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12.45 A.M., and it is impossible not to feel that, whether the lowering crew
were trained or not, whether they had or had not drilled since coming on
board, they did their duty in a way that argues the greatest efficiency. I
cannot help feeling the deepest gratitude to the two sailors who stood at the
ropes above and lowered us to the sea: I do not suppose they were saved.
CHAPTER IV 40
Perhaps one explanation of our feeling little sense of the unusual in leaving
the Titanic in this way was that it seemed the climax to a series of
extraordinary occurrences: the magnitude of the whole thing dwarfed
events that in the ordinary way would seem to be full of imminent peril. It
is easy to imagine it,--a voyage of four days on a calm sea, without a single
untoward incident; the presumption, perhaps already mentally half realized,
that we should be ashore in forty-eight hours and so complete a splendid
voyage,--and then to feel the engine stop, to be summoned on deck with
little time to dress, to tie on a lifebelt, to see rockets shooting aloft in call
for help, to be told to get into a lifeboat,--after all these things, it did not
seem much to feel the boat sinking down to the sea: it was the natural
sequence of previous events, and we had learned in the last hour to take
things just as they came. At the same time, if any one should wonder what
the sensation is like, it is quite easy to measure seventy-five feet from the
windows of a tall house or a block of flats, look down to the ground and
fancy himself with some sixty other people crowded into a boat so tightly
that he could not sit down or move about, and then picture the boat sinking
down in a continuous series of jerks, as the sailors pay out the ropes
through cleats above. There are more pleasant sensations than this! How
thankful we were that the sea was calm and the Titanic lay so steadily and
quietly as we dropped down her side. We were spared the bumping and
grinding against the side which so often accompanies the launching of
boats: I do not remember that we even had to fend off our boat while we
were trying to get free.
As we went down, one of the crew shouted, "We are just over the
condenser exhaust: we don't want to stay in that long or we shall be
swamped; feel down on the floor and be ready to pull up the pin which lets
the ropes free as soon as we are afloat." I had often looked over the side and
noticed this stream of water coming out of the side of the Titanic just above
the water-line: in fact so large was the volume of water that as we ploughed
along and met the waves coming towards us, this stream would cause a
splash that sent spray flying. We felt, as well as we could in the crowd of
people, on the floor, along the sides, with no idea where the pin could be
found,--and none of the crew knew where it was, only of its existence
somewhere,--but we never found it. And all the time we got closer to the
CHAPTER IV 41
sea and the exhaust roared nearer and nearer--until finally we floated with
the ropes still holding us from above, the exhaust washing us away and the
force of the tide driving us back against the side,--the latter not of much
account in influencing the direction, however. Thinking over what
followed, I imagine we must have touched the water with the condenser
stream at our bows, and not in the middle as I thought at one time: at any
rate, the resultant of these three forces was that we were carried parallel to
the ship, directly under the place where boat 15 would drop from her davits
into the sea. Looking up we saw her already coming down rapidly from B
deck: she must have filled almost immediately after ours. We shouted up,
"Stop lowering 14," [Footnote: In an account which appeared in the
newspapers of April 19 I have described this boat as 14, not knowing they
were numbered alternately.] and the crew and passengers in the boat above,
hearing us shout and seeing our position immediately below them, shouted
the same to the sailors on the boat deck; but apparently they did not hear,
for she dropped down foot by foot,--twenty feet, fifteen, ten,--and a stoker
and I in the bows reached up and touched her bottom swinging above our
heads, trying to push away our boat from under her. It seemed now as if
nothing could prevent her dropping on us, but at this moment another
stoker sprang with his knife to the ropes that still held us and I heard him
shout, "One! Two!" as he cut them through. The next moment we had
swung away from underneath 15, and were clear of her as she dropped into
the water in the space we had just before occupied. I do not know how the
bow ropes were freed, but imagine that they were cut in the same way, for
we were washed clear of the Titanic at once by the force of the stream and
floated away as the oars were got out.
I think we all felt that that was quite the most exciting thing we had yet
been through, and a great sigh of relief and gratitude went up as we swung
away from the boat above our heads; but I heard no one cry aloud during
the experience--not a woman's voice was raised in fear or hysteria. I think
we all learnt many things that night about the bogey called "fear," and how
the facing of it is much less than the dread of it.
The crew was made up of cooks and stewards, mostly the former, I think;
their white jackets showing up in the darkness as they pulled away, two to
CHAPTER IV 42
an oar: I do not think they can have had any practice in rowing, for all night
long their oars crossed and clashed; if our safety had depended on speed or
accuracy in keeping time it would have gone hard with us. Shouting began
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