We hopped up onto the gunwale, preparing to jump out into the sea, because if we had waited a minute longer we should have been boxed in against the ceiling. And as we looked out we saw this collapsible, the last boat on the port side, being lowered right in front of our faces. It was about nine feet out. It was full up to the bow, and I said to Steffanson: ‘There is nobody in the bows. Let us make a jump for it. You go first.’ He jumped out and tumbled head over heels into the bow, and I jumped too, and hit the gunwale with my chest, which had on this life preserver, of course, and I sort of bounced off the gunwale and caught the gunwale with my fingers, and slipped off backwards. As my legs dropped down, I felt that they were in the sea.
I pulled myself up out of the water and then I hooked my right heel over the gunwale. By this time Steffanson was standing up, and he caught hold of me and lifted me in. Then we looked over into the sea and saw a man swimming in the sea just beneath us, and pulled him in.
At dawn, Officer Lowe transferred five or six from his boat, No. 14, to ours, which brought us down very close to the water. At daylight we saw a great many icebergs of different colours, as the sun struck them. Some looked white, some looked blue, some looked mauve and others were dark grey. There was one double-toothed one that looked to be of good size; it must have been about 100ft high.
(US Inquiry, 29 April 1912)
ENGLEHARDT COLLAPSIBLE BOAT ‘B’
In the desperate race to launch the remaining two lifeboats before the Titanic went down, there was no time to release collapsible boats ‘A’ and ‘B’, which had been tethered to the roof of the officers’ quarters above the boat deck, and both were swept away as the sea rushed over the decks. Officers Wilde and Murdoch were last seen trying to free boat ‘B’ but, after it had fallen into the water upside down, neither man was able to scramble aboard. The upturned collapsible ‘B’ provided a precarious perch for as many as forty people that night.
Junior wireless operator Harold Bride had remained at his post with senior operator Jack Phillips until the very last minute. After being washed overboard, Bride was trapped in an air pocket beneath boat ‘B’ for some forty-five minutes. He finally managed to extricate himself and spent at least another half-hour in the freezing water before being picked up by the upturned collapsible. His ankles were gashed and bruised and his feet riddled with frostbite, but he survived.
I went to the place where I had seen the collapsible boat on the boat deck, and to my surprise I saw the boat, and the men still trying to push it off. I guess there wasn’t a sailor in the crowd. They couldn’t do it. I went up to them, and was just lending a hand when a large wave came awash of the deck. The big wave carried the boat off. I had hold of an oar-lock and I went with it. The next I knew I was in the boat. But that was not all. I was in the boat, and the boat was upside down, and I was under it. I remember realizing I was wet through, and that whatever happened I must not breathe, for I was under water. I knew I had to fight for it, and I did. How I got out from under the boat I do not know but I felt a breath of air at last. There were men all around me – hundreds of them. The sea was dotted with them, all depending on their lifebelts. I felt I simply had to get away from the ship. She was a beautiful sight then. Smoke and sparks were rushing out of her funnel. There must have been an explosion, but we heard none. We only saw a big stream of sparks. The ship was gradually turning on her nose – just like a duck that goes for a dive. I had only one thing on my mind – to get away from the suction. The band was still playing. I guess all of them went down. They were heroes. They were playing ‘Autumn’ then. I swam with all my might. I suppose I was 150 feet away when the Titanic, on her nose, with her afterquarter sticking straight up in the air, began to settle slowly. When at last the waves washed over her rudder there wasn’t the least bit of suction I could feel. She must have kept going just as slowly as she had been.
I felt after a little while like sinking. I was very cold. I saw a boat of some kind near me, and put all my strength into an effort to swim to it. It was hard work. I was all done when a hand reached out from the boat and pulled me aboard. It was our same collapsible. The same crowd was on it. There was just room for me to roll on the edge. I lay there not caring what happened. Somebody sat on my legs. They were wedged in between the slats, and were being wrenched. I had not the heart to ask the man to move. It was a terrible sight all around – men swimming and sinking.
I lay where I was, letting the man wrench my feet out of shape. Others came near. Nobody gave them a hand. The bottom-up boat already had more men than it would hold, and it was sinking. At first the larger waves splashed over my clothing. Then they began to splash over my head, and I had to breathe when I could. As we floated around on our capsized boat and I kept straining my eyes for a ship’s lights, somebody said, ‘Don’t the rest of you think we ought to pray?’ The man who made the suggestion asked what the religion of the others was. Each man called out his religion. One was a Catholic, one a Methodist, one a Presbyterian. It was decided the most appropriate prayer for all was the Lord’s Prayer. We spoke it over in chorus with the man who first suggested that we pray as the leader. Some splendid people saved us. They had a right-side-up boat and it was full to capacity. Yet they came to us and loaded us all into it. I saw some lights off in the distance and knew a steamship was coming to our aid. I didn’t care what happened. I just lay and gasped when I could, and felt the pain in my feet. I feel it still. At last the Carpathia was alongside, and the people were being taken up a rope ladder. Our boat drew near, and one by one the men were taken off it. One man was dead. I passed him, and went to a ladder, although my feet pained me terribly.
The dead man was Phillips. He died on the raft from exposure and cold. I guess he had been all in from work before the wreck came. He stood his ground until the crisis passed and then collapsed.
Waiter Thomas Whiteley managed to clamber aboard Collapsible ‘B’.
The deck was crowded. The Second Officer was getting boat No. 1 ready. He asked me to give him a hand. I helped fill the boats. They were crowded with women and children. There were two collapsible boats on each side in addition to the regular lifeboats. At the order of the Second Officer we got the collapsible boat on the port side ready and No. 1 on the starboard followed. The collapsible boat No. 2 on the starboard jammed. I got my leg caught in one of the ropes. The Second Officer was hacking at the rope with a knife. I was being dragged around the deck by that rope when I looked up and saw the boat filled with people turning end up on the boats. The boat overturned.
In some way I got overboard and found something to hold on to – an oak dresser. I wasn’t more than sixty feet from the Titanic when she went down. I saw all the machinery drop out of her.
I was in the water about half an hour and could hear the cries of thousands of people, it seemed. Then I drifted near a boat wrong side up. About thirty men were clinging to it. They refused to let me get on. Someone tried to hit me with an oar, but I scrambled on to her.
(US press, 19 April 1912)
After supervising the evacuation of the passengers, Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller told of his own escape from the jaws of death.
I was on top of the officers’ quarters and there was nothing more to be done. The ship then took a dive and I turned face forward and also took a dive from on top, practically amidships a little to the starboard. I was driven back against the blower, which faces forward to the wind and which then goes down to the stoke-hole. But there is a grating there and it was against this grating that I was sucked by the water, and held there under water.
There was a terrific blast of air and water, and I was blown out clear. I came up above the water, which barely threw me away at all, because I went down again against these fiddly gratings immediately abreast of the funnel over the stoke-hole. Colonel Gracie, I believe, was sucked down in identically the same manner, caused by the water rushing down below as the ship was going down.
I next found myself alongside the ov
erturned boat. This was before the Titanic sank. The funnel then fell down and if there was anybody on that side of the Englehardt boat, it fell on them. I hardly had any opportunity to swim. It was the action of the funnel falling that threw us out a considerable distance away from the ship. We had no oars or other effective means for propelling the overturned boat. We had little bits of wood, but they were practically ineffective.
(US Inquiry, 19 April 1912)
The chief baker on the Titanic was John Joughin. When told to provision the boats, he sent thirteen men up with four loaves of bread each. As the ship reeled, he took a last swig of alcohol to prepare himself for the ordeal ahead.
As we could not find sufficient women to fill the boat, two or three others went with me and forcibly brought the women to the boats. As there was not sufficient room, I remained on the ship when the boat was lowered away. Then I went to my room again and had a drop of liquor. When I went upstairs again all the boats seemed to have gone, and I threw about fifty deckchairs overboard because I was looking out for something to cling to.
I went into the pantry for some water, and while there I heard a crash and a noise as though people were rushing along the deck. I looked out on deck and saw people rushing aft to the poop. There was a buckling and crackling as if the vessel was breaking. I kept out of the crush of people as long as I could. I went down to the well deck and just as I got there she gave a great list to port and threw everybody in a bunch. The people were piled up, many hundreds of them. I eventually got to the starboard side of the poop.
Just as I was wondering what to do next she went. I was not dragged under water, but I was in the water about two hours. I did not try to get anything to hold on to. Instead I was just paddling until daylight came. Then I saw what I thought was some wreckage and started to swim towards it slowly. I then found it was a collapsible not properly afloat, but on its side, with an officer and, I think, about twenty-five men standing on the top, or rather the side of it. The officer was Mr Lightoller.
I tried to get on it, but I was pushed off, and I, what you would call, hung around. I eventually got round to the opposite side, and a cook on the collapsible recognized me and held out his hand, and I got the edge of my lifebelt hitched on to the side of the boat. Eventually a lifeboat came in sight. They got within fifty yards of us, and then they sung out that they could only take ten people on board. Then I said to the cook who was holding me: ‘Let go my hand, and I will swim to that boat. I am going to be one of the ten.’
(British Inquiry, 10 May 1912)
Eminent historian Colonel Archibald Gracie, an authority on the American Civil War, was returning first-class to his home in Washington, having been conducting research in England. As the Titanic sank, he bumped into the ship’s professional squash player, Frederick Wright, and had the presence of mind to cancel his Monday morning half-hour on the court, which was by then flooded to the ceiling. He jumped from the top deck of the Titanic and was sucked down with her.
After sinking with the ship it appeared to me as if I was propelled by some great force through the water. This might have been occasioned by explosions under the water, and I remembered fearful stories of people being boiled to death. The Second Officer has told me that he has had a similar experience. I thought of those at home as if my spirit might go to them to say ‘Goodbye’ for ever. Again and again I prayed for deliverance, although I felt sure that the end had come. I had the greatest difficulty in holding my breath until I came to the surface. I knew that once I inhaled, the water would suffocate me. When I got under water I struck out with all my strength for the surface. I got to the air again after a time which seemed to me to be unending. There was nothing in sight save the ocean, dotted with ice and strewn with large masses of wreckage. Dying men and women all about me were groaning and crying piteously.
The Second Officer and Mr J. B. Thayer, Jun., who were swimming near me, told me that just before my head appeared above the water one of the Titanic’s funnels separated and fell apart near me, scattering bodies in the water. I saw wreckage everywhere and all that came within reach I clung to. At last by moving from one piece of wreckage to another, I reached a raft. Soon the raft became so full that it seemed as if she would sink if more came on board her. The crew, for self-preservation, had, therefore, to refuse to permit any others to climb on board. This was the most pathetic and horrible scene of all. The piteous cries of those around us ring in my ears, and I shall remember them to my dying day. ‘Hold on to what you have, old boy,’ we shouted to each man who tried to get on board. ‘One more of you would sink us all.’ Many of those whom we refused answered, as they went to their death, ‘Good luck, God bless you!’ All the time we were buoyed up and sustained by the hope of rescue. We saw lights in all directions. Particularly frequent were some green lights which, as we learned later, were rockets fired in the air by one of the Titanic’s boats. So we passed the night with the waves washing over and burying the raft deep in water.
We prayed through all the weary night and there never was a moment when our prayers did not rise above the waves. Men who seemed long ago to have forgotten how to address their Creator recalled the prayers of their childhood and murmured them over and over again. Together we said the Lord’s Prayer again and again.
Seventeen-year-old Jack Thayer had befriended judge’s son Milton C. Long on the voyage. After dramatically diving together from the sinking ship, Thayer eventually found refuge on the upturned boat, but Long was less fortunate and perished.
Long and I stood by the rail just a little aft of the captain’s bridge. The list to port had been growing greater all the time. About this time 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 goodbye 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 fifteen yards away, with a mass of sparks and steam coming out of it. I saw the ship in a sort of 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 lifeboat. I looked up and saw some men on the top, and asked them to give me a hand. One of them, 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 ver
y calm and we kept the boat pretty steady, but every now and then a wave would wash over it.
The assistant wireless operator [Harold Bride] 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 the 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.
Towards 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 4.00 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 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.
(New York World, 21 April 1912)
Seventeen-year-old John Collins, Irish assistant cook in the first-class galley, told how a child was swept from his arms by a huge wave.
Voices from the Titanic Page 22
