Newspaper Account of the Titanic Disaster

Article taken from The Iowa Recorder, April 24, 1912

745 "Out of the Jaws of Death" - 745

Tale of Awful Tragedy
Passengers and Crew Display Marked Heroism in Hour of Great Trial

Monster Ship Torn Asunder

Strains of "Nearer My God to Thee" are last sounds heard by passengers awaiting doom--ripped by iceberg, icy flood explosed liner's boilers and tears ship in two--harrowing scenes as wives are torn from husbands and forced into lifeboats--only one person taken from wreck dies on way to New York.

New York, April 19 -

Lifted from the gates of death, the 745 survivors of the Titanic were landed by the Carpathis, which rescued them two hours and a half after the great White Star steamer hurled itself against an iceberg last Sunday night.

Disfigured by calamity and misery and oppressed by awful sorrow, the women and children and the few men who escaped from the world's greatest sea disaster are in better physical condition than the most optimistic had hoped for.

Out of the great company that waited for hours in bitter cold among this grinding bargs, many of them thinly clad, many bruised and hurt by the collision which destroyed their ship, few needed the ministrations of physicians when they put their feet on land in sight of the vast crowd that had been waiting in almost unverable uncertainty.

Survivors Well in Body

Many, it is true, were weak and nervous and hysterical from an experience that had left the world void and empty for them.  But--and thousands thanked God for it as they watched--the majority of the sad and bereaved company were well in body.

Only one of the Titanic's survivors died while the Carpathia was driving through fogs and storms to this port.  Four of the Titanic's people had perished trying to get aboard the Carpathia and another Titanic passenger lost his life by the overturning of a boat.  One woman, a second cabin passenger who was landed, was suffering from a broken arm.

Thirty-Nine Women Widowed

The Carpathia reported that there were 710 saved out of a passenger list which the White Star line figured at 2,180, making the loss of 1,470 lives.  The Titanic's passengers say there were 745 rescued out of a passenger list of 2,340.

The list of names furnished on the Carpathia on its arrival show 188 first class cabin passengers saved, 115 in the second cabin, 178 third class, and 206 of the crew, a total of 687 saved.  A woman passenger on the Carpathia heard from the ship's doctor that 495 of the passengers and 210 of the crew had been saved and that 39 women lost their husbands.  Six of these were brides.

The world's annals has provided few more intense and dramatic moments than when all that was left of the great company that sailed so gayly on the Titanic appeared on the Cunard pier.

Tragedy in their faces

The tragedy of the Titanic was written on the faces of nearly all of her survivors.  Some, it is true, who were saved with their families, could not repress the joy and thankfulness that filled their hearts, but they were few compared to the number of the rescued.  These others bore the impress of their time of darkness when their people passed in an accident that seemed like an insane vision of the night.  Their faces were swollen with weeping.  They had drunk as deeply of sorrow as is ever given to human kind.

But, many, whose spirits were fainting from despair, walked firmly enough down the gang plank.  Some walked unseeing in a kind of dreadful somnambulism of despair.

Officers Shoot Men Down

It was with difficulty that the tongues of many were loosened to speak of the scenes of agony and fear that fell over the Titanic's peaceful company when it became swiftly known that the ship must go down. 

Some told haltingly, with dread still frozen in their eyes, of men who strove and struggled against women for the lifeboats and of officers shooting them down.  One woman saw an officer shoot two men, she said, and other passengers recalled how officers had stood with drawn pistols while the women and children were being guided into the boats.

No one seemed to know the exact fate of the Titanic's captain, E. J. Smith.  There was a story that he had committed suicide, but the Titanic's passengers did not know that was true.  Many of them had heard shots fired.  They believed some of the firing was done to warn back steerage passengers.

Praise to Titanic's Crew

For the Titanic's officers and crew the rescued seemed to have nothing but praise.  These men acted calmly and coolly in the face of certain foundering, was the report brought here by the rescued.

The unhappy company so marvelously torn from the grip of the sea was received solemnly and with remarkable quiet by the enormous crowd which gathered near the Cunard piers and by the few hundreds that penetrated by right of relation or friendship or merciful business to the interior of the pier.

There was no cheering, no upraising of voices in salute of the living, for the thought of the dead was in the minds of all onlookers.  The depression of death was on the waiting men and women.

Quiet in Glad Greeting

Those who found their gladdest hopes realized and looked through the press to make out the well known face of husbands and fathers and sisters and wives, could not conceal their tremendous elation through thankfulness that all suspense and disheartening conjecture was over.  But they greeted their rescued ones quietly for the most part, with a though ever present of the overburdened hearts of the many who had been bereaved.

So cleanly were the police arrangements at the pier carried out that there was no struggling of crowds, no bustling and baiting of the Titanic's survivors.

The pier was crowded with representatives of relief organizations with ambulances, surgeons from the hospitals, with sisters of charity, nurses, doctors--all those who could be of help in alleviating distress or suffering.

Presently the Cunarder was laid alongside and the gangplanks lowered, and then there came in an incessant streams the hundreds who had come alive from the most awful disaster in marine history

Tell Tale of Horror

From a score of passengers came the story of their awful experience.

The great liner was plunging through a comparatively placid sea on the surface of which there was much mushy ice and here and there a number of comparatively harmless looking floes.  The night was clear and stars visible.  Chief Officer Murdoch was in charge of the bridge.

The first intimation of the presence of an iceberg that he received was from the crow's nest.  They were so close uupon the berg at this moment that it was practically impossible to avoid a collision with it.

The first officer did what other unstartled and alert commanders would have done under similar circumstances--that is, he made an effort by going full speed ahead on his starboard propeller and reversing his port propeller, simultaneouly throwing his helm over, to make a rapid turn and clear the berg.

Rips Bottom Open

These maneuvers were not successful.  He succeeded in preventing his bow from crashing into the ice cliff, but nearly the entire length of the great ship on the starboard side was ripped.

The speed of the Titanic, estimated to be at least 21 knots, was so terrific that the knifelife edge of the iceberg's spur protruding under the sea cut through her like a can opener.

The shock was almost imperceptible.  The first officer did not apparently realize that the great ship had received its death wound and none of the passengers it is believed had the slightest suspicion that anything more than a usual minor accident had happened.  Hundreds who had gone to their berths and were asleep were not awakened by the vibration.

Return to Card Game

To illustrate the placidity with which practically all the men regarded the accident it is related that four were in the smoking room playing bridge, calmly got up from the table, and after walking on deck and looking over the rail returned to their game.  One of them had left his cigar on the card table, and while the three others were gazing out on the sea he remarked that he couldn't afford to lose his smoke, returned for his cigar, and came out again.

The four remained only a few moments on deck.  They resumed their game under the impression that the ship had stopped for reasons best known to the commander and not involving any danger to her.  The tendency of the whole ship's company except the men in the engine department, who were made aware of the danger by the inrushing water, was to make light of it and in some instances even to ridicule the thought of danger to so substantial a fabric.

Slow to Realize Peril

Within a few minutes stewards and other members of the crew were sent round to arouse the people.  Some utterly refused to get up.  The stewards had almost to force the doors of the staterooms to make the somnolent appreciate their peril.

Mr. and Mrs. Astor were in their room and saw the ice vision flash by.  They had not apparently felt the gentle shock and supposed then nothing out of the ordinary had happened.  They were both dressed and came on deck leisurely.

It was not until the ship began to take a heavy jist to starboard that a tremor of fear prevaded it.

Launch Boats Safely

The crew had been called to clear away the lifeboats of which there were 20, of which four were collapsible.  The boats that were lowered on the port side of the ship touched the water without capsizing.  Some of the others lowered to starboard, including one collapsible, were capsized.  All hands on the callapsible boats that practically went to pieces were rescued by the other boats.

Sixteen boats in all got away safely.  It was even then the general impression that the ship was all right and there is no doubt that that was the belief of even some of the officers.

At the lowering of the boats the officers susperintending it were armed with revolvers, but there was no necessity for using them as there was nothing int he nature of a panic and no man made an effort to get into a boat while the women and children were being put aboard.

As the ship began to settle to starboard, heeling at an angle of nearly 45 degrees, those who had believed it was all right to stick by the ship began to have doubt and a few jumped into the sea.  These were followed immediately by others and in a few minutes there were scores swimming around.  Nearly all of the them wore life preservers.

One man who had a Pomeranian dog leaped overboard with it and striking a piece of wreckage was badly stunned.  He recovered after a few minutes and swam toward one of the lifeboats and was taken aboard.  Most of the men who were aboard the Carpathia, barring the members of the crew who had manned the boats, had jumped into the sea as the Titanic was settling.

Ship Breaks in Two

Under instructions from officers and men in charge of lifeboats were rowed a considerable distance from the ship herself in order to get away from the foundering.  The marvelous thing about the disappearance was so little suction as to be hardly appreciable from the point where the boats were floating.

There was ample time to launch all boats before the Titanic went down, as it was two hours and twenty minutes afloat.

So confident were all hands that she had not sustained a mortal wound that it was not until 12:15 a.m. or 35 minutes after the berg was encountered, that the boats were lowered.  Hundreds of the crew and a large majority of the officers including Capt. Smith, stuck to the ship to the last.

It was evident after there were several explosions, which doubtless were the boilers blowing up, that she had but a few minutes more of life.

The ship broke in half amidship and almost simultaneously the after half and the forward half sank, the forward half vanishing bow first and the other half stern first.

John Jacob Astor stood on deck and fought off man after man until his wife was in a lifeboat.  Then he remained on the deck to the last.

Many of the survivors assert positively that not a woman was to be seen on any of the decks at the time the officers of the Titanic gave the word for the men to enter the lifeboats.  It is therefore believed many of those who lost their lives must have been killed in their cabins as the survivors also say that every one had ample time to dress.

Bodies at Bottom of Sea

"The bodies of the victims of the Titanic are at the bottom of the deep never to leave it," declared Prof. Robert W. Wood of the chair of experimental physics of Johns Hopkins university. 

"It is unlikely that any of the corpses will ever return to the surface, as is the case with bodies drowned in shallow water.  At the death of two miles, the pressure of the water is something like 6,000 pounds to the square inch, which is far too great to be overcome by bouyancy ordinarily given drowned bodies by the bases generated in time.  That the bodies sank to the bottom of the sea there is no question," he continued.  "The Titanic's victims who were not carried down with the boat followed until the very bottom of the sea was reached.  There was no such thing as their stopping in their downward course a half mile a mile or at any other point."