Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  Then Officer Lowe wanted to go back to the rescue, but the women begged him not to go. He got about four boats together and distributed his passengers amongst them as many as he possibly could and then went back to the rescue. I believe they rescued six alive from that raft. The others had all died from exposure as it was intensely cold. The boat I got in was No. 10. There had been six picked up but one man was mad. He shook the boat and we were afraid it would capsize. Two men revived but they were terribly frozen, and two were dead and fell into the water at the bottom of the boat.

  Several times we thought we saw the lights of a ship, but no. Then we saw the lights of the Carpathia. We tried to shout for joy but it was a poor noise. My friend, Miss Clear Cameron, took an oar and the sea was getting much rougher and several of the passengers were very sick. By this time the cries of the drowning had ceased and the men rowed as quickly as possible. We wondered if we would ever get to it. Our boat had about two feet of water in it although we baled out all the time. Every wave we thought would swamp us, and the wreckage was sailing down right in our course. We got safely over that, but when the boat was so deep in the water we were pulled back to lie at the end of the boat. Oh, that last hour’s row with hope in sight!

  When we got to the Carpathia, we were helped up with ropes. The kindness of the officers and crew we shall never forget. They took us along to the saloon and gave us neat brandy. The women were brought in screaming on account of children they had lost. Some of the children got separated from their parents and others looked after them. Those we had said goodnight to on the Titanic on the Sunday evening we shook hands with on the Monday at a quarter to seven. That was the time we were picked up by the Carpathia, thanking God for our safety.

  All the boats were not in, so we went up on deck and watched the others coming up. Quite near the Carpathia were quite large icebergs and ice about 12 miles long, broken ice, it was a most imposing sight. I went to the wireless operator who was very kind and promised, if possible, to get a wireless through to tell Mother I was saved, but he was unable to do so, having so much to do.

  We tried to sleep that night on the tables in the saloon, but it thundered and lightened all night. How thankful we were that it was not the previous night!

  (Maidenhead Advertiser)

  BOAT NO. 16

  Boat 16 was lowered at 1.35 a.m. with fifty-six people on board, mainly women and children from second and third class. One of the crew members was thirty-six-year-old Able Seaman Ernest Archer.

  I went to the starboard side and assisted in lowering about three boats. Then an officer came along and he sang out that they wanted some seamen on the other side, on the port side, to assist over there. I assisted in getting Nos. 12, 14 and 16 out. When I got to No. 16 boat, the officer told me to get into the boat and see that the plug was in. So I got in the boat. I saw that the plug was in tight, then they started to put passengers in. I never saw any men get in – only my mate. We lowered the boat, and my mate pulled at the releasing bar for both falls, and that cleared the boat, and we started to pull away. There were about fifty passengers and only my mate and myself until the master-at-arms came down the fall to be coxswain of the boat. He took charge.

  We rowed, I should say, a quarter of a mile from the ship, and we remained there. I did not think the ship would go down. I thought we might go back to her again afterwards. I heard a couple of explosions. I should say there was about twenty minutes between each explosion. I assumed that water had got into the boiler room.

  After the ship went down, one of the lady passengers asked to go back and see if there was anyone in the water we could pick up, but I never heard any more of it. Another lady – a stewardess – tried to assist with the rowing. I told her it was not necessary for her to do it, but she said she would like to do it to keep herself warm.

  (US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

  ENGLEHARDT COLLAPSIBLE BOAT ‘C’

  The first of the four collapsible boats to leave was lowered on the starboard side at 1.40 a.m.. There were thirty-nine people on board including four oriental stowaways. But the most controversial occupant was White Star Line chairman J. Bruce Ismay who crept in unnoticed at the last minute along with another first-class passenger, wealthy American Billy Carter. Ismay later claimed that he only stepped in because there were no more women or children in the vicinity but he was widely condemned for saving his own skin while all around him perished. The man in charge of this boat was thirty-two-year-old Quartermaster George Rowe.

  I felt a slight jar and looked at my watch. It was a fine night, and it was then twenty minutes to twelve. I looked towards the starboard side of the ship and saw a mass of ice. I then remained on the after bridge to await orders through the telephone. No orders came down, and I remained until twenty-five minutes after twelve, when I saw a boat on the starboard beam. I telephoned to the fore bridge to know if they knew there was a boat lowered. They replied, asking me if I was the third officer. I replied: ‘No, I am the quartermaster.’ They told me to bring over detonators, which are used in firing distress signals.

  I took them to the fore bridge and turned them over to the fourth officer. I assisted the officer to fire them, and was firing the distress signals until about five-and-twenty minutes after.

  At that time they were getting out the starboard collapsible boats. The chief officer, Wilde, wanted a sailor. I asked Captain Smith if I should fire any more, and he said: ‘No, get into that boat.’ I went to the boat. Women and children were being passed in. I assisted six – three women and three children. The order was then given to lower the boat. The chief officer wanted to know if there were more women and children. There were none in the vicinity. Two gentlemen passengers got in. The boat was then lowered. When we reached the water we steered for a light in sight, roughly five miles. We pulled through the night, but seemed to get no nearer to the lights. So we altered our course back to a boat that was carrying a green light. During that time daylight broke and the Carpathia was in sight. When daylight broke, we found four men – Chinamen, I think they were, or Filipinos. They came up between the seats.

  (US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

  Londoner Hugh Woolner was a first-class passenger on the Titanic. He described how Chief Officer William Murdoch fired warning shots while the first collapsible boat was being loaded on the starboard side.

  There was a scramble on the starboard side. I looked around and saw two flashes of a pistol in the air. I heard Mr Murdoch shouting: ‘Get out of this, clear out of this,’ and that sort of thing to a lot of men who were swarming into the boat. Lt Steffanson and I went to help clear the boat of the men who were climbing in because there was a bunch of women – I think Italians and foreigners – who were standing on the outside of the crowd, unable to make their way towards the side of the boat. So we helped the officer to pull these men out, by their legs and anything we could get hold of. We pulled out five or six. I think they were probably third-class passengers. When the men cleared out, we lifted these Italian women and put them into the boat. They were very limp.

  (US Inquiry, 29 April 1912)

  Amy Stanley, aged twenty-four, from Oxfordshire was travelling third-class to the US to start a job there as a children’s maid. She later described her ordeal in a letter to her parents, which was printed in their local paper.

  I was writing a postcard the night that the boat struck the iceberg. It was about 11.30 p.m. I got out of bed and put my coat on and went out on deck and asked the steward what was the matter. He told me it was only the engines stopped, and ordered all the women back to bed. But I did not go. I shared a cabin with an American lady and child. I assisted them to dress, and then we went up on deck. We tried to reach the boats. Then I saw two fellows (whom we met at meals, the only men we made real friends of) coming towards us, who assisted us over the railings into the lifeboat. As we were being lowered a man about 16 stone jumped into the boat almost on top of me. I heard a pistol fired – I believe it was done to frighten the men f
rom rushing the boat. This man’s excuse was that he came because of his baby. When we rowed off, the child must have died had I not attended to it.

  We were rowing for several hours. I seemed to have extra strength that night to keep up my nerves, for I even made them laugh when I told them we had escaped vaccination, for we were all to have been vaccinated that day [Monday]. I will say no more of that awful row, except that I was able to fix the rope around the women for them to be pulled up on the Carpathia while then men steadied the boat. The women seemed quite stupefied yet when I was safe myself, I was the first to break down.

  The sight on board was awful, with raving women. Barely six women were saved who could say they had not lost a relative. Oh! the widows the Titanic has made!

  (Oxford Times, 18 May 1912)

  EMERGENCY CUTTER NO. 2

  The second emergency boat was launched from the port side at 1.45 a.m. with twenty-five people on board under the command of Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall. As the boat was lowered, Walter Douglas bade farewell to his wife Mahala Douglas and her maid, Miss Le Roy. It was the last time they would see him alive.

  I got into the boat and sat under the seats on the bottom, just under the tiller. Mr Boxhall had difficulty getting the boat loose and called for a knife.

  The rowing was very difficult, for no one knew how. I tried to steer, under Mr Boxhall’s orders, and he put the lantern – an old one, with very little light on it – on a pole which I held up for some time. Mr Boxhall got away from the ship and we stopped for a time. Several times we stopped rowing to listen for the lapping of the water against the icebergs.

  In an incredibly short space of time, it seemed to me, the boat sank. I heard no explosion. I watched the boat go down, and the last picture in my mind is the immense mass of black against the starlit sky, and then … nothingness.

  Mrs Appleton and some of the other women had been rowing, and did row all the time. Mr Boxhall had charge of the signal lights on the Titanic, and he put in the emergency boat a tin box of green lights, like rockets. These he commenced to send off at intervals, and very quickly we saw the lights of the Carpathia, the captain of which stated he saw our green lights ten miles away, and, of course, steered directly to us, so we were the first boat to arrive at the Carpathia.

  When we pulled alongside, Mr Boxhall called out: ‘Shut down your engines and take us aboard. I have only one sailor.’ At this point I called out, ‘The Titanic has gone down with everyone on board,’ and Mr Boxhall told me to ‘shut up’. This is not told in criticism; I think he was perfectly right. We climbed a rope ladder to the upper deck of the Carpathia. I at once asked the chief steward, who met us, to take the news to the captain. He said the officer was already with him.

  In the afternoon I sent a brief Marconigram with the news that Mr Douglas was among the missing. I went myself to the purser several times every day, and others also made inquiries for me in regard to it, but it was not sent.

  (US Inquiry, 9 May 1912)

  Able Seaman Frank Osman, aged thirty-eight, was one of the sailors on board Boat No. 2.

  All of us went up and cleared away the boats. After that we loaded all the boats there were. I went away in No. 2, the fourth from the last to leave the ship. Mr Boxhall was in command; Mr Murdoch directed the loading. All passengers were women and children except one man, a third-class passenger.

  After I got in the boat the officer found a bunch of rockets which was put in the boat by mistake for a box of biscuits. The officer fired some off, and the Carpathia came to us first and picked us up half an hour before anybody else. Not until morning did we see an iceberg about 100 feet out of the water with one big point sticking on one side of it, apparently dark, like dirty ice, 100 yards away. I knew that was the one we struck because we could see it was the biggest berg there, and the other ones would not have done so much damage, I think. It looked as if there was a piece broken off after she struck.

  When we were in the boat we shoved off from the ship, and I said to the officer, ‘See if you can get alongside to see if you can get any more hands – squeeze some more hands in.’ So the women then started to get nervous after I said that, and the officer said: ‘All right.’ The women disagreed to that. We pulled around to the starboard side of the ship and found we could not get to the starboard side because it was listing too far. We pulled astern that way again, and after we got astern we lay on our oars and saw the ship go down. After she got to a certain angle she exploded, broke in halves, and it seemed to me as if all the engines and everything that was in the after part slid out into the forward part, and the after part came up right again.

  We did not go back to the place where the ship had sunk because the women were all nervous. We pulled around as far as we could get to her, so that the women would not see, and it would not cause a panic. We got as close as we would dare to. We could not have taken any more hands into the boat – it was impossible. We might have got one in, that is about all.

  (US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

  St Louis judge’s widow Elisabeth Robert, aged forty-three, was travelling first-class with her daughter Georgette Madill, niece Elisabeth Allen and maid Emilie Kreuchen. Mrs Robert claimed to shed light on the fate of Captain Smith.

  I was lying in my cabin awake when the crash came. I arose and called to my daughter and niece to dress, and we all went up on deck, but even then they were beginning to load the lifeboats. We got seats in one, thanks to the men who stood back to make room for us.

  We soon cleared the Titanic and were rowing aimlessly about when I heard a fearful shrieking. I sounded as if hundreds of throats were calling for help. Then, quite clearly, I saw Colonel Astor and Captain Smith standing side by side. The explosion threw them into the water. Colonel Astor I did not see reappear, but Captain Smith was blown into the water with a couple of officers and swam quite near our boat.

  The officers we dragged aboard, but when we offered to help Captain Smith he shook his head and swam back towards where the Titanic had sunk.

  (New York World, 20 April 1912)

  BOAT NO. 4

  With lifeboats being launched in rapid succession, Second Officer Lightoller appeared to have completely forgotten about Boat No. 4 – the first to be uncovered – with its passenger list of wealthy women, including Mesdames Astor, Carter, Ryerson, Thayer and Widener. It was finally launched – almost an hour and a half later – at 1.55 a.m. after these eminent socialites had suffered the ignominy of having to clamber out of the cranked-open windows on A deck. Colonel Astor helped load the women and children, including his pregnant wife Madeleine. As the boat was barely two-thirds full, he asked whether he might be allowed to join her, but Lightoller refused to shift from his ‘women and children only’ policy. Colonel Astor’s final act was to rush down to the dog kennels on F deck, where he managed to free his pet Airedale, Kitty, as well as the other dogs. Madeleine Astor later said that her final memory of the Titanic was seeing Kitty running about on the sloping deck.

  Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller admitted his mistake to the Senate Investigation.

  We had previously lowered a boat from A deck, one deck down below. That was through my fault. It was the first boat I had lowered. I was intending to put the passengers in from A deck. On lowering the boat I found that the windows were closed. So I sent someone down to open the windows and carried on with the other boats, but decided it was not worth while lowering them down, that I could manage just as well from the boat deck.

  When I came forward from the other boats, I loaded that boat from A deck by getting the women out through the windows. My idea in filling the boats there was because there was a wire hawser running along the side of the ship for coaling purposes and it was handy to tie the boat in to hold it so that nobody could drop between the side of the boat and the ship.

  (US Inquiry, 19 April 1912)

  Walter Perkis, aged thirty-nine, was the quartermaster placed in command of lifeboat No. 4.

  I lowered No. 4
into the water, and left that boat, and walked aft. I came back and one of the seamen that was in the boat at the time sung out to me: ‘We need another hand down here.’ So I slid down the life line there from the davit into the boat. It was a drop of 70-odd feet.

  I took charge of the boat after I got in. We left the ship with three sailormen and about forty-two passengers. We were the last big boat on the port side to leave the ship. Later we picked up eight men that were swimming with life preservers. Two died afterwards in the boat. One was a fireman and one was a steward. After we had picked up the men, I could not hear any more cries anywhere. Everything was over. We stopped picking up. The last man we picked up, we heard a cry, and we did not hear any more cries after that. I waited then until daylight, or just before daylight, when we saw the lights of the Carpathia.

  (US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

  Mrs Emily Ryerson of Philadelphia was the wife of steel magnate Arthur Ryerson. The latter famously finished a game of cards with Archie Butt, Frank Millet and Clarence Moore in the first-class smoking room before finally heading for the boat deck at 2 a.m. All four men perished.

  At the time of collision I was awake and heard the engines stop, but felt no jar. My husband was asleep, so I rang and asked the steward, Bishop, what was the matter. He said: ‘There is talk of an iceberg, ma’am, and they have stopped not to run into it.’ I told him to keep me informed if there were any orders.

  After about ten minutes I went out in the corridor and saw far-off people hurrying on deck. A passenger ran by and called out: ‘Put on your lifebelts and come up on the boat deck.’ I said: ‘Where did you get those orders?’ He said: ‘From the captain.’