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

it, for when he gave orders to lower away, there was no woman in sight. I have further questioned him as to whether there was an interval between the ship’s rail and the lifeboat he was loading, but he says, ‘No,’ for until the very last boat he stood, as has already been described, with one foot planted on the ship’s gunwale and the other in the lifeboat. I had thought that the list of the ship might have caused too much of an interval for him to have done this. Perhaps what I have read in a letter of Mrs. Brown may furnish some reason why Miss Evans’ efforts to board the lifeboat, in which there was plenty of room for her, were unavailing. ‘Never mind,’ she is said to have called out, ‘I will go on a later boat.’ She then ran away and was not seen again; but there was no later boat, and it would seem that after a momentary impulse, being disappointed and being unable to get into the boat, she went aft on the port side, and no one saw her again. Neither the second officer nor I saw any women on the deck during the interval thereafter of fifteen or twenty minutes before the great ship sank.
    An inspection of the American and British Reports shows that all women and children of the first cabin were saved except five. Out of the one hundred and fifty these were the five lost: (1) Miss Evans; (2) Mrs. Straus; (3) Mrs. H.J. Allison, of Montreal; (4) her daughter, Miss Allison, and (5) Miss A.E. Isham, of New York. The first two have already been accounted for. Mrs. Allison and Miss Allison could have been saved had they not chosen to remain on the ship. They refused to enter the lifeboat unless Mr. Allison was allowed to go with them. This statement was made in my presence by Mrs. H.A. Cassobeer, of New York, who related it to Mrs. Allison’s brother, Mr. G.F. Johnston, and myself. Those of us who survived among the first cabin passengers will remember this beautiful Mrs. Allison, and will be glad to know of the heroic mould in which she was cast, as exemplified by her fate, which was similar to that of another, Mrs. Straus, who has been memorialized the world over. The fifth lady lost was Miss A.E. Isham, and she is the only one of whom no survivor, so far as I can learn, is able to give any information whatever as to where she was or what she did on that fateful Sunday night. Her relatives, learning that her stateroom, No. C, 49, adjoined mine, wrote me in the hope that I might be able to furnish some information to their sorrowing hearts about her last hours on the shipwrecked Titanic . It was with much regret that I replied that I had not seen my neighbour at any time, and, not having the pleasure of her acquaintance, identification was impossible. I was, however, glad to be able to assure her family of one point, viz., that she did not meet with the horrible fate which they feared, in being locked in her stateroom and drowned. I had revisited my stateroom twice after being aroused by the collision, and am sure that she was fully warned of what had happened, and after she left her stateroom it was locked behind her, as was mine.
    The simple statement of fact that all of the first cabin women were sent off in the lifeboats and saved, except five – three of whom met heroic death through choice and two by some mischance – is in itself the most sublime tribute that could be paid to the self-sacrifice and the gallangry of the first cabin men, including all the grand heroes who sank with the ship and those of us who survived their fate. All authentic testimony of both first and second cabin passengers is also in evidence that the Captain’s order for women and children to be loaded first met with the unanimous approval of us all, and in every instance was carried out both in letter and in spirit. In Second Officer Lightoller’s testimony before the Senate Committee, when asked whether the Captain’s order was a rule of the sea, he answered that it was ‘the rule of human nature.’ There is no doubt in my