.

  (Birkenhead News, 4 May 1912)

  Mrs Paul Schabert from Derby, Connecticut, saved her brother’s life.

  As I heard the cry ‘Lifeboats are ready! The ladies will go first!’ a bedroom steward rushed by me. ‘Steward,’ I asked, ‘are we sinking?’ He stopped, and with perfect coolness said, ‘We are.’ The way he said it left no room for doubt.

  When the women were assembled for the boats I was urged to get in with the other women in one of the first boats. My brother Philip was with me, and I wanted him to go along, too, but they said that was out of the question. ‘Very well, then, I will wait until the last boat,’ I said. I wanted to be near him as long as I could. Then they called me for the last boat. They told me it was my last chance, so I then decided to go. Fortunately there were no more women left, and they let my brother go with me. I assure you, I am mighty glad I did not go away on the first invitation.

  (US press, 19 April 1912)

  Mrs Allen Becker was the wife of a missionary based in India. She and her three young children were sailing to America for specialist treatment for an illness which one-year-old Richard had contracted in India.

  I stood at the lifeboat helping my babies in. When I got them all in the boat the officer said the boat was filled. I begged him to let me go with my children. He said it was impossible, that there were too many. I pleaded with him. Finally, just as the boat was being lowered, he pushed me, and I landed face down. For a long time I didn’t see my children. People told me they were in the other end of the boat. Still I was afraid. And then I saw Richard in a sailor’s arms, and the others near him. At that moment I was almost overwhelmed by the gladness. My babies are safe.

  I do not know how far away we were from the Titanic when she sank. I did not look back. We could see drowning men struggling all around us after the boat went down. Some could not have been very far off. There was no more room in our boat and we had to sit and watch men perish. We were afraid to move for fear of sinking the boat, and the ice grinding against it added to our fright.

  It seemed ages and ages before we were picked up by the Carpathia – the ship of widows. There were 160 women left husbandless by the wreck, where I was quartered in the second cabin of the Carpathia. The scenes of grief were terrible.

  But once aboard the Carpathia we were in the midst of the most lavish kindness. The ship’s company and the passengers were most kind. We were given comfortable quarters and good food while passengers supplied us with clothing. But oh it was so ghastly.

  (US press, 20 April 1912)

  Swiss-born Mrs Amin Jerwan, aged twenty-three, was travelling second-class. She told how mothers and children were separated by the officers and how she herself was handed a baby as she left in boat 11.

  Everything was done without the slightest disorder. No one got hysterical and there was no confusion except when a child would be put in a boat and the mother told to wait for another one. I saw several instances of this. The crew and the men passengers all behaved as if everything would turn out all right, and we women thought it would.

  When I got in one of the boats I found a baby in my possession without the least idea whom it belonged to. I never found out. When we were picked up by the Carpathia the baby was taken on board in a net and I never saw it again. I suppose it was found by the mother.

  Before we had been in the boat very long we saw the Titanic go down. Then we knew that all the people we had left behind were lost. We saw it go plainly, although it was night. The stars were bright and we could see the lights of the ship. Suddenly those in the bow seemed to go out, and then quickly the same thing happened to those in the stern. The band was in the stern and went down playing. We could hear the screams of those on board and cries of ‘Save us!’ But of course we could do nothing.

  Everybody on the ship blamed the captain. The sailor who rowed our boat told me that he had followed the sea for 45 years and had never been in any kind of an accident before, except on the Olympic when she rammed the Hawke. ‘That was under the same captain,’ he said, ‘and now I am having my second experience under him.’

  (US press, 19 April 1912)

  BOAT NO. 12

  With boats now being launched in rapid succession as the severity of the situation became apparent, No. 12 was allowed to leave with just forty-two on board, owing to an apparent lack of women and children. When a crowd of men from second-and third-class tried to clamber aboard, the officers held them at bay. The only male passenger to leave on this boat was a Frenchman who leapt in as it was being lowered past B deck. Later, No. 12 picked up passengers from the overturned Englehardt collapsible boat B. Able Seaman Frederick Clench described the scene.

  There was only one male passenger in our boat, and that was a Frenchman who jumped in, and we could not find him. He got under the thwart and mixed with the women.

  We rowed away from the ship about a quarter of a mile, then we rested on our oars according to orders. After the ship was gone down, Officer Lowe came up with us with his boat, and transferred some of his people into ours so that he would have a clear boat to go around to look for the people who were floating in the water. We had close on sixty then. Mr Lowe told us to lie on our oars and keep together until he came back to us.

  While Mr Lowe was gone I heard shouts. Of course I looked around, and I saw a boat in the way that appeared to be like a funnel. We started to back away then. We thought it was the top of the funnel. I put my head over the gunwale and looked along the water’s edge and saw some men on a raft. Then I heard two whistles blown.

  I sang out, ‘Aye, aye. I am coming over,’ and we pulled over and found it was not a raft exactly, but an overturned boat. Mr Lightoller was there on that boat and I think the wireless operator (Harold Bride) was on there too. We took them on board the boat and we shared the amount of room that was there. They were all wet through. They had been in the water.

  Mr Lightoller took charge of us and sighted the Carpathia’s lights. Then we started heading for that. We had to row a tidy distance to the Carpathia because there were boats ahead of us and we had a boat in tow, besides all the people we had aboard.

  (US Inquiry, 25 April
1912)

  Lillian Bentham, aged seventeen, from Rochester, New York, was one of a party of eleven on their way home from a trip to Europe.

  Although the passengers were being taken off in the lifeboats, I did not think the Titanic was going to sink. It was so big, so magnificent, that I did not think it possible. I had gone to my state room and it was just before the last of twelve lifeboats put off that one of the young men in my party rushed to my state room and told me to hurry on deck, that the ship was going down.

  I reached the deck with him just in time to get into the boat before it was lowered from the davits. I recall that the officer on deck shouted to the seaman in charge of the lifeboat to pull away quickly, that the Titanic was going down, and the suction would pull us under. A man jumped from an upper deck and landed in our boat just as we pulled away.

  We had just moved a few yards from the giant ship when she was broken by the explosion of her boilers and sank in two sections. The suction did pull us back towards the great hole in the water the ship left as she plunged. But we kept afloat, a frail craft loaded with women and children, with the exception of the seaman in charge and the man who had jumped.

  The greatest horror of the experience was the eight hours we spent floating about until we were picked up by the Carpathia. At first the sea was smooth as glass but it was literally dotted with human forms swimming, clinging to wreckage, fighting to climb into the lifeboats. Most of them were lost.

  Towards morning the wind freshened, and the boats, which had been lashed together, tossed dangerously and crashed against one another, so they were cut apart. Then the lifeboats separated and drifted in all directions.

  For my part, I began to realize that I had lost nothing compared to others, who had been compelled to see their relatives and friends go down with the Titanic. There was a Frenchwoman there, too, who was very much possessed. I helped the seaman with the oars and did what I could to comfort the others.

  Towards morning we came upon one of the collapsible canvas boats, in a sinking condition, with about twenty men on it. They were huddled together, stiff and cold, absolutely helpless. In their midst was an apparent millionaire, dressed in evening clothes and a fur coat and wearing a life preserver. He had been to a gay party in the first cabin the night before and was gloriously intoxicated. He did not seem to realize the situation and was having the time of his life.

  I helped the seamen pull those twenty men into our boat, which already had more than 30 in it. We had to pile them on the bottom of the boat, like so many sacks of flour, because they were unable to do anything to help themselves. The boat was very much overloaded when the task was finished. I took off my coat and gave it to one man – I had two coats and could spare one. One of those men was virtually dead when we pulled him into our boat. Seven of them died from exposure.

  It was the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. The sun came up like a great ball of fire, casting its rays on a large iceberg behind us, causing the berg to glisten like gold. And then, far off in the distance, we saw smoke, thin and indistinct at first, but gradually coming nearer. Then we made out what it was. It was a ship, answering the SOS call. It was the Carpathia. To me, and I guess to all of the others in that boat, that was the most wonderful ship in the world.

  Then our hearts sank with terrible fear as the ship disappeared. We were sure we were lost. But it came into view again and hope revived. Several times it did that. We did not know at that time that the Carpathia was steaming about the ocean, picking up the survivors from the different lifeboats that had been so widely scattered.

  It finally came to our boat and we were lifted on deck. They used ropes with a seat on it for the adults. The children were pulled up in rope baskets. We were given every care on the Carpathia, and it must have been a task for that ship to get us all back to New York, for the Carpathia is a small boat and was greatly overcrowded.

  BOAT NO. 13

  First-class steward Frederick Ray described the lowering of boat No. 13 on the starboard side.

  I got to A deck and went through the door. I went out on to the open deck and along to No. 9 boat. It was just being filled with women and children, and I assisted. I saw that lowered away and went along to No. 11 boat. After that was lowered away with women and children, I went to No. 13 boat. I saw that about half filled with women and children. They said: ‘A few of you men get in here.’ There were about nine to a dozen men there, passengers and crew. I saw Mr Washington Dodge there, asking where his wife and child were. He said they had gone away in one of the boats. He was standing well back from the boat, and I said: ‘You had better get in here, then.’ I got behind him and pushed him, and I followed.

  After I got in, there was a rather big woman came along, and we helped her in the boat. She was crying all the time, saying: ‘Don’t put me in the boat – I’ve never been in an open boat in my life.’ I said: ‘You’ve got to go, so you may as well keep quiet.’ Then a small child rolled in a blanket was thrown into the boat to me, and I caught it. The woman that brought it along got into the boat afterwards. We left about three or four men on the deck, at the rail, and they went along to No. 15 boat.

  The boat was lowered away until we got nearly to the water. Then two or three of us noticed a large discharge of water coming from the ship’s side. The hole was about two feet wide and about a foot deep, a solid mass of water coming out from the hole. I realized that if the boat was lowered down straight away the boat would be swamped and we would all be thrown into the water. We shouted for the boat to be stopped from being lowered, and it was.

  We got oars and pushed it off from the side of the ship and the next I knew we were in the water free from this discharge. In the meantime we were drifting a little aft and another boat was being lowered immediately upon us, about two feet over our heads. We all shouted again, and again they stopped lowering the other boat.

  (US Inquiry, 27 April 1912)

  English schoolteacher Lawrence Beesley, whose name was not on the original list of survivors sent by the Carpathia, lived to give a detailed account of the evacuation. Whilst Beesley’s narrative is viewed as one of the most reliable, even he, in the heat of the moment, became confused by the lifeboat numbers, mistaking No. 15 for No. 14.

  All this time there was no trace of any disorder, panic or rush to the boats, and no scenes of women sobbing hysterically, such as one generally pictures as happening at such times; every one seemed to realize so slowly that there was imminent danger. When it was realized that we might all be presently in the sea, with nothing but our life belts to support us until we were picked up by passing steamers, it was extraordinary how calm every one was and how completely self-controlled.

  One by one the boats were filled with women and children, lowered and rowed away into the night. Presently the word went round among the men, ‘the men are to be put into the boats on the starboard side.’ I was on the port side, and most of the men walked across the deck to see if this was so. I remained where I was, and presently heard the call: ‘Any more ladies?’ Looking over the side of the ship, I saw the boat, No. 13, swinging level with B deck, half full of ladies. Again the call was repeated: ‘Any more ladies?’ I saw none come on and then one of the crew looked up and said: ‘Any ladies on your deck, sir?’ ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Then you had better jump.’

  I dropped in and fell in the bottom, as they cried ‘lower away’. As the boat began to descend, two ladies were pushed hurriedly through the crowd on B deck and heaved over into the boat, and a baby of ten months passed down after them. Down we went, the crew calling to those lowering which end to keep level. ‘Aft,’ ‘stern’, ‘both together’, until we were some ten feet from the water, and here occurred the only anxious moment we had during the whole of our experience from leaving the deck to reaching the Carpathia. Immediately below our boat was the exhaust of the condensers, a huge stream of water pouring all the time from the ship’s side just above the water line. It was plain we ought to be quite a way from t
his not to be swamped by it when we touched water. We had no officer aboard, nor petty officer or member of the crew to take charge. So one of the stokers shouted: ‘Someone find the pin which releases the boat from the ropes and pull it up.’ No one knew where it was. We felt as well as we could on the floor and sides, but found nothing, and it was hard to move among so many people – we had sixty or seventy on board.

  Down we went and presently floated with our ropes still holding us, the exhaust washing us away from the side of the vessel and the swell of the sea urging us back against the side again. The result of all these forces was an impetus which carried us parallel to the ship’s side and directly under boat No. 14, which had filled rapidly with men and was coming down on us in a way that threatened to submerge our boat. ‘Stop lowering 14,’ our crew shouted, and the crew of No. 14, now only twenty feet above, shouted the same. But the distance to the top was some seventy feet and the creaking pulleys must have deadened all sound to those above, for down it came – fifteen feet, ten feet, five feet, and a stoker and I reached up and touched her swinging above our heads. The next drop would have brought it on to our heads, but just before it dropped another stoker sprang to the ropes with his knife. ‘One,’ I heard him say; ‘two’ as his knife cut through the pulley ropes, and the next moment the exhaust steam had carried us clear, while boat 14 dropped into the space we had the moment before occupied, our gunwales almost touching.

  We drifted away easily as the oars were got out and headed directly away from the ship. The crew seemed to me to be mostly cooks in white jackets, two to an oar, with a stoker at the tiller. The captain-stoker told us that he had been on the sea twenty-six years and had never seen such a calm night on the Atlantic. As we rowed away from the Titanic we looked back from time to time to watch it, and a more striking spectacle it was not possible for anyone to see. In the distance it looked an enormous length, its great bulk outlined in black against the starry sky, every port-hole and saloon blazing with light. It was impossible to think anything could be wrong with such a leviathan were it not for that ominous tilt downward in the bow, where the water was by now up to the lowest row of portholes. Presently about 2 a.m., as near as I can remember, we observed it settling very rapidly, with the bow and bridge completely under water, and concluded it was now only a question of minutes before it went; and so it proved.