Shipwrecks -- North Atlantic Ocean; Titanic (Steamship)
As the ship began to settle to starboard, heeling at an angle of nearly
forty-five degrees, those who had believed it was all right to stick by
the ship began to have doubts, and a few jumped into the sea. They were
followed immediately by others, and in a few minutes there were scores
swimming around. Nearly all of them wore life-preservers. One man, who
had a Pomeranian dog, leaped overboard with it and striking a piece of
wreckage was badly stunned. He recovered after a few minutes and swam
toward one of the life-boats and was taken aboard.
Said one survivor, speaking of the men who remained on the ship. "There
they stood--Major Butt, Colonel Astor waving a farewell to his wife,
Mr. Thayer, Mr. Case, Mr. Clarence Moore, Mr. Widener, all
multimillionaires, and hundreds of other men, bravely smiling at us all.
Never have I seen such chivalry and fortitude. Such courage in the face
of fate horrible to contemplate filled us even then with wonder and
admiration."
Why were men saved? ask: others who seek to make the occasional male
survivor a hissing scorn; and yet the testimony makes it clear that for
a long time during that ordeal the more frightful position seemed to
many to be in the frail boats in the vast relentless sea, and that some
men had to be tumbled into the boats under orders from the officers.
Others express the deepest indignation that 210 sailors were rescued,
the testimony shows that most of these sailors were in the welter of ice
and water into which they had been thrown from the ship's deck when she
sank; they were human beings and so were picked up and saved.
"WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST"
The one alleviating circumstance in the otherwise immitigable tragedy
is the fact that so many of the men stood aside really with out the
necessity for the order, "Women and children first," and insisted that
the weaker sex should first have places in the boats.
There were men whose word of command swayed boards of directors,
governed institutions, disposed of millions. They were accustomed merely
to pronounce a wish to have it gratified. Thousands "posted at their
bidding"; the complexion of the market altered hue when they nodded;
they bought what they wanted, and for one of the humblest fishing smacks
or a dory they could have given the price that was paid to build and
launch the ship that has become the most imposing mausoleum that ever
housed the bones of men since the Pyramids rose from the desert sands.
But these men stood aside--one can see them!--and gave place not merely
to the delicate and the refined, but to the scared Czech woman from the
steerage, with her baby at her breast; the Croatian with a toddler by
her side, coming through the very gate of Death and out of the mouth of
Hell to the imagined Eden of America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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