Sinking of the "Titanic" : $b most appalling ocean horror; with graphic descriptions of hundreds swept to eternity beneath the waves ...Mowbray, Jay Henry
History
Sinking of the "Titanic" : $b most appalling ocean horror; with graphic descriptions of hundreds swept to eternity beneath the waves ...
Mowbray, Jay Henry
Shipwrecks -- North Atlantic Ocean -- History -- 20th century; Titanic (Steamship)
“I told him I would be with him in a minute. He did not jump clear, but
slid down the side of the ship. I never saw him again.
“About five seconds after he jumped I jumped out, feet first. I was
clear of the ship, bent down, and as I came up I was pushed away from
the ship by some force. I came up facing the ship, and one of the
funnels seemed to be lifted off and fell towards me, about 15 yards
away, with a mass of sparks and steam coming out of it.
“I saw the ship in a sort of a red glare, and it seemed to me that
she broke in two just in front of the third funnel. At this time I
was sucked down, and as I came up I was pushed out again and twisted
around by a large wave, coming up in the midst of a great deal of small
wreckage.
“As I pushed it from around my head my hand touched the cork fender of
an overturned lifeboat. I looked up, saw some men on the top and asked
them to give me a hand. One of them, who was a stoker, helped me up. In
a short time the bottom was covered with about 25 or 30 men.
“When I got on this I was facing the ship. The stern then seemed to
rise in the air and stopped at about an angle of 60 degrees. It seemed
to hold there for a time and then, with a hissing sound, it shot right
down out of sight with people jumping from the stern.
“The stern either pivoted around towards our boat or we were sucked
towards it, and as we only had one oar we could not keep away. There
did not seem to be very much suction and most of us managed to stay on
the bottom of our boat.
“We were then right in the midst of fairly large wreckage, with people
swimming all around us. The sea was very calm and we kept the boat
pretty steady, but every now and then a wave would wash over it.
SANG A HYMN AND SAID THE LORD’S PRAYER.
“The assistant wireless operator was right next to me, holding on to
me and kneeling in the water. We all sang a hymn and said the Lord’s
prayer, and then waited for dawn to come.
“As often as we saw the other boats in a distance we would yell ‘Ship
ahoy!’ but they could not distinguish our cries from any others so
we all gave it up, thinking it useless. It was very cold and none of
us were able to move around to keep warm, the water washing over her
almost all the time.
“Towards dawn the wind sprang up roughing up the water and making it
difficult to keep the boat balanced. The wireless man raised our hopes
a great deal by telling us that the Carpathia would be up in about
three hours. About three thirty or four o’clock some men on our boat on
the bow sighted her mast lights.
“I could not see them as I was sitting down with a man kneeling on my
leg. He finally got up and I stood up. We had the second officer, Mr.
Lightholler, on board. We had an officer’s whistle and whistled for the
boats in the distance to come up and take us off.
“It took about an hour and a half for the boats to draw near. Two boats
came up. The first took half and the other took the balance, including
myself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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