Titanic: A Survivor's Story

by Gracie, Archibald

  My research, particularly the testimony taken before the Senate Committee, establishes the identity of the Titanic lifeboats to which, at day-dawn, we of the upset boat were transferred. These were Boats No. 12 and No. 4. The former was the one that Lightoller, Barkworth, Thayer, Jr., and myself were in. Frederick Clench, able seaman, was in charge of this boat, and his testimony, as follows, is interesting:

  ‘I looked along the water’s edge and saw some men on a raft. Then I heard two whistles blown. I sang out, “Aye, aye, I am coming over,” and we pulled over and found it was not a raft exactly, but an overturned boat, and Mr. Lightoller was there on that boat and I thought the wireless operator, too. We took them on board our boat and shared the amount of room. They were all standing on the bottom, wet through apparently. Mr. Lightoller took charge of us. Then we started ahead for the Carpathia. We had to row a tidy distance to the Carpathia because there were boats ahead of us and we had a boat in tow, with others besides all the people we had aboard. We were pretty well full up before, but the additional ones taken on made about seventy in our boat.’

  This correspondes with Lightoller’s testimony on the same point. He says:

  I counted sixty-five heads, not including myself, and none that were in the bottom of the boat. I roughly estimated about seventy-five in the boat, which was dangerously full, and it was all I could do to nurse her up to the sea.

  From Steward Cunningham’s testimony I found a corroboration of my estimate of our distance, at daydawn, from the Carpathia. This he says ‘was about four or five miles.’

  Another seaman, Samuel S. Hemming, who was in Boat No. 4, commanded by Quartermaster Perkis, also gave his testimony as follows:

  As day broke we heard some hollering going on and we saw some men standing on what we thought was ice about half a mile away, but we found them on the bottom of an upturned boat. Two boats cast off and we pulled to them and took them in our two boats. There were no women or children on this boat, and I heard there was one dead body. Second Officer Lightoller was on the overturned boat. He did not get into our boat. Only about four or five got into ours and the balance of them went into the other boat.

  It seemed to me an interminable time before we reached the Carpathia. Ranged along her sides were others of the Titanic’s lifeboats which had been rowed to the Cunarder and had been emptied of their loads of survivors. In one of these boats on the port side, standing up, I noticed my friend, Third Officer H.J. Pitman, with whom I had made my trip eastward on the Atlantic on board the Oceanic. All along the sides of the Carpathia were strung rope ladders. There were no persons about me needing my assistance, so I mounted the ladder, and, for the purpose of testing my strength, I ran up as fast as I could and experienced no difficulty or feeling of exhaustion. I entered the first hatchway I came to and felt like falling down on my knees and kissing the deck in gratitude for the preservation of my life. I made my way to the second cabin dispensary, where I was handed a hot drink. I then went to the deck above and was met with a warm reception in the dining saloon. Nothing could exceed the kindness of the ladies, who did everything possible for my comfort. All my wet clothing, overcoat and shoes, were sent down to the bake-oven to be dried. Being thus in lack of clothing, I lay down on the lounge in the dining saloon corner to the right of the entrance under rugs and blankets, waiting for a complee outfit of dry clothing.

  I am particularly grateful to a number of kind people on the Carpathia who helped replenish my wardrobe, but especially to Mr. Louis M. Ogden, a family connection and old friend. To Mrs. Ogden and to Mr. and Mrs. Spedden, who were on the Titanic, and to their boy’s trained nurse, I am also most grateful. They gave me hot cordials and hot coffee which soon warmed me up and dispersed the cold. Among the Carpathia’s passengers, bound for the Mediterranean, I discovered a number of friends of Mrs. Gracie’s and mine – Miss K. Steele, sister of Charles Steele, of New York, Mr. and Mrs. Charles H. Marshall and Miss Marshall, of New York. Leaning over the rail of the port side I saw anxiously gazing down upon us many familiar faces of fellow survivors, and, among them, friends and acquaintances to whom I waved my hand as I stood up in the bow of my boat. This boat No. 12 was the last to reach the Carpathia and her passengers transferred about 8.30 a.m.

  1 Temperature of water 28 degrees, of air 27 degrees Fahrenheit, at midnight, April 14th (American Inquiry, p. 1142).

  2 Maturin’s Bertram.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Port Side: Women and Children First

  FOREWORD

  The previous chapters, describing my personal experience on board the Titanic and remarkable escape from death in the icy waters of the middle Atlantic, were written some months ago. In the interim I have received the pamphlets, printed in convenient form, containing the hearings of both the American and British Courts of Inquiry, and have given them considerable study.

  These official sources of information have added materially to my store of knowledge concerning the shipwreck, and corroborate to a marked degree the description from my personal viewpoint, all the salient points of which were written before our arrival in New York, and on the S.S. Carpathia, under circumstances which will be related in a future chapter.

  During the same interval, by correspondence with survivors and by reading all available printed matter in books, magazine articles and newspapers, I have become still more conversant with the story of this, the greatest of maritime disasters, which caused more excitement in our country than any other single event that has occurred in its history within a generation.

  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 inter
est 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:

  BOAT NO 61

  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.