Titanic: A Survivor's Story (11 page)

The adopted standard by which I propose to measure the truth of all statements in this book is the evidence obtained from these Courts of Inquiry, after it has been subjected to careful and impartial analysis. All accounts of the disaster, from newspapers and individual sources, for which no basis can be found after submission to this refining process, will find no place or mention herein. In the discussion of points of historical interest or of individual conduct, where such are matters of public record, I shall endeavour to present them fairly before the reader, who can pass thereon his or her own opinion after a study of the testimony bearing on both sides of any controversy. In connection with such discussion where the reflections cast upon individuals in the sworn testimony of witnesses have already gained publicity, I claim immunity from any real or imaginary animadversions which may be provoked by my impartial reference thereto.

I have already recorded my personal observation of how strictly the rule of human nature, ‘Women and Children First,’ was enforced on the port side of the great steamship, whence no man escaped alive who made his station on this quarter and bade goodbye to wife, mother or sister.

I have done my best, during the limited time allowed, to exhaust all the above-defined sources of information, in an effort to preserve as complete a list as possible of those comrades of mine who, from first to last, on this port side of the ship, helped to preserve order and discipline, upholding the courage of women and children, until all the boats had left the
Titanic
, and who then sank with the ship when she went down.

I shall now present the record and story of each lifeboat, on both port and starboard sides of the ship, giving so far as I have been able to obtain them the names of persons loaded aboard each boat, passengers and crew; those picked up out of the water; the stowaways found concealed beneath the thwarts, and those men who, without orders, jumped from the deck into boats being lowered, injuring the occupants and endangering the lives of women and children. At the same time will be described the conditions existing when each boat was loaded and lowered, and whatever incidents occurred in the transfer of passengers to the rescuing steamer
Carpathia
.

The general testimony of record, covering the conduct which was exhibited on the port side of the ship, is contained in the careful statements of that splendid officer, Charles H. Lightoller, before the United States Senate Committee: (Am. Inq., p. 88).

Senator Smith
: From what you have said, you discriminated entirely in the interest of the passengers – first women and children – in filling these lifeboats?

Mr. Lightoller
: Yes, sir.

Senator Smith
: Why did you do that? Because of the captain’s orders, or because of the rule of the sea?

Mr. Lightoller
: The rule of human nature.

And also in his testimony before the British Inquiry (p. 71):

I asked the captain on the Boat Deck, ‘Shall I get women and children in the boats?’ The captain replied, ‘Yes, and lower away.’ I was carrying out his orders. I am speaking of the port side of the ship. I was running the port side only. All the boats on this side were lowered except the last, which was stowed on top of the officers’ quarters. This was the surf boat – the Engelhardt boat (A). We had not time to launch it, nor yet to open it.

I had no difficulty in filling the boat. The people were perfectly ready and quiet. There was no jostling or pushing or crowding whatever. The men all refrained from asserting their strength and from crowding back the women and children. They could not have stood quieter if they had been in church.

And referring to the last boats that left the ship (Br. Inq., p. 83):

When we were lowering the women, there were any amount of Americans standing near who gave me every assistance they could.

The crow’s nest on the foremast was just about level with the water when the bridge was submerged. The people left on the ship, or that part which was not submerged, did not make any demonstration. There was not a sign of any lamentation.

On the port side on deck I can say, as far as my own observations went, from my own endeavour and that of others to obtain women, there were none left on the deck.

My testimony on the same point before the United States Senate Committee (Am. Inq., p. 992) was as follows:

I want to say that there was nothing but the most heroic conduct on the part of all men and women at that time where I was at the bow on the port side. There was no man who asked to get in a boat with the single exception that I have already mentioned. (Referring to Col. Astor’s request to go aboard to protect his wife. Am. Inq., p. 991). No women even sobbed or wrung their hands, and everything appeared perfectly orderly. Lightoller was splendid in his conduct with the crew, and the crew did their duty. It seemed to me it was a little bit more difficult than it should have been to launch the boats alongside the ship. I do not know the cause of that. I know I had to use my muscle as best I could in trying to push those boats so as to get them over the gunwale. I refer to these in a general way as to its being difficult in trying to lift them and push them over. (As was the case with the Engelhardt ‘D.’) The crew, at first, sort of resented my working with them, but they were very glad when I worked with them later on. Every opportunity I got to help, I helped.

How these statements are corroborated by the testimony of others is recorded in the detailed description of each boat that left the ship on the port side as follows:

B
OAT
N
O
6
¹

No male passengers.

Passengers
: Miss Bowerman, Mrs. J.J. Brown, Mrs. Candee, Mrs. Cavendish and her maid (Miss Barber), Mrs. Meyer, Miss Norton, Mrs. Rothschild, Mrs. L.P. Smith, Mrs. Stone and her maid (Miss Icard).

Ordered in to supply lack of crew
: Major A.G. Peuchen.

Said goodbye to wives and sank with ship
: Messrs Cavendish, Meyer, Rothschild and L.P. Smith.

Crew
: Hitchens, Q.M. (in charge). Seaman Fleet. (One fireman transferred from No. 16 to row.) Also a boy with injured arm whom Captain Smith had ordered in.

Total
: 28. (Br. Inq.)

Incidents

Lightoller’s testimony (Am. Inq., p. 79):

I was calling for seamen and one of the seamen jumped out of the boat and started to lower away. The boat was half way down when a woman called out that there was only one man in it. I had only two seamen and could not part with them, and was in rather a fix to know what to do when a passenger called out: ‘If you like, I will go.’ This was a first-class passenger, Major Peuchen, of Toronto. I said: ‘Are you a seaman?’ and he said: ‘I am a yachtsman.’ I said: ‘If you are sailor enough to get out on that fall – that is a difficult thing to get to over the ship’s side, eight feet away, and means a long swim, on a dark night – if you are sailor enough to get out there, you can go down’; and he proved he was, by going down.

F. Fleet, L.O. (Am. Inq., 363) and (Br. Inq.):

Witness says there were twenty-three women, Major Peuchen and Seamen Hitchens and himself. As he left the deck he heard Mr. Lightoller shouting: ‘Any more women?’ No. 6 and one other cut adrift after reaching the
Carpathia
.

Major Arthur Godfrey Peuchen, Manufacturing Chemist, Toronto, Canada, and Major of Toronto’s crack regiment, The Queen’s Own Rifles (Am. Inq., p. 334), testified:

I was standing on the Boat Deck, port side, near the second officer and the captain. One of them said: ‘We must get these masts and sails out of these boats; you might give us a hand.’ I jumped in, and with a knife cut the lashings of the mast and sail and moved the mast out of the boat. Only women were allowed in, and the men had to stand back. This was the order, and the second officer stood there and carried it out to the limit. He allowed no men, except sailors who were manning the boat. I did not see one single male passenger get in or attempt to get in. I never saw such perfect order. The discipline was perfect. I did not see a cowardly act by any man.

When I first came on this upper deck there were about 100 stokers coming up with their dunnage bags and they seemed to crowd this whole deck in front of the boats. One of the officers, I don’t know which one, a very powerful man, came along and drove these men right off this deck like a lot of sheep. They did not put up any resistance. I admired him for it. Later, there were counted 20 women, one quartermaster, one sailor and one stowaway, before I was ordered in.

In getting into the boat I went aft and said to the quartermaster: ‘What do you want me to do?’ ‘Get down and put that plug in,’ he answered. I made a dive down for the plug. The ladies were all sitting pretty well aft and I could not see at all. It was dark down there. I felt with my hands and then said it would be better for him to do it and me do his work. I said, ‘Now, you get down and put in the plug and I will undo the shackles,’ that is, take the blocks off, so he dropped the blocks and got down to fix the plug, and then he came back to assist me saying ‘Hurry up.’ He said: ‘This boat is going to founder.’ I thought he meant our lifeboat was going to founder, but he meant the large boat, and that we were to hurry up and get away from it, so we got the rudder in and he told me to go forward and take an oar. I did so, and got an oar on the port side. Sailor Fleet was on my left on the starboard side. The quartermaster told us to row as hard as we could to get away from the suction. We got a short distance away when an Italian, a stowaway, made his appearance. He had a broken wrist or arm, and was of no use to row. He was stowed away under the boat where we could not see him.

Toward morning we tied up to another boat (No. 16) for fifteen minutes. We said to those in the other boat: ‘Surely you can spare us one man if you have so many.’ One man, a fireman, was accordingly transferred, who assisted in rowing on the starboard side. The women helped with the oars, and very pluckily too.
²

We were to the weather of the
Carpathia
, and so she stayed there until we all came down on her. I looked at my watch and it was something after eight o’clock.

Mrs. Candee’s account of her experience is as follows:

She last saw Mr. Kent in the companionway between Decks A and B. He took charge of an ivory miniature of her mother, etc., which afterwards were found on his body when brought into Halifax. He appeared at the time to hesitate accepting her valuables, seeming to have a premonition of his fate.

She witnessed the same incident described by Major Peuchen, when a group of firemen came up on deck and were ordered by the officer to return below. She, however, gives praise to these men. They obeyed like soldiers, and without a murmur or a protest, though they knew better than anyone else on the ship that they were going straight to their death. No boats had been lowered when these firemen first appeared upon the Boat Deck, and it would have been an easy matter for them to have ‘rushed’ the boats.

Her stateroom steward also gave an exhibition of courage. After he had tied on her life preserver and had locked her room as a precaution against looters, which she believed was done all through the deck, she said to this brave man: ‘It is time for you to look out for yourself,’ to which the steward replied, ‘Oh, plenty of time for that, Madam, plenty of time for that.’ He was lost.

As she got into boat No. 6, it being dark and not seeing where she stepped, her foot encountered the oars lying lengthwise in the boat and her ankle was thus twisted and broken.

Just before her boat was lowered away a man’s voice said: ‘Captain, we have no seaman.’ Captain Smith then seized a boy by the arm and said: ‘Here’s one.’ The boy went into the boat as ordered by the captain, but afterwards he was found to be disabled. She does not think he was an Italian.

Her impression is that there were other boats in the water which had been lowered before hers. There was a French woman about fifty years of age in the boat who was constantly calling for her son. Mrs. Candee sat near her. After arrival on the
Carpathia
this French woman became hysterical.

Notwithstanding Hitchens’ statements, she says that there was absolutely no upset feeling on the women’s part at any time, even when the boat, as it was being lowered, on several occasions hung at a dangerous angle – sometimes bow up and sometimes stern up. The lowering process seemed to be done by jerks. She herself called to the men lowering the boat and gave instructions: otherwise they would have been swamped.

The Italian boy who was in the boat was not a stowaway, he was ordered in by the captain as already related. Neither did he refuse to row. When he tried to do so, it was futile, because of an injury to his arm or wrist.

Through the courtesy of another fellow passenger, Mrs. J.J. Brown, of Denver, Colorado, I am able to give her experiences in boat No. 6, told in a delightul, graphic manner; so much so that I would like to insert it all did not space prevent:

In telling of the people she conversed with that Sunday evening, she refers to an exceedingly intellectual and much-travelled acquaintance, Mrs. Bucknell, whose husband had founded the Bucknell University of Philadelphia; also to another passenger from the same city, Dr Brewe, who had done much in scientific research. During her conversation with Mrs. Bucknell, the latter reiterated a statement previously made on the tender at Cherbourg while waiting for the
Titanic
. She said she feared boarding the ship because she had evil forebodings that something might happen. Mrs. Brown laughed at her premonitions and shortly afterwards sought her quarters.