SURVIVORS’ STIRRING STORIES.
Survivors’ Stirring Stories--How Young Thayer Was Saved--His Father,
Second Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Drowned--Mrs.
Straus’ Pathetic Death--Black Coward Shot--Countess Aids in Rowing
Boat.
Standing at the rail of the main deck of the ill-fated Titanic, Arthur
Ryerson, of Gray’s lane, Haverford, Pa., waved encouragement to his
wife as the lifeboat in which she and her three children--John, Emily
and Susan--had been placed with his assistance glided away from the
doomed ship. A few minutes later, after the lifeboat with his loved
ones had passed beyond the range of his vision, Mr. Ryerson met death
in the icy water into which the crushed ship plunged.
It is now known that Mr. Ryerson might have found a place in one of the
first lifeboats to be lowered, but made no effort to leave the ship’s
deck after assuring himself that his wife and children would be saved.
It was not until the Carpathia reached her dock that relatives who
were on hand to meet the survivors of the Ryerson family knew that
little “Jack” Ryerson was among the rescued. Day by day since the first
tidings of the accident to the Titanic were published, “Jack” had been
placed among the missing.
Perhaps of all those who came up from the Carpathia with the impress of
the tragedy upon them, the homecoming of Mrs. Ryerson was peculiarly
sad.
While motoring with J. Lewis Hoffman, of Radnor, Pa., on the Main Line,
on Monday a week before, Arthur L. Ryerson, her son, was killed. His
parents abandoned their plans for a summer pleasure trip through Europe
and took passage on the first home-bound ship, which happened to be the
Titanic, to attend the funeral of their son. And now upon one tragedy
a second presses.
Upon leaving the Carpathia Mrs. Ryerson, almost too exhausted and
weak to tell of her experiences, was taken in a taxicab to the Hotel
Belmont. With her were her son “Jack” and her two daughters, Miss Emily
and Miss Susan Ryerson.
The young women were hysterical with grief as they walked up from the
dock, and the little lad who had witnessed such sights of horror and
tragedy clung to his mother’s hand, wide eyed and sorrowful.
Mrs. Ryerson said that she and her husband were asleep in their
staterooms, as were their children, when the terrible grating crash
came and the ship foundered.
The women threw kimonos over their night gowns and rushed barefooted to
the deck. Master Ryerson’s nurse caught up a few articles of the little
boy’s clothing and almost as soon as the party reached the deck they
were numbered off into boats and lowered into the sea.
HARROWING AND TERRIBLE.
Mrs. John M. Brown, whose husband was formerly a well-known
Philadelphian, but now lives in Boston, described her experience on the
Titanic as the “most harrowing and terrible that any living soul could
undergo.”
“Oh, it was heart-rending to see those brave men die,” Mrs. Brown said,
half-sobbingly, after she had left the pier in a taxicab brought by her
husband.
Mr. Brown, for his part, said the days of agony which he had
experienced, when the lists of Titanic survivors were altered,
diminished and published incomplete, leaving him indecisive as to his
wife’s fate, was almost on a par what she had undergone.
In contradiction to several other statements, Mrs. Brown declared that
she saw no signs of panic or disorder on the Titanic and did not know
until later that there had been shooting on board the vessel.
“I was in my berth when the crash came,” Mrs. Brown said, “and after
the first shock when I knew instinctively that the vessel was sinking I
was comparatively calm.
“I had hardly reached deck when an officer called to me to enter a
lifeboat. I did so, and saw the huge liner split in half, with a pang
almost as keen as if I had seen somebody die.”
Mrs. Brown said that John B. Thayer, Jr., after jumping from the deck
of the liner, clad only in pajamas, swam through cakes of floating ice
to a broken raft. He was picked up by the boat of which Mrs. Brown was
an occupant.
Mrs. Brown said that it was about two hours after the Titanic sank that
their boat came within sight of an object bobbing up and down in the
cakes of ice, about fifty yards away.
Nearing, they made out the form of a boy clinging with one leg and both
arms wrapped around the piece of wreckage. Young Thayer uttered feeble
cries as they pulled alongside.
LAD PULLED INTO LIFE-BOAT.
The lad was pulled into the already crowded lifeboat exhausted. With a
weak, faint smile, Mrs. Brown said, the lad collapsed.
Women, who were not rowing or assisting in maneuvering the boat, by
vigorous rubbing soon brought Thayer to consciousness and shared part
of their scanty attire to keep him from dying from exposure. In the
meantime the boat bobbed about on the waves like a top, frequently
striking cakes of ice.
Mrs. Brown said for several hours more they battled with the sea before
help arrived.
“It was a blessed sight when all saw the Carpathia heading in our din,”
she declared. “We had hopes that a ship would come to our rescue and
all on board prayed for safe deliverance.
“No one can realize our feeling of gratitude when the Carpathia hoved
into sight. With increased energy the men, aided by the women, pulled
on the oars. We were soon taken aboard. Young Thayer was hurried into
the hospital on board the boat and was given stimulants and revived.
“Three survivors died soon after; they were buried at sea. Mrs. Brown
said that Mrs. John Jacob Astor, the wife of Colonel John Jacob Astor,
who proved himself a hero, was also an occupant of her boat.
“Mrs. Astor was frantic when she learned that her husband had gone with
the Titanic, but between sobs said he died a hero,” Mrs. Brown said.
“The colonel kissed her and pushing his bride to the side of the ship
told her to hurry to the lifeboats awaiting below.
“Mrs. Astor refused to listen to her husband’s entreaties until he
assured her that he would follow on the next boat, although all the
time he knew that he would sink.”
“The following horrors have never left me, day or night,” Mrs. Brown
continued.
DEAD BODIES OF BRAVE MEN.
“I saw dead bodies of brave men float past the lifeboats. I heard the
death cries of women and saw the terrible desolation of the wreck by
dawn.”
In the boat with Mrs. Brown were her two sisters, Mrs. Robert Cornell,
wife of Judge Robert Cornell, and Mrs. S. P. Appleton.
They followed each other down the long, roughly constructed rope
ladder, a distance of more than fifty feet, into the tenth lifeboat.
All were thinly clad. They had retired for the night and were tumbled
from their berths when the crash came.
When the Titanic sank and the first news came of the disaster, there
appeared in the list of first cabin passengers the name of “Washington
Logue.” Until J. Washington Logue, of Philadelphia, could be found to
explain that he was not on the high seas, many of his friends feared
that he had been on the Titanic.
When he landed from the Carpathia, Washington Dodge, of San Francisco,
was told how his name had been confused in the wireless reports from
the Olympic. He said he congratulated Mr. Logue on having been no
closer to disaster than this.
Mr. Dodge, who is a millionaire; Mrs. Dodge and their four-year-old
son, Washington Dodge, Jr., were among the first to land on the dock
from the Cunarder. Mr. Dodge carried a life preserver of the Titanic as
a memento.
“Nearly all the passengers had retired when the crash came, about
twenty minutes passed 10 o’clock,” said Mr. Dodge. “The liner was
struck on the starboard side, near the bow. The bow, it seemed,
withstood the crash, but water rushed into several compartments at the
same time.”
“There was complete order among the passengers and crew. We really
didn’t think there was any danger. We were assured that the ship would
float and that there were plenty vessels in the reach of wireless to
come to our aid if that should become necessary.
“Then the sinking of the Titanic by the head began and the crew was
ordered to man the boats. There was no panic. The officers told the men
to stand back and they obeyed. A few men were ordered into the boats.
Two men who attempted to rush beyond the restraint line were shot down
by an officer who then turned the revolver on himself. I could see Mrs.
Isador Straus. She clung to her husband and refused to leave him.
FLOATED FOR FOUR HOURS.
“We floated for four hours until we were picked up. Mr. Ismay left the
Titanic on a small boat.
“I did not see the iceberg. When we got into the boat she was gone.
“As the Titanic went down, Major Archibald Butt was standing on the
deck. I saw him.”
The body of one black coward, a member of the Titanic’s crew, lies
alone in the wireless “coop” on the highest deck of the shadowy bulk of
what was once the world’s greatest ship two miles down in the dark of
unplumbed ocean depths. There is a bullet hole in the back of his skull.
This man was shot by Harold Bride, the second wireless man aboard the
Titanic, and assistant to the heroic Phillips, chief operator, who
lost his life. Bride shot him from behind just at the instant that the
coward was about to plunge a knife into Phillips’ back and rob him
of the life preserver which was strapped under his arm pits. He died
instantly and Phillips, all unconscious at that instant that Bride was
saving his life, had but a brief little quarter of an hour added to his
span by the act of his assistant, and then went down to death.
This grim bit of tragedy, only a little interlude in the whole terrible
procession of horror aboard the sinking boat, occurred high above the
heads of the doomed men and women who waited death in the bleak galleys
of the decks.
“I had to do it,” was the way Bride put it.
“I could not let that coward die a decent sailor’s death, so I shot
him down and left him alone there in the wireless coop to go down with
the hulk of the ship. He is there yet, the only one in the wireless
room where Phillips, a real hero, worked madly to save the lives of two
thousand and more people.”
NEW YORK PHYSICIAN’S ESCAPE.
Miss Alice Farnan Leader, a New York physician, escaped from the
Titanic on the same boat which carried the Countess Rothes.
“The Countess is an expert oarswoman,” said Dr. Leader, “and thoroughly
at home on the water. She took command of our boat, when it was
found that the seamen who had been placed at the oars could not row
skilfully. Several of the women took their places with the Countess at
the oars and rowed in turns while the weak and unskilled stewards sat
quietly in one end of the boat.”
“The men were the heroes,” said Mrs. Churchill Candee, of Washington,
one of the survivors, “and among the bravest and most heroic, as I
recall, were Mr. Widener, Mr. Thayer and Colonel Astor. They thought
only of the saving of the women and went down with the Titanic, martyrs
to their manhood.
“I saw Mr. and Mrs. Isador Straus on the deck of the Titanic as I was
lowered into one of the lifeboats. Mrs. Straus refused to leave the
ship unless her husband could accompany her. They were on the top deck,
and I heard her say she would not leave her husband. She went down
with him as she had lived and traveled with him. Life without him did
not concern her, seemingly. ‘I’ve always stayed with my husband, so why
should I leave him now? I’ll die with him,’ I heard her say.
“Captain Smith, I think, sacrificed safety in a treacherous ice field
for speed. He was trying to make 570 miles for the day, I heard. The
captain, who had stood waist deep on the deck of the Titanic as she
sank, jumped as the ship went down, but he was drowned. All of the men
had bravely faced their doom for the women and children.
“The ship settled slowly, the lights going out deck after deck as
the water reached them. The final plunge, however, was sudden and
accompanied by explosions, the effect of which was a horrible sight.
Victims standing on the upper deck toward the stern were hurled into
the air and fell into the treacherous ice-covered sea. Some were
rescued, but most of them perished. I cannot help recalling again that
Mr. Widener and Mr. Thayer and Colonel Astor died manfully.
TWO DISTINCT SHOCKS.
“The ice pack which we encountered,” explained Mrs. Candee, “was
fifty-six miles long, I have since heard. When we collided with the
mountainous mass it was nearly midnight Sunday. There were two distinct
shocks, each shaking the ship violently, but fear did not spread
among the passengers immediately. They seemed not to realize what
had happened, but the captain and other officers did not endeavor to
minimize the danger.
“The first thing I recall was one of the crew appearing with pieces
of ice in his hands. He said he had gathered them from the bow of the
boat. Some of the passengers were inclined to believe he was joking.
But soon the situation dawned on all of us. The lifeboats were ordered
lowered and manned and the word went around that women and children
were to be taken off first. The men stood back as we descended to
the frail craft or assisted us to disembark. I now recall that huge
Woolner Bjomstrom was among the heroic men.”
“The Philadelphia women behaved heroically.”
This was the way Mrs. Walter B. Stephenson, of Haverford, a survivor of
the wreck of the fated Titanic, began her brief but graphic account of
the disaster at her home in Haverford, which she reached on the special
train that brought Mrs. John B. Thayer and others over from New York.
Worn by hours of terrible uncertainty on the frail lifeboats in the
open sea, almost distracted by the ordeal of waiting for news of those
left behind on the big liner, Mrs. Stephenson bore herself as did the
women whom she described heroically indeed.
She told how John B. Thayer, Jr., fell overboard when the boats were
launched, and how he was saved from the death that his father met, by
the crew of the lifeboat. She described tersely, to linger sadly as she
finished with the words, “But we never saw Mr. Thayer, Sr., at all.”
OCCUPANTS OF THE SAME BOAT.
Mrs. Thayer, Mrs. J. Boulton Earnshaw, of Mt. Airy, and Mrs. George D.
Widener were occupants of the same boat that carried Mrs. Stephenson to
safety, and, like Mrs. Stephenson, they witnessed the final plunge of
the Titanic.
“We were far off,” said Mrs. Stephenson, “but we could see a huge dark
mass behind us. Then it disappeared.” That was all she could tell of
the fate of those left on board.
“Then it disappeared,” she paused and her voice choked. “We weren’t
sure but what we might have been mistaken. A lingering hope remained
until long after the Carpathia picked us up. Then the wireless told the
terrible tidings. We were the sole survivors.”
Mrs. Stephenson wore the same dress that she hastily donned when the
crash occurred. It was a simple gown of dark texture, showing the wear
in its crumpled shape. Over it she had managed to throw a cape, and
to the covering she clung, as if yet fearful of the icy blasts of the
Northern Ocean.
Conveyed in a taxicab to the Pennsylvania Railroad Station from the
Cunard wharf, Mrs. Stephenson alighted, hastened across the train shed
and into a waiting elevator. She walked unaided. Relatives who had
rushed from Philadelphia to convey her in safety, were solicitous for
her welfare, but she assured them that she was well.
“And she is well,” said T. DeWitt Cuyler, a director of the
Pennsylvania Railroad who met the train. “She has borne up remarkably
under the strain.”
“I was wakened in my cabin by the shock,” Mrs. Stephenson began. “It
was nearly 12 o’clock, but I cannot be sure. The shock was great, but
not as great as the one I experienced in the San Francisco earthquake.
I was staying in the St. Francis Hotel at the time of the earthquake.
Even this terrible disaster cannot shake the memory of that night from
my mind.
ASSURANCE OF NO IMMEDIATE DANGER.
“I rose hastily from my berth and was about to hasten to the deck when
my maid assured me that there was no immediate danger and that I would
have time to dress; I put on this dress that I am wearing and threw a
cape around my shoulders. Then I went on deck.
“Scarcely had I gotten out in the air when an officer ordered me to don
a life belt. I returned to the cabin to buckle one around me. When I
returned I heard the order to man the lifeboats. There was no disorder.
The crew was under perfect discipline. Quickly and without any
excitement I was lifted into a lifeboat. Beside me I found Mrs. Thayer,
Mrs. Earnshaw and Mrs. Widener. Like myself they had no clothing except
what they wore.
“John B. Thayer, Jr., was with us. As the boat was lowered by the
davits, he slipped and fell into the water; luckily he wore a life belt
and was kept afloat until a sailor lifted him safely aboard. We never
saw Mr. Thayer, Sr., at all.
“As the boat pushed off from the ship Mrs. Widener collapsed. She was
finally revived. The Philadelphia women behaved heroically. They stood
up splendidly under the suspense, which was terrible. The sailors
rowed our boat some distance away. We thought we saw the Titanic sink,
but we couldn’t be sure. Behind us we could see a dark shape. Then it
disappeared. We despaired of any others being saved, but some hope
remained until long after the Carpathia had picked us up. Then the
wireless told the sad tale.
WAIFS FROM TITANIC RESTORED TO MOTHER’S ARMS.
Lola and Momon, the little waifs of the Titanic disaster, snatched from
the sea and kept for a month in a big, strange land, were clasped in
the arms of their mother Mme. Marcelle Navratil, who arrived in New
York, on May 16, from France on the White Star liner Oceanic.
Hurrying down the gangplank, after kindly customs officials had
facilitated her landing, Mme. Navratil, who is an Italian, 24 years
old, of remarkable beauty, rushed to Miss Margaret Hays, the rescuer
of the two little boys, who, with her father, was waiting on the pier.
They took her in a cab to the Children’s Society rooms, and there she
was reunited with her children.
The little boys, four and two years old, were thrust into one of the
last of the lifeboats to leave the sinking Titanic by an excited
Frenchmen, who asked that they be cared for. A steward told him he
could not enter the boat and he said he did not want to, but must save
his boys.
Arriving in New York on the Carpathia, Miss Hays at first could learn
nothing of the children’s identity, and she planned to care for them.
Then developed another chapter of the weird story of the disaster
in the ice fields. The Frenchman’s body was recovered and taken to
Halifax, where it was found that he was booked on the passenger list
under the name of “Hoffman.”
Cable messages to France brought the information that Mme. Navratil’s
husband, from whom she was separated, had kidnapped her children
and said he was going to America. He often used the name “Hoffman.”
Photographs of the boys were sent to Mme. Navratil in France, and she
identified them as her children.