“I must take upon myself the whole blame for that statement. I made it, and I believed it when I made it. The accident to the _Olympic_, when she collided with the cruiser _Hawke_, convinced me that these ships, the _Olympic_ and _Titanic_, were built like battleships, able to resist almost any kind of accident, particularly a collision. I made the statement in good faith, and upon me must rest the responsibility for error, since the fact has proved that it was not a correct description of the unfortunate _Titanic_.” And for three days while the _Carpathia_ was ploughing her way, now slowly through ice-strewn seas, and now at full speed through open water, and while England lay under the cloud of an unprecedented disaster, New York was in a ferment of grief, excitement, and indignation. Crowds thronged the streets outside the offices of the White Star Line, while gradually, in lists of thirty or forty at a time, the names of the survivors began to come through from the _Carpathia_. And at last, when all the names had been spelled out, and interrogated, and corrected, the grim total of the figures stood out in appalling significance—seven hundred and three saved, one thousand five hundred and three lost. It is not possible, nor would it be very profitable, to describe the scenes that took place on these days of waiting, the alternations of hope and grief, of thankfulness and wild despair, of which the shipping offices were the scene. They culminated on the Thursday evening when the _Carpathia_ arrived in New York. The greatest precautions had been taken to prevent the insatiable thirst for news from turning that solemn disembarkation into a battlefield. The entrance to the dock was carefully guarded, and only those were admitted who had business there or who could prove that they had relations among the rescued passengers. Similar precautions were taken on the ship; she was not even boarded by the Custom officials, nor were any reporters allowed on board, although a fleet of steam launches went out in the cold rainy evening to meet her, bearing pressmen who were prepared to run any risks to get a footing on the ship. They failed, however, and the small craft were left behind in the mist, as the _Carpathia_ came gliding up the Hudson. Among the waiting crowd were nurses, doctors, and a staff of ambulance men and women; for all kinds of wild rumours were afloat as to the condition of those who had been rescued. The women of New York had devoted the days of waiting to the organization of a powerful relief committee, and had collected money and clothing on an ample scale to meet the needs of those, chiefly among the steerage passengers, who should find themselves destitute when they landed. And there, in the rain of that gloomy evening, they waited.