Shipwrecks -- North Atlantic Ocean -- History -- 20th century; Titanic (Steamship)
After getting into the water I pushed out to the other boats. In No.
14 there were fifty-seven women and children and about six men,
including one officer, and I may have been seven. I am not quite sure.
I know how many, because when we got out a distance the officer asked
me how many people were in the boat.
When the boat was released and fell I think she must have sprung a
leak. A lady stated that there was some water coming up over her
ankles. Two men and this lady assisted in bailing it out with bails
that were kept in the boat for that purpose. We transferred our people
to other boats so as to return to the wreck and see if we could pick
up anybody else. Returning to the wreck, we heard various cries and
endeavored to get among them, and we were successful in doing so, and
picked up one body that was floating around in the water. It was that
of a man and he expired shortly afterwards. Going further into the
wreckage we came across a steward (J. Stewart) and got him into the
boat. He was very cold and his hands were kind of stiff. He recovered
by the time that we got back to the _Carpathia_.
A Japanese or Chinese young fellow that we picked up on top of some
wreckage, which may have been a sideboard or a table that was floating
around, also survived.[13] We stopped (in the wreckage) until
daybreak, and we saw in the distance an Engelhardt collapsible boat
(“A”) with a crew of men in it. We went over to the boat and found
twenty men and one woman; also three dead bodies, which we left.
Returning under sail we took another collapsible boat in tow (boat
“D”) containing fully sixty people, women and children.
[13] Undoubtedly reference is here made to the same Japanese
described in an account attributed to a second-class passenger,
Mrs. Collyer, and which follows Crowe’s testimony.
I did not see the iceberg that struck the ship. When it came daylight
and we could see, there were two or three bergs around, and one man
pointed out that that must have been the berg, and another man pointed
out another berg. Really, I do not think anybody knew which one struck
the ship.
* * * * *
Mrs. Charlotte Collyer, third-class passenger, in The Semi-Monthly
Magazine, May, 1912:
A little further on we saw a floating door that must have been torn
loose when the ship went down. Lying upon it, face downward, was a
small Japanese. He had lashed himself with a rope to his frail raft,
using the broken hinges to make the knots secure. As far as we could
see, he was dead. The sea washed over him every time the door bobbed
up and down, and he was frozen stiff. He did not answer when he was
hailed, and the officer hesitated about trying to save him.
“What’s the use?” said Mr. Lowe. “He’s dead, likely, and if he isn’t
there’s others better worth saving than a Jap!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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