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)
Like simultaneous photographs of the same tragedy etched on the brains
of 745 persons, survivors of the Titanic tell of their experiences and
what they saw in those pitifully few hours between the great ship’s
impact on the iceberg and the appalling moment when she disappeared.
As the survivors came, half fainting, half hysterical, down the
Carpathia’s gang plank, they began to relate these narratives. Many of
these were disjointed, fragmentary--a picture here, a frightful flash
of recollection there, some bordered on hallucination, some were more
connected as one of those who are now beginning to realize the horror
through which they came. A few strangely enough, are calm and lucid.
But every one thrills with some part of the awful truth as its narrator
saw it.
INDIVIDUALLY CONFLICTING STORIES OF THE WRECK.
Each tale is like another view of the same many-sided shield. Sometimes
they seem to contradict each other, but that is because those who
witness such scenes see them as individuals. There is not a survivor
but has something new and startling and dramatic to tell.
Taken altogether their accounts are a composite picture of 700 separate
experiences.
The shock of the collision had barely jarred the ship. One man who was
directing letters in his cabin kept on with his work until he felt a
sudden shift in the position of the ship and rushed to the deck in time
to leap into a lifeboat. Some of the passengers had returned to their
berths.
Nothing occurred to indicate to the passengers aboard the Titanic or
moving away from the ship in lifeboats that the vessel would not remain
afloat until help should arrive, until the boilers exploded. Then the
end was apparent to all.
Men with life-preservers strapped about their waists, jumped overboard
by scores and some were picked up by boats which had not got far from
the ship.
As the last three lifeboats were launched the restriction as to women
and children was removed. It was a free-for-all then on the deck, where
unskilled men, principally stewards, were trying to get the cumbersome
boats overboard. Nearly all those who took part in that struggle for
life are dead. Those who survived are not anxious to talk about it.
Just before the Titanic disappeared from view men and women leaped from
the stern. As the portion of vessel remaining above water swung up
to an almost perpendicular position hundreds on the upper decks were
thrown into the sea and were pulled down in the vortex. The biggest,
most thrilling moments of the wreck were those last moments when the
air-tight compartments in the after part of the Titanic were supporting
the balance of the ship.
KEPT TOGETHER BY GREEN LIGHT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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