Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  I went back then and told Miss Bowen and my daughter, who were in the next room, to dress immediately, roused my husband and the two younger children, who were in a room on the other side, and then remembered my maid who had a room near us. Her door was locked and I had some difficulty in waking her.

  By this time my husband was fully dressed and we could hear the noise of feet tramping on the deck overhead. He was quite calm and cheerful and helped me put the lifebelts on the children and on my maid. I was paralyzed with fear of not all getting on deck together in time as there were seven of us. I would not let my younger daughter dress, but she put on a fur coat over her nightgown. My husband cautioned us all to keep together, and we went up to A deck where we found quite a group of people we knew. Everyone had on a lifebelt, and they all were very quiet and self-possessed.

  We stood about there for quite a long time – fully half an hour, I should say. I know my maid ran down to the cabin and got some of my clothes. Then we were ordered to the boat deck. I only remember the second steward at the head of the stairs who told us where to go. My chief thought and that of everyone else was not to make a fuss and to do as we were told. My husband joked with some of the women he knew and I heard him say: ‘Don’t you hear the band playing?’ I begged him to let me stay with him but he said: ‘You must obey orders. When they say, “Women and children to the boats”, you must go when your turn comes. I’ll stay with John Thayer. We will be all right. You take a boat going to New York.’ This referred to the belief that there was a circle of ships around waiting – the Olympic, the Baltic were some of the names I heard.

  All this time we could hear the rockets going up – signals of distress. Again we were ordered down to A deck, which was partly enclosed. We saw people getting into boats, but waited our turn. There was a rough sort of steps constructed to get up to the window. My boy, Jack, was with me. An officer at the window said: ‘That boy can’t go.’ My husband stepped forward and said: ‘Of course that boy goes with his mother. He is only thirteen.’ So they let him pass. They also said: ‘No more boys.’

  I turned and kissed my husband, and as we left he and the other men I knew – Mr Thayer, Mr Widener and others – were all standing there together very quietly. The decks were lighted, and as you went through the window, it was as if you stepped out into the dark. We were flung into the boats. There were two men – an officer inside and a sailor outside – to help us. I fell on top of the women who were already in the boat, and scrambled to the bow with my eldest daughter. Miss Bowen and my boy were in the stern and my second daughter was in the middle of the boat with my maid. Mrs Thayer, Mrs Widener, Mrs Astor and Miss Eustis were the only others I knew in our boat. Presently an officer called out from the upper deck: ‘How many women are there in that boat?’ Someone answered: ‘Twenty-four.’ ‘That’s enough,’ said the officer. ‘Lower away.’

  The ropes seemed to stick at one end and the boat tipped. Someone called for a knife but it was not needed until we got into the water, as it was but a short distance, and I then realized for the first time how far the ship had sunk. The deck we left was only about 20ft from the sea. I could see all the portholes open and water washing in.

  Then they called out: ‘How many seamen have you?’ We answered, ‘One.’ ‘That is not enough,’ said the officer. ‘I will send you another.’ And he sent a sailor down the rope. In a few minutes several other men – not sailors – came down the ropes and dropped into our boat.

  The order was given to pull away, but we made little progress. There was a confusion of orders. We rowed towards the stern, someone shouted something about a gangway, but no one seemed to know what to do. Barrels and chairs were being thrown overboard. Then suddenly, when we still seemed very near, we saw the ship was sinking rapidly. I turned to see the great ship take a plunge towards the bow, the two forward funnels seemed to lean and then she seemed to break in half as if cut with a knife. As the bow went under, the lights went out. The stern stood up for several minutes, black against the stars, and then that too plunged down. There was no sound for what seemed like hours, and then began the cries for help of people drowning all around us.

  Someone called out, ‘Pull for your lives or you’ll be sucked under,’ and everyone that could rowed like mad. I could see my younger daughter and Mrs Thayer and Mrs Astor rowing, but there seemed to be no suction. Then we turned to pick up some of those in the water. Some of the women protested, but others persisted and we dragged in six or seven men. They were so chilled and frozen already they could hardly move. Two of them died in the stern later, and many were raving and moaning and delirious most of the time.

  We had no lights or compass. There were several babies in the boat, but there was no milk or water. I believe these were all stowed away somewhere but no one knew where, and as the bottom of the boat was full of water and the boat full of people, it was very difficult to find anything.

  After the Titanic sank we saw no lights, and no one seemed to know what direction to take. Lowe, the officer in charge of the boat, had called out earlier for all to tie together, so we now heard his whistle. As soon as we could make out the other boats in the dark, five of us were tied together, and we drifted about without rowing, as the sea was calm, waiting for the dawn. It was very cold and soon a breeze sprang up, and it was hard to keep our heavy boat bow on, but as the cries died down we could see dimly what seemed to be a raft with about twenty men standing on it back to back. It was the overturned boat. As the sailors on our boat said we could still carry eight or ten more people, we called for another boat to volunteer and go to rescue them. So we two cut loose our painters and between us got all the men off. They were nearly gone and could not have held out much longer.

  Then when the sun rose, we saw the Carpathia standing up about five miles away, and for the first time we saw the icebergs all around us.

  (US Inquiry, 10 May 1912)

  Young Cornish wife Emily Richards told of the desperate scene on board lifeboat No. 4.

  When we got on deck we were told to pass through the dining room to a ladder that was placed against the side of the cabins and led to the upper deck.

  We were put through the portholes into the boats, and the boat that I was in had a foot of water in it. As soon as we were in we were told to sit down on the bottom. In that position we were so low that we could not see over the gunwale.

  Once the boat had started away, some of the women stood up, and the seamen, with their hands full with the oars, simply put their feet on them and forced them back into the sitting position.

  We had not got far away by the time the ship went down, and after that there were men floating in the water all around, and seven of these were picked up by us in the hours that followed, between that and daybreak. Some of these seven were already mad with exposure, and babbled gibberish and kept trying to get up and overturn the boat. The other men had to sit upon them to hold them down.

  Two of the women picked up were so overcome with the cold of the water that they died before we reached the Carpathia and their dead bodies were taken aboard. One woman, who spoke a tongue none of us could understand, was picked up by the boat and believed that her children were lost. She was entirely mad. When her children were brought to her on the Carpathia she was wild with joy and lay down on the children on the floor trying to cover them with her body like a wild beast protecting its young, and they had to take her children away from her for the time to save them from being suffocated.

  (New York World, 20 April 1912)

  Sixteen-year-old Jean Gertrude Hippach was returning to Chicago after spending three months abroad to improve her health. She and her mother Ida had intended to travel back by the Olympic but, because they wanted to visit Paris, they switched to the Titanic instead. They boarded Boat No. 4.

  Mrs Astor, too, was in our boat. We already knew her, that is, we knew who she was. She was crying and her face was bleeding from a cut. One of the oars struck her somehow. There was a little bride in ou
r boat with her husband. She clung to him and cried that she would not go and leave him, so the officers finally pushed them both in together. There were about thirty-five in all in our boat, mainly from the steerage.

  We had gone back for our lifebelts before we got in, as the officers told us to do. I got mine on wrong side before and the officer changed it. That was the reason, perhaps, why some people couldn’t sit down with them on. And we went back still another time and got some heavy steamer rugs, two of them, as the officers said it was going to be very cold on the water and we might have to stay out several hours. Even then we didn’t expect the Titanic to go down, you see. The rugs were more than we needed, and we gave them to a poor woman who had on only a nightgown and a waterproof coat and her baby was in a nightgown only. That poor little baby! It slept through everything!

  After we had pushed away a little we looked at the steamer and I said to mother, ‘It surely is sinking. See, the water is up to those portholes!’ And very soon it went under. To the last those poor musicians stood there, playing ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’.

  We had only one or two in the boat who knew anything about rowing and they kept turning it this way and that and again and again it seemed as if we might be capsized. But we did get away from the Titanic a little distance before it went down.

  We picked up eight men from the water, all third-class passengers, I think. The water was very still and the sky – so many stars! Nothing but the sea and the sky. You can’t think how it felt out there alone by ourselves in the Atlantic. And there were so many shooting stars; I never saw so many in all my life. You know they say when you see a shooting star someone is dying. We thought of that, for there were so many dying, not far from us.

  It was so long, such a long, long night. At last there was a little faint light. The first thing we saw we thought was one of the Titanic’s funnels sticking out of the water. But it wasn’t; it was the raft, the collapsible boat that didn’t open, with twelve men on it, standing close together. They came up to us and demanded that we take them. But we thought they ought to say who they were; we were already pretty full and the water was getting rough. But they said they would jump in anyhow, so we let them come aboard, as we knew that jumping would surely capsize us. They were all stewards and waiters, men of the service of the Titanic. After we took them in it got still rougher, so that we sometimes shipped water. In fact, there was nearly a foot of water in the bottom of the boat and we hadn’t a basin, or dipper, not so much as a cup to dip it out with. Meanwhile the waves were rising and if we hadn’t been picked up when we were, another half hour would surely have been the end of us.

  Able Seaman Samuel Hemming swam 200 yards to reach Boat No. 4.

  I went to the bridge and looked over and saw the water climbing upon the bridge. I went and looked over the starboard side, and everything was black. I went over to the port side and saw a boat off the port quarter, and I went along the port side and got up the after boat davits and slid down the fall and swam to the boat about 200 yards. When I reached the boat I tried to get hold of the grab-line on the bows. I pulled my head above the gunwale, and I said, ‘Give us a hand in, Jack.’ Foley (a storekeeper) was in the boat. He said, ‘Is that you, Sam?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and him and the women and children pulled me in the boat.

  After the ship sank we pulled back and picked up seven of the crew. We made for the light of another lifeboat and kept in company with her. Then day broke and we saw two more lifeboats. We pulled towards them and we all made fast by the painter. Then we helped with Boat No. 12 to take off the people on an overturned boat.

  (US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

  ENGLEHARDT COLLAPSIBLE BOAT ‘D’

  This was the last lifeboat to be launched from the Titanic, at 2.05 a.m., with forty-four of its forty-seven places filled, but only after Second Officer Lightoller had drawn his revolver and got crew-men to form a human barrier to hold back a sudden surge of men from steerage who had just arrived on the deck. Amid the crush of bodies, second-class passenger Michel Navratil, a native of Slovakia, managed to pass his two young sons through the human chain and on to the boat. Navratil was travelling under an assumed name, Michel Hoffman, having snatched the children from their mother. He died in the sinking and a revolver was found in his pocket.

  Steward John Hardy helped with loading the boat before making up the crew numbers.

  I went to my station, which was Boat No. 1, on the starboard side. I saw that lowered before I myself got there – I did not get into it as there was no room. I went over to the port side and assisted the ladies and children in getting into the boats and finally I was working on deck until the last collapsible boat was launched.

  We launched the boat parallel with the ship’s side, and Mr Lightoller and myself loaded the boat. When the boat was full, Mr Lightoller was in the boat with me. He said he would step out himself and make room for somebody else, and he stepped back on board the ship and asked if I could row. I told him I could, and I went away in that boat. We could not get the boat lowered from one end. The forward part of the boat was lowered, but there was nobody there to lower the after end. Mr Lightoller stepped from the boat aboard the ship and did it himself.

  We lowered away and got to the water, and the ship was then at a heavy list to port. We got clear of the ship and rowed out some little distance from her, and finally we all got together, about seven boats of us, and I remember quite distinctly Officer Lowe telling us to tie up to each other, as we would be better seen and could keep better together. Then Officer Lowe, having a full complement of passengers in his boat, distributed among us what he had, our boat taking ten. We had twenty-five already, and that number made thirty-five.

  Officer Lowe then returned with his crew to back to the ship to pick up all he could. We hung around then until dawn, until we sighted the Carpathia, pulling now and again. We were towed up by Mr Lowe with a sail to the Carpathia, not having enough men in the boat to pull. There was only the quartermaster Bright and myself, two firemen, and about four gentlemen passengers, and the balance were women and children. Bright took the tiller. He was using an oar to steer by. I myself pulled with all my might. The passengers were all strangers to me. There were a number of third-class passengers, that were Syrians, in the bottom of the boat, chattering the whole night in their strange language.

  Greatly to my surprise, when I got on the Carpathia I saw Officer Lightoller coming in the following afternoon. When he stepped from the collapsible boat, I was sure he had gone down on the ship.

  There was no panic on board the ship because everybody had full confidence that the ship would float. I had great respect and great regard for Chief Officer Murdoch, and I was walking along the deck forward with him, and he said, ‘I believe she is gone, Hardy.’ That is the only time I thought she might sink – when he said that. That was a good half hour before my boat was lowered.

  (US Inquiry, 25 April 1912)

  Lt Mauritz Hakan Bjornstrom-Steffanson of the Swedish army was travelling to the US on business. He and another first-class passenger, Englishman Hugh Woolner, had been sitting talking in the Café Parisien at the moment of impact. They saved their skins by dramatically jumping from the flooded promenade deck into collapsible boat ‘D’ as it was being lowered past them.

  Mr Woolner and I went to a lower deck. It was deserted, but as we wished to find out what had happened we went down a deck lower. Then for the first time we realized the seriousness of that twisting which had rent the ship nearly asunder. We saw the water pouring into the hull and where we finally stood water rose to our knees. Woolner and I decided to get out as quickly as we could and as we turned to rush upward we saw sliding down the portside of the drowning ship a collapsible lifeboat. Most of those it contained were from the steerage.

  ‘Let’s not take any chances,’ I shouted to Woolner, and as it came nearly opposite us, swinging in and out slowly, we jumped and fortunately landed in it. I should say we jumped at least ten feet clear of the boat.
The boat teetered a bit and then swiftly shot down to the water. A second later a fat man bobbed up in the water in front of the boat, and he was also dragged in. Woolner and I took oars and started to pull with all our might to get from the ship before she sank. We could see some gathered in the steerage, huddled together, as we pulled away, and then cries of fear came to us.

  We hardly reached a point 100 yards away from the Titanic when we saw all the lights go out in a flash. Thirty seconds later there was a roar, and we saw the big boat settle a second and then plunge straight down head foremost. It was quiet for a moment, and then we saw the people who had been on the decks bob up, and there was the most terrible cry that I have ever heard in my life. It was so terribly sudden, and then there was a vast quiet, during which we shivered over the oars and the women cried hysterically. Some of them tried to jump overboard and we had to struggle in the shaky boat to hold them until they quieted down.

  For about two hours we just rowed around. We rolled badly at times, but it didn’t seem dangerous. Some of the people didn’t have any clothes. There were women from the first and second cabins and from the steerage in our boat. About 4 o’clock in the morning we saw the lights of a big boat coming. It was the Carpathia. The wind was rising then and it was very cold. For a time it looked as if they wouldn’t see us, but they finally did and we were taken aboard.

  (US press, 19 April 1912)

  Hugh Woolner told his account to the Senate investigation.

  I said to Steffanson: ‘There is nothing more for us to do. Let us go down to A deck again.’ And we went down again, but there was nobody there that time at all. It was perfectly empty the whole length. It was absolutely deserted, and the electric lights along the ceiling of A deck were beginning to turn red, just a glow, a red sort of glow. So I said to Steffanson: ‘This is getting rather a tight corner. I do not like being inside these closed windows. Let us go out through the door at the end.’ And as we went out through the door, the sea came onto the deck at our feet.