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morning with him. Tied to boat 5 was boat 7, one of those that

contained few people: a few were transferred from number 5, but it

would have held many more.

 

Fifth Officer Lowe was in charge of boat 14, with fifty-five women and

children, and some of the crew. So full was the boat that as she went

down Mr. Lowe had to fire his revolver along the ship’s side to

prevent any more climbing in and causing her to buckle. This boat,

like boat 13, was difficult to release from the lowering tackle, and

had to be cut away after reaching the sea. Mr. Lowe took in charge

four other boats, tied them together with lines, found some of them

not full, and transferred all his passengers to these, distributing

them in the darkness as well as he could. Then returning to the place

where the Titanic had sunk, he picked up some of those swimming in the

water and went back to the four boats. On the way to the Carpathia he

encountered one of the collapsible boats, and took aboard all those in

her, as she seemed to be sinking.

 

Boat 12 was one of the four tied together, and the seaman in charge

testified that he tried to row to the drowning, but with forty women

and children and only one other man to row, it was not possible to

pull such a heavy boat to the scene of the wreck.

 

Boat 2 was a small ship’s boat and had four or five passengers and

seven of the crew. Boat 4 was one of the last to leave on the port

side, and by this time there was such a list that deck chairs had to

bridge the gap between the boat and the deck. When lowered, it

remained for some time still attached to the ropes, and as the Titanic

was rapidly sinking it seemed she would be pulled under. The boat was

full of women, who besought the sailors to leave the ship, but in

obedience to orders from the captain to stand by the cargo port, they

remained near; so near, in fact, that they heard china falling and

smashing as the ship went down by the head, and were nearly hit by

wreckage thrown overboard by some of the officers and crew and

intended to serve as rafts. They got clear finally, and were only a

short distance away when the ship sank, so that they were able to pull

some men aboard as they came to the surface.

 

This boat had an unpleasant experience in the night with icebergs;

many were seen and avoided with difficulty.

 

Quartermaster Hickens was in charge of boat 6, and in the absence of

sailors Major Peuchen was sent to help to man her. They were told to

make for the light of the steamer seen on the port side, and followed

it until it disappeared. There were forty women and children here.

 

Boat 8 had only one seaman, and as Captain Smith had enforced the rule

of “Women and children only,” ladies had to row. Later in the night,

when little progress had been made, the seaman took an oar and put a

lady in charge of the tiller. This boat again was in the midst of

icebergs.

 

Of the four collapsible boats—although collapsible is not really the

correct term, for only a small portion collapses, the canvas edge;

“surf boats” is really their name—one was launched at the last moment

by being pushed over as the sea rose to the edge of the deck, and was

never righted. This is the one twenty men climbed on. Another was

caught up by Mr. Lowe and the passengers transferred, with the

exception of three men who had perished from the effects of immersion.

The boat was allowed to drift away and was found more than a month

later by the Celtic in just the same condition. It is interesting to

note how long this boat had remained afloat after she was supposed to

be no longer seaworthy. A curious coincidence arose from the fact that

one of my brothers happened to be travelling on the Celtic, and

looking over the side, saw adrift on the sea a boat belonging to the

Titanic in which I had been wrecked.

 

The two other collapsible boats came to the Carpathia carrying full

loads of passengers: in one, the forward starboard boat and one of the

last to leave, was Mr. Ismay. Here four Chinamen were concealed under

the feet of the passengers. How they got there no one knew—or indeed

how they happened to be on the Titanic, for by the immigration laws of

the United States they are not allowed to enter her ports.

 

It must be said, in conclusion, that there is the greatest cause for

gratitude that all the boats launched carried their passengers safely

to the rescue ship. It would not be right to accept this fact without

calling attention to it: it would be easy to enumerate many things

which might have been present as elements of danger.

CHAPTER VII

THE CARPATHIA’S RETURN TO NEW YORK

 

The journey of the Carpathia from the time she caught the “C.Q.D.”

from the Titanic at about 12.30 A.M. on Monday morning and turned

swiftly about to her rescue, until she arrived at New York on the

following Thursday at 8.30 P.M. was one that demanded of the captain,

officers and crew of the vessel the most exact knowledge of

navigation, the utmost vigilance in every department both before and

after the rescue, and a capacity for organization that must sometimes

have been taxed to the breaking point.

 

The extent to which all these qualities were found present and the

manner in which they were exercised stands to the everlasting credit

of the Cunard Line and those of its servants who were in charge of the

Carpathia. Captain Rostron’s part in all this is a great one, and

wrapped up though his action is in a modesty that is conspicuous in

its nobility, it stands out even in his own account as a piece of work

well and courageously done.

 

As soon as the Titanic called for help and gave her position, the

Carpathia was turned and headed north: all hands were called on duty,

a new watch of stokers was put on, and the highest speed of which she

was capable was demanded of the engineers, with the result that the

distance of fifty-eight miles between the two ships was covered in

three and a half hours, a speed well beyond her normal capacity. The

three doctors on board each took charge of a saloon, in readiness to

render help to any who needed their services, the stewards and

catering staff were hard at work preparing hot drinks and meals, and

the purser’s staff ready with blankets and berths for the shipwrecked

passengers as soon as they got on board. On deck the sailors got ready

lifeboats, swung them out on the davits, and stood by, prepared to

lower away their crews if necessary; fixed rope-ladders,

cradle-chairs, nooses, and bags for the children at the hatches, to

haul the rescued up the side. On the bridge was the captain with his

officers, peering into the darkness eagerly to catch the first signs

of the crippled Titanic, hoping, in spite of her last despairing

message of “Sinking by the head,” to find her still afloat when her

position was reached. A double watch of lookout men was set, for there

were other things as well as the Titanic to look for that night, and

soon they found them. As Captain Rostron said in his evidence, they

saw icebergs on either side of them between 2.45 and 4 A.M., passing

twenty large ones, one hundred to two hundred feet high, and many

smaller ones, and “frequently had to manoeuvre the ship to avoid

them.” It was a time when every faculty was called upon for the

highest use of which it was capable. With the knowledge before them

that the enormous Titanic, the supposedly unsinkable ship, had struck

ice and was sinking rapidly; with the lookout constantly calling to

the bridge, as he must have done, “Icebergs on the starboard,”

“Icebergs on the port,” it required courage and judgment beyond the

ordinary to drive the ship ahead through that lane of icebergs and

“manoeuvre round them.” As he himself said, he “took the risk of full

speed in his desire to save life, and probably some people might blame

him for taking such a risk.” But the Senate Committee assured him that

they, at any rate, would not, and we of the lifeboats have certainly

no desire to do so.

 

The ship was finally stopped at 4 A.M., with an iceberg reported dead

ahead (the same no doubt we had to row around in boat 13 as we

approached the Carpathia), and about the same time the first lifeboat

was sighted. Again she had to be manoeuvred round the iceberg to pick

up the boat, which was the one in charge of Mr. Boxhall. From him the

captain learned that the Titanic had gone down, and that he was too

late to save any one but those in lifeboats, which he could now see

drawing up from every part of the horizon. Meanwhile, the passengers

of the Carpathia, some of them aroused by the unusual vibration of the

screw, some by sailors tramping overhead as they swung away the

lifeboats and got ropes and lowering tackle ready, were beginning to

come on deck just as day broke; and here an extraordinary sight met

their eyes. As far as the eye could reach to the north and west lay an

unbroken stretch of field ice, with icebergs still attached to the

floe and rearing aloft their mass as a hill might suddenly rise from a

level plain. Ahead and to the south and east huge floating monsters

were showing up through the waning darkness, their number added to

moment by moment as the dawn broke and flushed the horizon pink. It is

remarkable how “busy” all those icebergs made the sea look: to have

gone to bed with nothing but sea and sky and to come on deck to find

so many objects in sight made quite a change in the character of the

sea: it looked quite crowded; and a lifeboat alongside and people

clambering aboard, mostly women, in nightdresses and dressing-gowns,

in cloaks and shawls, in anything but ordinary clothes! Out ahead and

on all sides little torches glittered faintly for a few moments and

then guttered out—and shouts and cheers floated across the quiet sea.

It would be difficult to imagine a more unexpected sight than this

that lay before the Carpathia’s passengers as they lined the sides

that morning in the early dawn.

 

No novelist would dare to picture such an array of beautiful climatic

conditions,—the rosy dawn, the morning star, the moon on the horizon,

the sea stretching in level beauty to the skyline,—and on this sea

to place an ice-field like the Arctic regions and icebergs in numbers

everywhere,—white and turning pink and deadly cold,—and near them,

rowing round the icebergs to avoid them, little boats coming suddenly

out of mid-ocean, with passengers rescued from the most wonderful ship

the world has known. No artist would have conceived such a picture: it

would have seemed so highly dramatic as to border on the impossible,

and would not have been attempted. Such a combination of events would

pass the limit permitted the imagination of both author and artist.

 

The passengers crowded the rails and looked down at us as we rowed up

in the early morning; stood quietly aside while the crew at the

gangways below took us aboard, and watched us as if the ship

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