DOES NOT DESERVE CRITICISM.
“Mr. Ismay does not deserve any criticism for being saved. He was another of those who had to man an oar in a lifeboat, so as to get the boats out of danger by being sucked under by the sinking Titanic.”
Three French survivors, Fernand Oment, Pierre Marechal, son of the well-known French Admiral, and Paul Chevre, the sculptor, conjointly cabled to the “Matin” a graphic narrative of the disaster to the Titanic, in which they repeatedly insist that more lives could have been saved if the passengers had not had such dogged faith that the Titanic was unsinkable. Several boats, they declared, could have carried double the number.
The three Frenchmen say that they were playing bridge with a Philadelphian when a great, crunching mass of ice packed up against the port holes. As they rushed on deck there was much confusion, but this quickly died down. One of the officers when questioned by a woman passenger humorously replied:
“Do not be afraid. We are merely cutting a whale in two.”
Presently the captain appeared to become somewhat nervous and ordered all to put on life preservers. The boats were then lowered, but only a few people stirred and several of the boats put off half empty, one with only fifteen persons in it.
When the Frenchmen’s boat rowed off for half a mile the Titanic presented a fairylike picture illuminated from stem to stern. Then suddenly the lights began to go out and the stern reared up high in the air. An immense clamor rose on all sides, and during an hour anguished cries rang out.
It was, say the narrators, like a great chorus chanting a refrain of death with wild obstinacy. Sometimes the cries died out and then the tragic chorus began again more terribly and more despairingly.
The narrative continues:
“Those shrieks pursued us and haunted us as we pulled away in the night. Then one by one the cries ceased, and only the noise of the sea remained. The Titanic was engulfed almost without a murmur. Her stern quivered in a final spasm and then disappeared.”
The Frenchmen and their companions suffered bitterly from the cold. They cried out to attract attention, and a German baron, who was with them, emptied his revolver in the air. When finally the Carpathia appeared a feeble hurrah went up from the small boats, every one of which moved as swiftly as possible toward the liner.
The Frenchmen related tragic incidents as they were leaving the sides of the Titanic. After all the boats had been launched many of the passengers who had stayed behind too long tried to embark on a collapsible raft, which worked badly. Fifty persons climbed onto the raft, which was half filled with water.
One after another the passengers on the raft were drowned, or perished with the cold. When a body was found in the way it was thrown overboard, and only fifteen of the fifty who had taken refuge on the raft were saved by the Carpathia.
CHAPTER VIII.
SURVIVORS’ STIRRING STORIES.
Survivors’ Stirring Stories—How Young Thayer Was Saved—His Father, Second Vice President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, Drowned—Mrs. Straus’ Pathetic Death—Black Coward Shot—Countess Aids in Rowing Boat.
Standing at the rail of the main deck of the ill-fated Titanic, Arthur Ryerson, of Gray’s lane, Haverford, Pa., waved encouragement to his wife as the lifeboat in which she and her three children—John, Emily and Susan—had been placed with his assistance glided away from the doomed ship. A few minutes later, after the lifeboat with his loved ones had passed beyond the range of his vision, Mr. Ryerson met death in the icy water into which the crushed ship plunged.
It is now known that Mr. Ryerson might have found a place in one of the first lifeboats to be lowered, but made no effort to leave the ship’s deck after assuring himself that his wife and children would be saved.
It was not until the Carpathia reached her dock that relatives who were on hand to meet the survivors of the Ryerson family knew that little “Jack” Ryerson was among the rescued. Day by day since the first tidings of the accident to the Titanic were published, “Jack” had been placed among the missing.
Perhaps of all those who came up from the Carpathia with the impress of the tragedy upon them, the homecoming of Mrs. Ryerson was peculiarly sad.
While motoring with J. Lewis Hoffman, of Radnor, Pa., on the Main Line, on Monday a week before, Arthur L. Ryerson, her son, was killed. His parents abandoned their plans for a summer pleasure trip through Europe and took passage on the first home-bound ship, which happened to be the Titanic, to attend the funeral of their son. And now upon one tragedy a second presses.
Upon leaving the Carpathia Mrs. Ryerson, almost too exhausted and weak to tell of her experiences, was taken in a taxicab to the Hotel Belmont. With her were her son “Jack” and her two daughters, Miss Emily and Miss Susan Ryerson.
The young women were hysterical with grief as they walked up from the dock, and the little lad who had witnessed such sights of horror and tragedy clung to his mother’s hand, wide eyed and sorrowful.
Mrs. Ryerson said that she and her husband were asleep in their staterooms, as were their children, when the terrible grating crash came and the ship foundered.
The women threw kimonos over their night gowns and rushed barefooted to the deck. Master Ryerson’s nurse caught up a few articles of the little boy’s clothing and almost as soon as the party reached the deck they were numbered off into boats and lowered into the sea.