Shipwrecks -- North Atlantic Ocean -- History -- 20th century; Titanic (Steamship)
I got on to the starboard side of the poop; found myself in the water.
I do not believe my head went under the water at all. I thought I saw
some wreckage. Swam towards it and found collapsible boat (“B”) with
Lightoller and about twenty-five men on it. There was no room for me.
I tried to get on, but was pushed off, but I hung around. I got around
to the opposite side and cook Maynard, who recognized me, helped me
and held on to me.
* * * * *
The experience of my fellow passenger on this boat, John B. Thayer,
Jr., is embodied in accounts written by him on April 20th and 23rd,
just after landing from the _Carpathia_: the first given to the press
as the only statement he had made, the second in a very pathetic
letter written to Judge Charles L. Long, of Springfield, Mass., whose
son, Milton C. Long, was a companion of young Thayer all that evening,
April 14th, until at the very last both jumped into the sea and Long
was lost, as described:
“Thinking that father and mother had managed to get off in a boat we,
Long and myself, went to the starboard side of the Boat Deck where the
boats were getting away quickly. Some were already off in the
distance. We thought of getting into one of them, the last boat on the
forward part of the starboard side, but there seemed to be such a
crowd around that I thought it unwise to make any attempt to get into
it. I thought it would never reach the water right side up, but it
did.
“Here I noticed nobody that I knew except Mr. Lingrey, whom I had met
for the first time that evening. I lost sight of him in a few minutes.
Long and I then stood by the rail just a little aft of the captain’s
bridge. There was such a big list to port that it seemed as if the
ship would turn on her side.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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