Titanic: A Survivor's Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

Smith and I, with others, followed Lightoller and the crew. On this deck some difficulty was experienced in getting the boats ready to lower. Several causes may have contributed to this, viz., lack of drill and insufficient number of seamen for such emergency, or because of the new tackle not working smoothly. We had the hardest time with the Engelhardt boat, lifting and pushing it towards and over the rail. My shoulders and the whole weight of my body were used in assisting the crew at this work. Lightoller’s testimony tells us that as the situation grew more serious he began to take chances and in loading the third boat he filled it up as full as he dared to, with about thirty-five persons. By this time he was short of seamen, and in the fourth boat he put the first man passenger. ‘Are you a sailor?’ Lightoller asked, and received the reply from the gentleman addressed that he was ‘a yachtsman.’ Lightoller told him if he was ‘sailor enough to get out over the bulwarks to the lifeboat, to go ahead.’ This passenger was Major Arthur Peuchen, of Toronto, who acquitted himself as a brave man should. My energies were so concentrated upon this work of loading the boats at this quarter that lapse of time, sense of sight and sense of hearing recorded no impressions during this interval until the last boat was loaded; but there is one fact of which I am positive, and that is that every man, woman, officer and member of the crew did their full duty without a sign of fear or confusion. Lightoller’s strong and steady voice rang out his orders in clear firm tones, inspiring confidence and obedience. There was not one woman who shed tears or gave any sign of fear or distress. There was not a man at this quarter of the ship who indicated a desire to get into the boats and escape with the women. There was not a member of the crew who shirked, or left his post. The coolness, courage, and sense of duty that I here witnessed made me thankful to God and proud of my Anglo-Saxon race that gave this perfect and superb exhibition of self-control at this hour of severest trial. ‘The boat’s deck was only ten feet from the water when I lowered the sixth boat,’ testified Lightoller, ‘and when we lowered the first, the distance to the water was seventy feet. We had now loaded all the women who were in sight at that quarter of the ship, and I ran along the deck with Clinch Smith on the port side some distance aft shouting, ‘Are there any more women?’ ‘Are there any more women?’ On my return there was a very palpable list to port as if the ship was about to topple over. The deck was on a corresponding slant. ‘All passengers to the starboard side,’ was Lightoller’s loud command, heard by all of us. Here I thought the final crisis had come, with the boats all gone, and when we were to be precipitated into the sea.
    Prayerful thoughts now began to rise in me that my life might be preserved and I be restored to my loved ones at home. I weighed myself in the balance, doubtful whether I was thus deserving of God’s mercy and protection. I questioned myself as to the performance of my religious duties according to the instructions of my earliest Preceptor, the Revd Henry A. Coit, whose St. Paul’s School at Concord, N.H., I had attended. My West Point training in the matter of recognition of constituted authority and maintenance of composure stood me in good stead.
    My friend, Clinch Smith, urged immediate obedience to Lightoller’s orders, and, with other men passengers, we crossed over to the starboard quarter of the ship, forward on the same Boat Deck where, as I afterwards learned, the officer in command was First Officer Murdoch, who had also done noble work, and was soon thereafter to lose his life. Though the deck here was not so noticeably aslant as on the port side, the conditions appeared fully as desperate. All the lifeboats had been lowered and had departed. There was somewhat of a crowd congregated along the