COULD ALMOST FEEL THE WATER RUSHING IN.
“Twenty men stepped forward almost immediately and started down. To permit them to enter the hold it was necessary for the doors to be opened again, and after that one could almost feel the water rushing in. It was but a few minutes later when all hands were ordered on deck with lifebelts. It was then known for a certain fact that the ship was doomed.”
Charles Williams, the racquet coach at Harrow, Eng., who is the professional champion of the world and was coming to New York to defend his title, said he was in the smoking-room when the boat struck. He rushed out, saw the iceberg, which seemed to loom above the deck over a hundred feet. It broke up amidship and floated away.
He jumped from the boat deck on the starboard side as far away from the steamer as possible. He was nine hours in the small boat, standing in water to his knees. He said “the sailors conducted themselves admirably.”
A. A. Dick, of New York, said:
“Everybody in the first and second cabin behaved splendidly. The members of the crew also behaved magnificently. But some men in the third class, presumably passengers, were shot by some of the officers. Who these men were we do not know. There was a rush for the lifeboats.
“It was fully an hour after the boat struck that the lifeboats were launched. This was due to the fact that those aboard had not the slightest idea that the ship would sink.”
George Rheims, of 417 Fifth avenue, New York, was on the Titanic with his brother-in-law, Joseph Holland Loring, of London. He said no one seemed to know for twenty minutes after the boat struck that anything had happened. Many of the passengers stood round for an hour with their life belts on, he said, and saw people getting in the boats.
When all the boats had gone, he added, he shook hands with his brother-in-law, who would not jump, and leaped over the side of the boat.