DID NOT SEE ANY SHOTS FIRED.
“It was his face, more than anything else, which made me fearful,” continued Mr. Stengel. “He looked like an old, old man. I heard him give instructions to his officers, and they took their stations at the boats. I did not see anyone shot during the whole wreck. They fired three shots in the air to show the steerage men that the guns were loaded, but I was on the boat almost to the last, and I didn’t see anyone shot. The boat which saved me was not a regular lifeboat, but a light emergency boat. There was a great rush for it. By the time it was launched the first fear had subsided. It was the last to be lowered from the starboard side.
“The Titanic seemed to be floating safely, and a lot of people preferred it to the flimsy looking rowboats. A deckhand told me that there was a vacant place in it. There I found Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, Lady Duff-Gordon and their maid, Miss Francatelli. Just as the boat was being lowered Mr. A. L. Solomon jumped in. We had gone but a little way from the ship when the first boiler explosion came. It was followed in quick succession by three others, at intervals of about one second apart.”
In the boat which harbored Mr. Stengel were three stokers and two members of the steerage. Mr. Stengel told graphically of the last plunges of the ship and its final sinking. He declared that there was a little eddy and no whirlpool when it sank. Many of the men on the Titanic jumped into sea before the decks were awash. In telling of the long night on the sea Mr. Stengel gave great credit to a member of the crew who had taken three green lanterns on board just as the small lifeboat was manned.
He said that it was the only beacon which the other lifeboats had for guidance, and said that without it many more would surely have been lost.
Mrs. Stengel spoke particularly of the calmness of the night.
“When the sun rose there was not a ripple on the water,” she said. “It was as calm as a little lake in Connecticut. Words cannot express the wonderful terrible beauty of it all—but of course I couldn’t appreciate it, because I thought my husband had gone down in the sea.
“The shout of ‘land’ ever uttered by an explorer was not half so joyful as the shout of ‘ship!’ which went up when the Carpathia appeared on the horizon that morning,” she said. “The first dim lights which appeared were eagerly watched and when it was really identified as a ship, men and women broke down and wept.”
The reunion of Mr. and Mrs. Stengel was on the Carpathia. Each was mourning the other as lost for more than an hour after they had been on the vessel, when they met on the promenade deck. Their separation and subsequent reunion was generally considered one of the most remarkable in the history of the wreck.
CHAPTER VII.
WOMAN’S THRILLING NARRATIVE.
Barber Says Good Word for Accused Shipowner—Claims He was a Witness—Saw the Whole Scene—Woman Tells Different Tale—Mrs. Carter’s Thrilling Narrative—Barber’s Story Differs From Ismay’s Own.
J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, who has been widely charged with cowardice in saving himself when the Titanic was wrecked, has found his first defender in the person of August H. Weikman, “commodore” barber of that company’s fleet, who was chief ship’s barber on the ill-fated vessel.
Weikman declares that he was a witness of the scene when Ismay left the vessel, and that he literally was thrown into the lifeboat by a seaman, who did not recognize him, and thought he was interfering with the work. He asserts that Ismay was striving valiantly to help in the work of launching the boats, and went overboard only under physical compulsion.
Weikman was accompanied to his home in Palmyra, N. J., by his brothers-in-law, A. H. and John Henricks, who tell of a vexatious experience in getting him off the Carpathia. Weikman was badly injured when he was blown off the ship by the explosion of the boilers.
A. H. Henricks charges that the custom officials refused him a pass to the pier because he wanted to get a member of the ship’s crew, and the official said they were not bothering about the crew. The brothers finally made their way to the pier by running between double lines of automobiles. Weikman was brought off the Carpathia on a rolling chair too late to catch the special train which came to this city, and the Pennsylvania Railroad officials provided him with a berth free of charge.
“I was in my barber shop reading,” said Weikman, “when I felt a slight jar and realized we had struck something. I went to the gymnasium to see whether others had noticed it. I found some of the men punching the bag, while Colonel Astor, Mr. Widener and a number of others were watching them.
“I had known Mr. Widener for some time, and I advised him to put on a life belt. He laughed at me.
“‘What sense is there in that? This boat isn’t going to sink,’ he said to me. ‘There is plenty of time. We’re safer here than in a small boat, anyway.’
“Then came the order to man the boats and I went on deck to help. I saw Mr. Ismay at the rail, directing and helping the men. One of them did not recognize him and said: ‘What are you interfering for? You get back out of the way.’