DISCIPLINE DESCRIBED AS PERFECT.
Steffanson also described the discipline upon the boat as perfect. Many women, as well as men, he said, declined to leave the Titanic, believing she was safe.
Miss Cornelia Andrews, of Hudson, N. Y., was one of the first to be put into a lifeboat.
“I saw the Titanic sink,” she said. “I saw her blow up. Our little boat was a mile away when the end came, but the night was clear and the ship loomed up plainly, even at that distance. As our boat put off I saw Mr. and Mrs. Astor standing on the deck. As we pulled away they waved their hands and smiled at us. We were in the open boat about four hours before we were picked up.”
E. W. Beans, a second-cabin passenger, was picked up after swimming in the icy water for twenty minutes. He, too, jumped into the sea after the boats were lowered.
“I heard a shot fired,” said Beans, “just before I jumped. Afterward I was told a steerage passenger had been shot while trying to leap into a lifeboat filled with women and children.”
How the wireless operator on the Carpathia, by putting in an extra ten minutes on duty, was a means of saving 745 lives was told by Dr. J. F. Kemp, the Carpathia’s physician.
“Our wireless operator,” said Dr. Kemp, “was about to retire Sunday night when he said, jokingly: ‘I guess I’ll wait just ten minutes, then turn in.’
“It was in the next ten minutes that the Titanic’s call for help came. Had the wireless man not waited, there would have been no survivors.”
“The iceberg that sank the Titanic looked to be as big as the Rock of Gibraltar,” said Thomas Brown, one of the stewards of the Carpathia, in describing what he saw when the crew of his ship picked up the survivors from the Titanic. Brown left the Carpathia a few minutes after she was docked and he gave a vivid description of the work of the rescue.
“There were 2,341 persons aboard the Titanic, counting officers and crew,” said the steward. “Seven hundred and ten persons were saved; so the list of those who drowned numbers 1,631 persons.