JUMPED AS THE LINER WAS GOING DOWN.
Mr. Daniel stated with emphasis that Colonel John Jacob Astor stayed on the Titanic until the last second, then jumped just as the liner was going down, and he did not see the millionaire again.
Captain Smith also stuck to the bridge, until the ship sank, said Mr. Daniel, when the skipper also jumped, but disappeared below the waves and apparently never came up again.
“I spoke to the fourth officer just before I went to my cabin,” said Mr. Daniel, “and he told me he was in charge while the captain was at dinner. Then I remembered I had heard Ismay was giving a banquet.
“The fourth officer said the skipper was coming up ‘pretty soon’ to relieve him,” added Mr. Daniel.
On the Carpathia, Mr. Daniel said, were nineteen women who had been made widows by the Titanic disaster. Six of them were young brides who were returning on the steamship from honeymoon trips on the Continent. None of them, he said, was able to obtain from the passengers of the Carpathia mourning garb.
While on the Carpathia Mr. Daniel proved of considerable assistance to the wireless operator. He is an amateur student of wireless telegraphy. Following the disaster the operator on the Carpathia was compelled to work night and day.
While the operator was engaged in the arduous task of sending to shore the long list of those who had been snatched from the sea, Mr. Daniel went into the operating room. He found the operator on the verge of collapse, and, volunteering his services, sent a large part of the list himself.
Mr. Daniel denied that all the lifeboats and collapsible rafts launched from the Titanic had been picked up by the Carpathia.
“Only twelve boats were picked up,” he said, “while there were half a dozen more that drifted away in other directions. There has been no storm, and I don’t see why they should not have been located by some other vessel.”