Voices from the Titanic

by Geoff Tibballs

  It was a terrible experience and when I look back at it, I can scarcely believe my good luck in getting away as there were so many chances against me.

  (Burlington Daily Gazette, 25 April 1912)

  Norwegian steerage passenger Olaus Abelseth related how he dived from the stern of the Titanic moments before she went under.

  I asked my brother-in-law if he could swim and he said no. I asked my cousin if he could swim and he said no. We could see the water coming up, the bow of the ship was going down, and there was a kind of explosion. We could hear the popping and cracking, and the deck raised up and got so steep that the people could not stand on their feet on the deck. So they fell down and slid on the deck into the water right on the ship. We hung on to a rope in one of the davits.

  My brother-in-law said to me, ‘We had better jump off or the suction will take us down.’ I said, ‘No. We won’t jump yet. We might as well stay as long as we can.’ It was only about five feet down to the water when we jumped off. It was not much of a jump. My brother-in-law took my hand just as we jumped off, and my cousin jumped at the same time. When we came into the water, we went under and I swallowed some water. I got a rope tangled around me, and I let loose of my brother-in-law’s hand to get away from the rope. I thought then, ‘I am a goner.’ But I came on top again, and I was trying to swim. There was a man – lots of them were floating around – and he got me on the neck and pressed me under, trying to get on top of me. I said to him, ‘Let go.’ Of course, he did not pay any attention to that, but I got away from him. Then there was another man and he hung on to me for a while, but he let go. Then I swam for about fifteen or twenty minutes. I saw something dark ahead of me. I did not know what it was, but I swam towards that, and it was one of those rafts or collapsible boats. When I got on they did not try to push me off, and they did not do anything for me to get on. All they said was, ‘Don’t capsize the boat.’ So I hung on to the raft for a little while before I got on. Some of them were trying to get up on their feet. They were sitting down or lying down on the raft. Some of them fell into the water again. Some of them were frozen, and there were two dead that they threw overboard.

  (US Inquiry, 3 May 1912)

  One of the ship’s barbers, fifty-one-year-old Philadelphia-born Augustus H. Weikman, was blown off deck by the explosion and spent over two hours in the water before finding refuge on collapsible boat ‘A’.

  The crew and passengers had faith in the bulkhead system to save the ship and we were lowering a collapsible boat, all confident the ship would get through, when she took a terrible dip forward and the water rushed up and swept over the deck and into the engine rooms.

  The explosions were caused by the rushing-in of the icy water on the boilers. A bundle of deck chairs, roped together, was blown off the deck with me, and struck my back, injuring my spine, but it served as a temporary raft.

  The bow went down and I caught the pile of chairs as I was washed up against the rail. Then came the explosions and blew me 15ft.

  After the water had filled the forward compartments the ones at the stern could not save her. They did delay the ship’s going down. If it wasn’t for the compartments hardly anyone would have got away.

  The water was too cold for me to swim, and I was hardly more than 100ft away when the ship went down. The suction was not what one would expect and only rocked the water around me. I was picked up after two hours. I have done with the sea.

  (New York World, 19 April 1912)

  Los Angeles cement manufacturer George Brayton saw Henry B. Harris bid farewell to his wife. He also shed some light into the possible fate of Captain Smith.

  Shortly after the lifeboats left, a man jumped overboard. Other men followed. It was like sheep following a leader. I saw one of the stewards shoot a foreigner who tried to press past a number of women and enter a lifeboat.

  Captain Smith was washed from the bridge into the ocean. He swam to where a baby was drowning and carried it in his arms while he swam to a lifeboat which was manned by officers of the Titanic. He surrendered the baby to them and swam back to the steamer. About the time Captain Smith got back, there was an explosion. The entire ship trembled. I had secured a life preserver and jumped over. I struck a piece of ice and was not injured. I swam about sixty yards from the steamer when there was a series of explosions. I looked back and saw the Titanic go down bow first. I was in the water two hours, clinging to a piece of wreckage when I was picked up by a lifeboat.

  Miss Mary Lowell of Boston, Massachusetts, was a passenger on the Carpathia. After watching the rescue, she shared her cabin with one of the survivors, actress Dorothy Gibson, who was brought aboard wearing a low-necked ball gown of white satin. Miss Lowell described her experiences:

  I was awakened by a strange thumping and pounding from the interior of the steamer, and I didn’t know what to make of it. I lit the light and looked at my watch, and saw that the hands pointed to 3.30. Then I heard some people talking outside and saying something about a sinking steamer and icebergs, so I got up and dressed.

  At four o’clock I came on deck. Dawn had not begun to break, and the air was terribly cold. The steamer was tearing through the water at a great rate. Up in the bow there was a little crowd of people, and just as I started towards them, two or three of them shouted and pointed straight ahead. When I joined them I saw a little flickering light in the distance. It was that at which they were pointing.

  As soon as this light was sighted the Carpathia slowed down. Her regular speed is 13 knots an hour, but when our wireless operator learned that the Titanic was sinking, her speed was increased by more than one third so that she was making 17 knots an hour. The speed at which she was running was responsible for the thumping and pounding which had awakened me.

  Ahead of us, and on every side of us, the water was filled with ice cakes and icebergs. It was so dark at first that I could not see how far away this ice extended. The ship’s surgeon who came down and stood beside me just after the light was sighted, said that he had been on the bridge for two hours with the captain and that for every minute of that time, we had been running through ice fields.

  As we got nearer and nearer to the little flickering light, the sky began to grow very grey, and we were able to see a little.

  The sky got greyer and greyer and finally the east showed a tinge of pink and yellow. Then all of a sudden we saw two little boats among the ice cakes. We looked and looked, and then away beyond the first two we saw two more. As the day grew brighter and brighter we kept discovering more and more boats, until we had located all of them, scattered ahead of us over two or three square miles of ocean.

  The first boat seemed to creep to us and we thought it would never reach us. We didn’t know what had happened or how many had been saved or anything at all about the accident; but when the little boat was close up against our side and we could look down into her we knew that the accident had been a terrible one.

  The men and women who were huddled into the boat’s bottom were only half dressed. Until I saw their faces I never knew what the word ‘haggard’ meant. They had been exposed to the biting cold for so many hours that they could scarcely move. Some of them were so frozen that they couldn’t even look up or move from the bottom of the boat when it came their turn to come aboard the Carpathia.

  Our captain had made the sailors get chairs on the ends of ropes and big bags on the ends of ropes and fix them around the rails so that they could be used in unloading the boats. It was lucky that he did, for the poor women were so frozen that when they were helped up from the positions that they had been cramped in for so many hours, they could do nothing except fall back into the bottom of the boat. So the chairs were used to get the women up on deck, and the bags were used for the children.

  It was really terrible to see the poor women stagger out of their chairs, and fall into the arms of the people who were so anxious to help them. The experience they had been through was such a horrible one that they were completely dazed
by it. I was helping one girl when she was hoisted out of a boat, and she turned her face towards me with a smile, and said in a perfectly unemotional, conversational tone: ‘My husband’s drowned, isn’t it awful?’ There was as much expression in her face and voice as if she had said: ‘I’ve forgotten my handkerchief. Isn’t that terrible?’

  The children could not appreciate what they had been through, of course. When the first sack was hoisted on deck we all crowded around it while it was being opened. When the mouth was finally undone, a little four-year-old boy was blinking at me. We pushed the bag down around his feet, and then we saw that he had a wooden soldier in his hand. He put the head of the wooden soldier in his mouth and sucked it, and didn’t make a sound. Poor little boy. He’d lost his father and mother.

  Nobody could watch those poor people come aboard without crying. Everyone was crying. I cried fearfully. In fact, I simply howled. Men were crying, too, and they weren’t ashamed of it. I saw one sailor carrying deck chairs away from one part of the deck and stacking them up in another. He had seen the women coming aboard and heard them asking for their husbands and fathers and as he carried the chairs down the deck, the great big tears rolled out of his eyes and dropped down on his jersey.

  For four hours those little boats were creeping up to our side, and survivors were coming aboard. In one of the boats there was only one man, and he was afraid. He steered the boat and the women rowed. While they rowed the man kept telling them that they would never get away alive. He was a steward. When these women got aboard, their hands were blistered fearfully from swinging the heavy oars for so many hours.

  All of us aboard the Carpathia either gave our state rooms to the survivors or took them into our cabins. I took in Miss Dorothy Gibson of New York.

  I asked her what had happened. In common with almost every survivor she said the shock of hitting the iceberg was so light as to be almost imperceptible. She had just gone down from the deck to her cabin to get an overcoat when it occurred so she went right back on deck again.

  Not only Miss Gibson, but many other survivors, told me that many more persons could have been put into the boats. I saw every one of them come up to the side of the Carpathia and there were only one or two of them that were really crowded.

  (Boston Post, 20 April 1912)

  Mr J. W. Barker, a member of the victualling department on board the Carpathia, recounted the rescue.

  At midnight on Sunday, April 14, I was promenading the deck of the Carpathia when, hearing eight bells strike, I went below to retire for the night. I had just turned in when an urgent summons came from the chief steward, and I learned that an urgent distress message had been received from the Titanic.

  We were then about 58 miles to the south-east of her, and Captain A. H. Rostron had already given orders for the Carpathia to be turned around and proceed at utmost speed in her direction. The heads of all departments were aroused and every precaution was quietly and quickly made to receive 2000 passengers.

  Blankets were placed in readiness, tables laid up, hot soups and consommes, coffee and tea prepared, and the surgeries stocked and staffed. Men were mustered at the boats and given instruction to be in immediate readiness to launch and row to the Titanic and bring off all passengers and crew.

  Within an hour every possible preparation had been made by the stewards’ department, and, to their great credit be it recorded, not a single passenger of the 1000 we were carrying had been aroused. It was now only possible to wait and look for any signals from the distressed vessel. Their wireless had failed some time. We were then forging ahead at the utmost speed that could be got out of our engines, making us about 18 knots per hour as against our usual 13 to 14. No words of praise can be too great for the unsparing efforts of the engineering department and the firemen.

  At about a quarter to three we got the first signal, a blue flare on our port bow. Shortly after we sighted our first iceberg, undoubtedly the cause of the disaster, a huge ghostly mass of white looming up through the darkness a few miles distant. A little later we found ourselves in a field of icebergs, large and small, and it became frequently necessary to alter our course.

  It was a little before 4 o’clock when we came near enough to discern the first lifeboat, which came alongside at 4.10 a.m. She was not much more than half-filled with women and children, and was in the charge of an officer, who reported that the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic had foundered a little more than an hour after striking the iceberg. The survivors were taken aboard and handed over to the care of the medical staff and the stewards, under the perfect control of Chief Steward Hughes.

  Day was breaking, and over an area of four miles we were able to see the other boats. We were surrounded by icebergs of all sizes, and three miles to the north was a big field of drift ice dotted with bergs. During the next two or three hours we endured the most heartrending experiences we have ever known. Some of the incidents were almost too pathetic for description.

  One woman was heartbroken and uncontrollable. She cried hysterically for her husband, and it was only with the greatest difficulty that she could be restrained from jumping into the sea to look for him. It was necessary to resort to the subterfuge of a lie, and tell her that her husband was safe before she could be calmed.

  A Colonel was brought aboard unconscious. He had been swimming in the icy water for over two hours. His mother was placed in a collapsible boat which was launched only to capsize on reaching the water. Immediately he dived from the ship to his mother’s rescue.

  He was unable in the darkness to find her, and commenced a frantic search among the bodies and wreckage. One after another the lifeboats endeavoured to take him aboard, but he resisted until the coldness of the water overcame him. He was hauled into a boat just as he was about to sink and join his mother in death. It is doubtful if he will recover. He has spoken to no one. His mother was about to pay a visit to three other of her sons.

  Another young woman went down with the Titanic rather than desert her dog – a huge St Bernard, and a great favourite on board. When the lifeboats were being launched a seat was prepared for her, but she demanded that the dog be taken also.

  This was impossible, human lives being the first consideration, and she was urged to sacrifice the dog and save herself. She refused, and was last seen on the deck of the vessel, clasping her pet to her bosom. Her dead body was afterwards found floating by the side of her dog.

  An old lady was bewailing to a steward that she had lost ‘everything’. Indignantly he told her she should thank God that her life was spared, and not at such a time regret the loss of her property. Her reply was pathetic – steward, I have lost everything – my dear husband – and she burst into tears.

  About 8 o’clock we had picked up the last boat, and got all the survivors aboard. Two were so exhausted from exposure that they died whilst being brought aboard. These, together with a sailor and steward who had perished at the oars, were buried at 4 o’clock.

  The Carpathia’s passengers behaved splendidly, giving up their cabins voluntarily, and supplying the distressed women with clothes. The captain, officers and crew also gave up their quarters, and did their utmost to alleviate the sufferings of the survivors. The saloons, library, and smoke-rooms were also utilized for sleeping quarters.

  (Daily Sketch, 6 May 1912)

  An unnamed passenger on the Carpathia gave her version of the rescue.

  I was awakened at about half past twelve at night by a commotion on the decks which seemed unusual, but there was no excitement. As the boat was moving I paid little attention to it, and went to sleep again. About three o’clock I again awakened. I noticed that the boat had stopped. I went to the deck. The Carpathia had changed its course.

  Lifeboats were sighted and began to arrive – and soon, one by one, they drew up to our side. There were sixteen in all, and the transferring of the passengers was most pitiable. The adults were assisted in climbing the rope ladder by ropes adjusted to their waists. Little children and babies
were hoisted to the deck in bags. Some of the boats were crowded, a few were not half full. This I could not understand. Some people were in full evening dress. Others were in their night clothes and were wrapped in blankets. These, with immigrants in all sorts of shapes, were hurried into the saloon indiscriminately for a hot breakfast. They had been in the open boats four and five hours in the most biting air I ever experienced. There were husbands without wives, wives without husbands, parents without children and children without parents. But there was no demonstration. No sobs – scarcely a word spoken. They seemed to be stunned. Immediately after breakfast, divine service was held in the saloon. One woman died in the lifeboat; three others died soon after reaching our deck. Their bodies were buried in the sea at five o’clock that afternoon. None of the rescued had any clothing except what they had on, and a relief committee was formed and our passengers contributed enough for their immediate needs.

  When its lifeboats pushed away from the Titanic, the steamer was brilliantly lighted, the band was playing and the captain was standing on the bridge giving directions. The bow was well submerged and the keel rose high above the water. The next moment everything disappeared. The survivors were so close to the sinking steamer that they feared the lifeboats would be drawn into the vortex.

  On our way back to New York we steamed along the edge of a field of ice which seemed limitless. As far as the eye could see to the north there was no blue water. At one time I counted thirteen icebergs.

  (British press, 20 April 1912)

  John Kuhl of Nebraska was a passenger on board the Carpathia.

  It was almost four o’clock in the morning, dawn was just breaking, when the Carpathia’s passengers were awakened by the excitement occasioned by coming upon a fleet of life-saving boats. At that hour the whole sea was one mass of whitened ice. The work of getting the passengers over the side of the Carpathia was attended by the most heart-rending scenes. The babies were crying. Many of the women were hysterical, while the men were stolid and speechless. Some of the women were barefooted and without any headgear. The impression of those saved was that the Titanic had run across the projecting shelf of the iceberg, which was probably buried in the water, and that the entire bottom of the Titanic had been torn off. Shortly afterwards she doubled up in the middle and went down. Most of the passengers did not believe that the boat was going to sink. According to their stories it was fully half an hour before a lifeboat was launched from the vessel. In fact, some of the passengers keenly questioned the wisdom of Captain Smith’s orders that they should leave the big ship.