Voices from the Carpathia, page 24
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ERNEST G.F. BROWN
In 1913, Chief Purser Brown granted the following interview to a Wisconsin newspaper:
I can add nothing to what has already been told about the tragedy. We got the CQD flash at 12:20 while we were forty-eight miles away. We got the flash by accident. We were late getting the wireless news and the operator was just about to go to bed when he decided to take one more chance on picking up something. He adjusted the headgear just in time to get the call.
The Titanic went down at 2:25 and we did not reach the scene of the wreck till 3:45. Sixteen heavy loaded boats were floating about. There was no wreckage with the exception of a few deck chairs. Because of the large number of icebergs in the vicinity it took us till 4 o’clock to get any of the boats aboard.
We did not realize the extent of the tragedy till later. The Titanic survivors were so numbed by the magnitude of the disaster they themselves did not realize they were figuring in the most monster marine tragedy in the world.
We had 1,200 passengers of our own on board the Carpathia, and we had to find room for the 705 survivors. The Carpathia passengers were very good about sharing their rooms with the survivors.
Only two passengers on the Carpathia knew that the rescue work was in progress. The first the rest of them knew of it was when they arose in the morning.75
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THOMAS BROWN
Steward Brown granted the following interview after the Carpathia reached New York:
The iceberg that sank the Titanic looked to be as big as the Rock of Gibraltar.
There were 2,341 persons aboard the Titanic, counting officers and crew. Seven hundred and ten persons were saved; so the list of those who drowned numbers 1,631 persons.
I had turned in for the night when Main [Cottam], our wireless operator, caught the SOS signal of distress. He told me it was the clearest signal of any sort he ever received. The minute he got the message he hastened to Captain Rostron and said, ‘Captain, the Titanic is sinking; she struck an iceberg.’ Captain Rostron did not believe it. ‘Here it comes again, Captain,’ said the operator.
That was all the captain needed to get our crew into action; he sounded the bell for the watchman, and sent him to order all hands on deck.
I doubt if any passengers on the Carpathia knew of the tragedy until Jones, the first mate, sounded the emergency gong after the watchman had summoned the crew.
A few minutes after we got the signal for help we were ready for action. The SOS reached us shortly after midnight. We were then 56 miles away from the Titanic. Our engineer turned about and put on full speed, and we reached the Titanic about 3.30 o’clock Monday morning.
While the Carpathia was speeding toward the doomed ship, Captain Rostron summoned the higher officers together, and said he would hold every man responsible for the work assigned to him.
He told Main [Cottam] to answer the Titanic and tell Captain Smith that we were making for his ship, full steam ahead.
Phillips, the operator of the Titanic, evidently did not get our reply, or, if he did receive it, he could not answer us in any way. Captain Rostron told Mrs. Smith, the stewardess, to prepare for any emergency.
He told me to get coffee, sandwiches and other food ready for the survivors.
On our way to the Titanic the captain went below and told the engineer that he must get to the Titanic before she sank. I doubt if Captain Rostron ever got as much speed out of the Carpathia as he did on the way to the Titanic.
Long before the Carpathia got near the scene of the wreck our boats were ready to be lowered into the water.
Two men were stationed at each boat, and I and Thomas McKenna, seaman, were in charge of boat No. 1. We have sixteen boats on the ship, and they were hanging suspended from the davits within fifteen minutes after we received the SOS call for help.
I must not forget the women who were on the Carpathia. They were the most self-sacrificing women I ever saw. Their fortitude under the distressing circumstances was so remarkable that each one ought to be rewarded for the work she did after the survivors were lifted aboard the Carpathia.
As we got near the scene of the wreck the barometer dropped considerably. It became cold – bitter cold. We did not see the icebergs then, but Captain Rostron said that we were nearing them. Suddenly, as the iceberg loomed up ahead of our ship, Captain Rostron ran to the pilot house and took charge of the helm.
The night was clear and starlight, but we did not see an iceberg until the Carpathia was within a half mile of it. Of course, we had ample time to steer clear of the floes.
At 3.30 o’clock our vessel plunged into a sea of open ice. I believe there must have been thirty or forty icebergs in the water around the Carpathia. Captain Rostron took his ship safely through the floe and suddenly we heard a shriek. It was faint at first and then it became louder.
‘The women and children, get them first,’ Captain Rostron shouted to the crew on the boat deck who were awaiting the signal to cut loose lifeboats. Our searchlight was trained on the sea ahead and the boats filled with the shipwrecked passengers stood out in bold relief.
I shall never forget the sight. There were many boats from the Titanic loaded with women and children wedged among the ice. Even before we got up to the first boat from the Titanic we could see the iceberg which sank her. It looked to be as big as the Rock of Gibraltar. It towered high in the air and it moved very slowly.
I believe it was over 500 feet high, and we can judge by its size by recalling that seven-eighths of an iceberg is submerged. Within fifty yards of the boats in the water Captain Rostron gave the signal to reverse the engines so our ship would not crash into the shipwrecked passengers.
‘Ready men – go,’ shouted the captain to me, and McKenna loosened the rope and our boat dropped into the water. We tugged away at the oars with all our strength. We shoved our boat alongside of boat No. 13 from the Titanic. It was filled with passengers. I believe there were about fifteen children in it.
Poor little things! Some were benumbed with cold; others were apparently lifeless, and several moaned piteously. The women in the boat were scantily clad. Their clothing was grotesque. They had on wraps, night robes, silk shawls ever their heads and men’s coats around them. Many had no shoes, and all of them suffered from the cold.
McKenna and I tied a hawser to the boat and then rowed back to the Carpathia. Harris, the bos’n’s mate, and another member of the crew helped us to lift the unfortunate ones from the boat. Some had to be carried up the ladder to the boat deck of the Carpathia.
A few could walk, but the majority were so benumbed that they could neither speak nor walk.
As fast as others of our crew could get the Titanic’s boats they were dragged toward the side of the Carpathia. We rescued twenty boatloads of passengers – 710 in all. Our ship resembled a hospital on our way back to New York, for a number of the women and children were ill.
The three physicians on the Carpathia told me as we were going up the bay that there were sixteen patients for the hospital as soon as the Carpathia docked.76
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HENRY BURKE
After reaching New York, Fr Burke and Fr Daniel McCarthy spoke with Fr J.W. Malone, who relayed their account to the newspapers. At 1 a.m. a steward knocked at their door and whispered that the Carpathia was trying to rescue some people on a sinking ship but that the two priests should keep the news to themselves. They dressed and went on deck, where fourteen other passengers were also gathered. The sky was star-lit and the weather bracingly delightful:
It was impossible when we got to the deck to contemplate that anything serious had happened within range of our vessel, as the elements were at peace.
We first began to realize something was not right when the orders of the captain and of the other officers rang through the Carpathia. They were in forms which the landsman does not understand, but the tone of voice they were uttered in spoke volumes, and we could feel the ship moving ahead as if every power within it was exerted to its limit.
Presently we came within sight of the ice floes, which the Carpathia cut through at top speed. We stayed on deck all the time, and as we were getting closer to the grave of the Titanic the lowering temperature warned us of the icebergs.
When the morning began to dawn we could see through haze and fog something that resembled a white mountain. While the ship ran fast through the ice floe, which was nothing more than smaller cakes of ice that offered no resistance, as they were swept aside with ease by her prow and sides, the captain changed course several times, and we were informed that he did so because of the danger of meeting a berg which would damage the ship.
However, there was little slackening of speed from the time that we got aboard until she slowed down when her bearings indicated that she was close to the disaster site.
As she was nearing the rescue she sent up rockets and blew the siren whistles to call the lifeboats to her. It was breaking day when we saw the first lifeboat, and in a few moments others loomed in view. They were all making toward the Carpathia, which had almost stopped.
The captain assigned two of the crew to take the names of the persons as they came aboard, and it was not till the first boatload was brought on that the extent of the disaster was fully comprehended on the Carpathia.
From daylight till between 8 and 9 o’clock Monday morning the Carpathia was moving in one direction after another, scouting for more survivors. After the first few lifeboat loads were taken aboard, the captain knew the Titanic had sunk, because one of the lifeboats was within five hundred feet of her when she went down, and if there had been the suction usually said to accompany a sinking vessel four or five other lifeboat loads would have been drowned.
When the sun’s rays shot through the fog and mist of the morning the most inspiring sight we ever beheld was disclosed. Three miles off, the captain said, the figure of a giant iceberg loomed a hundred and fifty feet or more above the water. It may have been the one the Titanic struck.
When the Carpathia got to the place indicated where the Titanic went down, there was nothing visible. Some of the lifeboats were two or three miles distant from others.
One of the survivors who had taken the last lifeboat lowered from the Titanic said that the crew of that ship had been making merry early Sunday night and some of them were drunk.
The reception J. Bruce Ismay, president of the company that owned the Titanic, got in the four days’ run from the icefield into New York harbor was one that he will not forget till death, if he lives to be as old as the oldest man. The feeling against Mr. Ismay was intense. We did not bother to inquire whether he jumped into the first lifeboat or the last, but it was enough to drive him out of his head if he knew the feeling against him.
He had to have a stateroom all to himself and have every attention, while some poor women were without the ordinary comforts. That he might not be disturbed a sign was placed outside his room that he should not be disturbed. On it was written ‘Don’t Knock’. A big Irish stoker was passing it one of the days and kicked it with all his might. The feeling was so strong that it wouldn’t take much to stir up a mob spirit to throw him overboard and put a millstone around his neck.
The description we gathered from the survivors, especially those in the nearest lifeboat when the Titanic sank, was that she sank gently as a big creature lying down to sleep.
The shock of striking the iceberg, they told us, was not a severe one. It was a lurch more than a sudden impact, as if the Titanic had run up on the side of a sloping ledge of ice and her starboard side was torn away for more than half its length. Then it seemed to settle back again in the water.
A call was sent through the entire vessel, they said, to get to the upper decks at once, but that was met by the assurance from the officers that the vessel would not sink, and could not, no matter what happened.
This served to quiet a lot of the confusion at first, but as the ship began sinking steadily into the water there was a general feeling of panic. One survivor told us he saw two of the crew shoot three Chinese cooks who were struggling to press ahead of some women. They were carried from where they fell and the bodies thrown overboard.
There was an explosion, and after that the vessel buckled, her middle going up like a hump and her stern dipping into the water.
Strange as it may seem, after the boilers exploded, or whatever it was in the hold that caused the explosion, the electric lights were lit till the last and the wireless apparatus was working, as the operator stuck to his post.
When it was realized by all on board the Titanic that she could not stay above water much longer, the band, which during the excitement had been playing lively and patriotic music, suddenly stopped. The first thing the band struck up when the rush was made aloft was ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. It had a most soothing effect on all.
The band never stopped playing for any length of time. The players rested on their turns, and someone seemed to be working all the time.
As the strains of ‘Nearer, My God, To Thee’ broke over the waters the Titanic, as if echoing to the sentiment, plunged her nose into the water, and the stern stuck up straight into the air, and she went down gently head first.
The lights stayed lit until within a few minutes of her fatal plunge. The survivors in the adjacent lifeboats could see that all the people on deck were kneeling with their faces lifted to heaven in prayer.
When the last boatload had been put aboard our ship, and she scurried around looking for other stray boats that might have drifted off, the survivors and the Carpathia’s own passengers were lined up in a mass and prayers were said for those who had not been saved, as well as a prayer of thanksgiving offered to God for those who were.
All the stories that the survivors aboard the Carpathia were filled with hope that some other vessel had saved the rest of the people, are as far from the truth as it is possible to get. There was no less than three lifeboat loads of survivors who were within sight of the Titanic as she took her grave, and they saw the people go down.
Fr Burke and Fr McCarthy moved their belongings from their stateroom, gave it to a survivor and slept in the smoking room on cots. Every day the survivors gathered together and prayed for the dead. The priests said that two sisters named Murphy, who boarded the Titanic at Queenstown, were separated by death. The surviving sister was overcome with hysterics after landing from the lifeboat, but when she saw the priests she knelt down and asked their blessing. They told her that her sister had plenty of time to invoke the mercy of God and was probably looking down on her from heaven with all the others who had died.77
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JOHN CARGILL
In later years, crewman Cargill granted the following newspaper interview:
Our wireless operator was just about to turn in when the message came through. We couldn’t believe it. The Titanic in trouble. It seemed impossible.
It didn’t take our captain long to react. We were the nearest ship except for the Californian. We told Titanic we were on our way, then went like a bat out of hell. But we still never thought the Titanic could sink.
In case we had to help we made restaurants ready and got blankets. I just stayed at the wheel looking for icebergs – and the Titanic …
In describing the rescue, Cargill said:
It was pathetic. People were dressed in everything from fur coats to pajamas.
We saw a man in the water clutching two children – a boy and a girl. They had frozen to death.
We lowered sacks for the children and the babies and started looking for other boats. I’m sure to this day that one of the survivors I helped lift on board was Nan Harper.
We were all quite numb. We looked across and saw the Californian. If only she had come sooner.
There are two things I’ll always remember. There was a huge iceberg right at the spot. It had red on it and looked like the one which sank the Titanic.
The other thing was the anger we all felt [later] towards the Californian. Everyone might have been saved if she had answered the rockets.78
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HOWARD CHAPIN
In later years Mr Chapin granted the following interview:
We remember keenly the hours of the evening before on the Carpathia. One day out from New York, we were steaming along the Gulf Stream. The evening was hot, the air sultry. It was so mild that men on deck discarded their coats – even sitting in their shirt-sleeves.
At a reasonable hour – perhaps 10 o’clock, we went to our stateroom and to bed. As we went in I recalled that on the roof of the deckhouse, directly over our stateroom, was a lifeboat. Its painter was fastened to a cleat on the roof. I noticed that it was the only lifeboat that hung outward in the davits – the rest were stowed aboard.
Sometime after 11 o’clock, or just before midnight, I was awakened – by the sound of feet overhead. I heard the footsteps on top of the deckhouse and stop directly over me. There could be no reason but that a sailor was uncleating the painter of that lifeboat.
I threw on some clothing and hurried on deck. I found that the weather had changed – drastically changed. It was bitter cold. I asked the sailor what he was doing and he told me the Titanic had struck an iceberg. We were hastening to her rescue.
I returned to the cabin, aroused my wife, and together we dressed in our warmest clothing. We returned to the deck. We could see that we were steaming through black water, but water that was flecked with masses of ice. We were in the midst of the icefields; that was what accounted for the change in the atmosphere.
