After the Titanic struck, Father Byles made his way to the steer-age. He was active in getting the steerage passengers up to the boat deck and assisting women and children to the lifeboats. Of the two clergymen he was the leader, not only in rendering material aid to the frightened emigrants, but in keeping the religious aspect of the terrible occasion to the fore.
Three of the survivors who vividly remember the last hours of the heroic English priest are Miss Ellen Mocklare, a pretty dark-haired young girl from Galway, now at her sister’s home at No. 412 17th Street; Miss Bertha Moran, who has gone to Troy, N.Y., and Miss McCoy, who is in St Vincent’s Hospital. These told their story in concert at the hospital today.
‘When the crash came we were thrown from our berths,’ said Miss Mocklare. ‘Slightly dressed, we prepared to find out what had happened. We saw before us, coming down the passageway, with his hand uplifted, Father Byles. We knew him because he had visited us several times on board and celebrated mass for us that very morning.
‘ “Be calm, my good people,” he said, and then he went about the steerage giving absolution and blessings.’
‘Meanwhile the stewards ordered us back to bed,’ spoke up Miss McCoy, ‘but we would not go.’
‘A few around us became very excited,’ Miss Mocklare continued, ‘and then it was that the priest again raised his hand and instantly they were calm once more. The passengers were immediately impressed by the absolute self-control of the priest. He began the recitation of the rosary. The prayers of all, regardless of creed, were mingled and the responses, “Holy Mary,” were loud and strong.’
‘Continuing the prayers,’ said Miss Bertha Moran, ‘he led us to where the boats were being lowered. Helping the women and children in, he whispered to them words of comfort and encouragement.’
‘One sailor,’ said Miss Mocklare, ‘warned the priest of his danger and begged him to board a boat. Father Byles refused. The same seaman spoke to him again and he seemed anxious to help him, but he refused again. Father Byles could have been saved, but he would not leave while one was left and the sailor’s entreaties were not heeded.
‘After I got in the boat, which was the last one to leave, and we were slowly going further away from the ship, I could hear distinctly the voice of the priest and the responses to his prayers. Then they became fainter and fainter, until I could only hear the strains of “Nearer, My God, To Thee” and the screams of the people left behind. We were told by the man who rowed our boat that we were mistaken as to the screams and that it was the people singing, but we knew otherwise.’
‘Did all the steerage get a chance to get on deck?’ she was asked.
‘I don’t think so, because a great many were there when our boat went out, but there were no more boats, and I saw Father Byles among them.
‘A young man who was in the steerage with us helped me into the boat. It was cold and I had no wrap. Taking off the shirt he was wearing, he put it around my shoulders, used the suspenders to keep it from blowing undone and then stepped back in the crowd.’
Wedding bells, quickly followed by a funeral march, changed on Saturday what was to have been the happiest day in the lives of Miss Isabel Katherine Russell and W. E. Byles. More than 2000 people were expected to be present.
The ceremony was to have been performed in St Augustine’s Church and the Rev. Thomas R. D. Byles of Ongar, Essex County, England, brother of the groom, was asked to officiate.
Miss Russell and Mr Byles did not give up hope that Father Byles had been saved until every passenger had arrived from the Carpathia. They returned to the Russell residence, No. 119 Pacific Street, and, by telephone and telegram, recalled the numerous invitations.
Believing in the superstition, however, that it is bad luck to postpone a wedding, the ceremony was performed Saturday by a life-long friend of the bride, in St Paul’s Church. The bride wore her white satin gown which had been imported from Paris, and was attended by her sister. Only relatives and a few friends were present.
Instead of the usual reception following, the party hastened home, and, donning garments of mourning, returned to the church where the Rev. Father Flannery, rector, performed a requiem mass for the late father.
(New York World, 22 April 1912)
NO LIGHT ON THE MYSTERY HIDING THE IDENTITY OF TWO WAIFS OF THE SEA
Of all the survivors of the Titanic those two whose impressions would be most worth gathering remain resolutely silent. The two little waifs whose father perished in the disaster and who gained a temporary home with Miss Margaret Hays, a fellow passenger on the ill-fated steamer, are still at Miss Hays’ home at No. 304 West 83rd Street, and not a word have they vouchsafed to anyone as to their names, their relatives or any other matter which might shed a ray of light on their antecedents or identity.
Under the shadow of a giant azalea they sat yesterday after-noon, each with a brand new boat in hand with which they entertained themselves while the French Consul to New York strove vainly to extract some enlightening word from the elder boy, whose age has been given as three and a half.
To every question the little curly-haired chap replied with a polite and baffling, ‘Oui’ and said nothing more.
‘Do you like to play with your boat?’ asked the Consul, taking the little fellow on his knee.
‘Oui,’ came the monotonous reply.
‘What city do you come from?’
‘Oui.’
‘Do you remember the big boat that brought you away from France?’
‘Oui.’
This time the child’s assent was rather bored as though he wished to add: ‘Why do you bother me with questions about that old boat when I have this new shiny, painted, wonderful boat of tin in my hands?’
Probably I am the only person to whom it seemed in the least incongruous that these two babies should be playing with brand new tin boats. The boats obviously delight them and bring back no memory of the night of horror which saw the younger boy tossed naked from the Titanic into a lifeboat while the older boy followed later, clad in a flannel shirt .?.?.
We have no intention of keeping them, remarked Miss Hays’s father, beyond the time when their relatives are found or the search for them is given up. A Montreal family who were passengers on the Titanic are anxious to adopt them, and my daughter says they shall have the preference. Of course, many persons here in New York have also offered to take them.
The published story that the children were in the same boat with my daughter and clung to her instinctively, is a misstatement. My daughter left in the first lifeboat and the two children followed on in later boats. The smaller boy was tossed from the deck of the Titanic into a lifeboat without a stitch of clothing. The older child wore only a shirt when he was taken aboard the Carpathia. The survivors of the Titanic on board formed a ladies’ committee, and as my daughter was the only one among them who had not suffered some personal loss through the disaster, she was asked to care for the two children, and gladly did so. She was told that the two children had been in the second cabin of the Titanic in the care of a man named Hoffman, but we have been unable to get any clue to their whereabouts from the White Star Line or anywhere else.
(New York World, 22 April 1912)
TWO SURVIVORS CALL ON MAYOR TO ASK RELIEF
Two survivors of the Titanic called on Mayor Gaynor today. One is a sailor who was assigned to help man a lifeboat, the other a steerage passenger who, wearing a lifebelt, leapt overboard from the sinking ship, was picked up by passengers aboard an already over-burdened life-raft, again to be hurled back into the ocean and again to be saved by the occupants of a lifeboat. They sought immediate assistance, having lost every possession when the Titanic sank.
Eugene P. Daly, the rescued steerage passenger, was playing the bagpipes in the third cabin to the amusement of his fellow passengers shortly before the iceberg was struck. Daly says he was just about to retire when the impact startled him. He grabbed some clothing and started for the deck. Stewards went through the st
eerage and reassured the passengers, saying there was no danger.
Most of the women believed these statements, said Daly, until it was too late. That is why so many of the women in the steerage were drowned. When they finally realized that the ship was sinking they tried to reach the boats, but could not get through the crowd of other frightened passengers.
I managed to don a life preserver and, failing to get a seat on a lifeboat or on a raft, jumped overboard and struck out just before the ship sank. The water was icy and for the first few minutes I thought I could not survive the cold shock. I do not know how long I was in the water when I caught the edge of a life-raft or collapsible boat already crowded. It upset, but the people in it did not drown. Some of them scrambled back while others, including myself, were dragged into a lifeboat containing women and a few men. My sufferings in the lifeboat were intense until we reached the Carpathia where we were made comfortable.
Here I am now, stripped of every worldly possession, including my beloved bagpipes, my baggage and £98 sterling which I saved in fourteen years in anticipation of spending the rest of my days in the United States.
Daly is living with friends at No. 901 Dean Street, Brooklyn. Secretary Adamson gave Daly a note to those in charge of the mayor’s relief fund at the headquarters of the American Red Cross Society at No. 1 Madison Avenue.
Robert Hopkins, the sailor of the Titanic, was also referred to the fund managers. He was assigned by a superior officer to get into one of the boats whose occupants all were women and to help handle the boat. He says that when he put off from the sinking Titanic he was under orders to steer a course towards lights which were burning on the distant horizon.
‘We all believed that those lights came from the Frankfurt but she was steaming away. We found out when we tried to row towards her,’ said Hopkins.
Hopkins is one of the White Star crew who refused to sail back to England by company’s orders. He said he had to quit the company and expected therefore no relief from that quarter. Hopkins threw some additional light on the so-called ‘millionaires special’ lifeboat, which was one of the first boats to leave the Titanic. This boat, Hopkins said, contained Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, Lady Duff Gordon, a man who was indicated as a millionaire and only ten others, including a few women. The millionaire, according to Hopkins, who received the story afterwards from fellow crew members, offered to do handsomely by the crew in the boat if they ‘put right away from the Titanic’, although there was plenty of room for others.
The crew did as requested by the millionaire, continued Hopkins, and after they had boarded the Carpathia the millionaire gave each of the Titanic’s crew who had handled his boat a cheque for five pounds upon Coutts’s Bank. If anybody can get hold of one of these cheques the identity of the millionaire will be established.
(New York World, 22 April 1912)
‘NEARER, MY GOD, TO THEE’
Band Conductor’s Favourite Hymn
Mr Wallace Hartley, the conductor of the Titanic’s orchestra, was well known in Leeds, where for several years he was connected with local orchestras.
‘A splendid musician he was,’ said one of his former colleagues to the Daily Sketch, ‘and a better fellow you could not meet in a day’s march. He was one of the best.’
Apparently Mr Hartley had a presentiment that one day he would meet his end at sea, and it may have been no sudden inspiration that led him at the last moment to direct his orchestra to play ‘Nearer, My God, To Thee.’
On one occasion he discussed the subject with Mr E. Moody, of Leeds, who played in the orchestra conducted by Mr Hartley on the Mauretania.
I do not know what made me say it, said Mr Moody, but one night when Hartley and I were walking round the Mauretania’s deck together I suddenly asked, ‘What would you do, old chap, if you were on board a liner that was rapidly sinking?’
‘I’d get my men together and play,’ he replied without hesitation.
‘What would you play?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t think I could do better than play ‘O God our help in ages past’ or ‘Nearer, My God, To Thee’. They are both favourite hymns of mine, and they would be very suitable to the occasion.’
(Daily Sketch, 22 April 1912)
OCEAN HIGHWAY WHY ATLANTIC ROUTES ARE CHANGED ARE THEY SAFE NOW?
The shortest ocean route from Northern Europe to North American ports lies past Cape Race, the extreme point which Newfoundland pushes in southerly direction into the sea. This route lies across the Grand Banks. Cape Race is a terrible danger to navigation. It makes the current tricky, it creates fogs to entrap the unwary mariner into its deadly embrace. Past Cape Race there come from the north in the spring the wandering icebergs, and the great floes which sweep in fog or darkness across the ocean routes sending the big liner and the small tramp with relentless impartiality to their doom.
From August 15 to January 14, before the ice begins to break off from the Greenland ice cap and float across the high roads of the Atlantic, the big steamers are able to cut the corner of Cape Race pretty closely, and shorten their distance from Queenstown to New York or Montreal by several hundred miles. They make almost a straight line from the south of the Cape, across the Grand Bank to New York; or rounding the Cape to the north-west make the Gulf of St Lawrence between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
When the northern sun gains strength and begins to send the ice down, then the big steamers have to look out, and instead of steering within 300 miles of Cape Race they clear the Grand Banks altogether, and take a course more southerly by 250 miles or so.
In fifty years something like a hundred ocean-going vessels have been lost in the dangerous seas off Cape Race. The Newfoundlander, wrote Mr P. McGrath in an article in Pearson’s Magazine some time ago, ‘counts on a few wrecks every year to help him to maintain his family.’ The tramp steamers, which often run risks to make a short and economic passage and pass the Cape and its 500 miles of ice-infested seas too closely, have suffered tremendously in risking too short a course across that part of the North Atlantic.
The recognized ‘safety’ highways of the sea more than 300 miles south of Cape Race were fixed by the shipping companies in consultation many years ago, and have been found in ordinary practice to be safe enough. But Nature is unreliable. Though the average limit of the field ice is north of the summer course, an early spring, or an unusually warm season now and then carries the bergs further to the south before they dissolve in the warm currents of the Gulf Stream and across the summer course. The captain of the Titanic had evidently recognized that this is a bad season for ice, for he was apparently steering some 30 miles south of his normal course, though he dared not steam so far south as to get on the eastward route. (The westward route is nearly 60 miles north of the eastward route, the object being to avoid the danger of collision between vessels steaming in opposite directions.) That the allowance was not enough is proved by the terrible disaster which has just shocked the civilized world.
It is a profound misfortune that, knowing that the ice had appeared earlier this year, the Atlantic lines did not immediately change the ocean routes, as they have decided to do since the Titanic went down. The new routes agreed upon will take the steamers about 200 miles further south of the old summer routes, and quite out of the danger zone, even allowing for early and exceptional ice seasons in the North Atlantic. The new course, it is confidently predicted, will be quite outside the extreme limit of drift ice, and at no part of the journey across the ocean will any ship be within sight of ice.
It is obvious that the lengthening of the journey from Great Britain to North America means an additional expense to the shipping companies. This is the price which will be paid, necessarily and cheerfully, for absolute safety from ice.
(Liverpool Evening Express, 22 April 1912)
FRANK KORUN REACHES HOME
Titanic Survivor, Daughter and Austrian Friend Saved From Ocean Grave
When Frank Korun, one of the Titanic surv
ivors, stepped from the Burlington train at 10 o’clock, Monday night, with his little daughter, Amie, clasping his hand, there were awaiting him a happy family group of his wife and four other children, and the moment that he reached the platform they surrounded him and the little girl and an affectionate reunion ensued, warming all that saw it. The stalwart Austrian was deeply affected by the warm greeting and as for little Amie, she knew how much better it was to be in her mother’s arms than on the crowded boat in the Atlantic, dodging ice floes and freezing in Christmas temperature.
With Mr Korun was a fellow Austrian who was with the party that came over on the Titanic and who was also saved from the wreck. These wended their way to the Korun home a happy group, once more reunited after an experience that comes to but few.
When Mr Korun was seen this forenoon by a representative of the Republican Register, he was still suffering from the effects of his experiences, and evidently had sustained an attack of delirium from which, however, he is recovering. ‘I feel it in my head,’ he said, in broken English, and he put his hand on his forehead. He was just out of the hospital in New York where, with his daughter, he spent over two days. A number crowded around to hear his story which was all the more dramatic as, owing to his scanty knowledge of English, it had to be told in fragments.
With only the suit of clothes he now has on, he made his escape. The $700 that he received from the rent of his land near Krom, Austria, all in cash, and all his belongings in his trunk valued at $150 are at the bottom of the Atlantic. The company paid his fare to Galesburg for the misfortune left him without a cent.
I was a third class passenger and sleeping in a room at the rear of the boat, he remarked. With me were my little girl, and also my brother-in-law, John Markum [sic], who was coming to this country to get work, and who left his wife and five children in Austria.
The man’s voice grew soft and tremulous as he thought of the wife and five children across the waters. He then produced a rude drawing of the big ship, to show where his room was, not far from the rear of the boat. The damage he indicated to the front end and side of the vessel.
Voices from the Titanic Page 35