THE CRIES WERE HEART-RENDING.
“Then the cries were awful to listen to; some of the women screamed all the time. For four straight hours they kept at it. First from one boat, then from another. It was heart-rending.”
Asked why the Carpathia had refused to answer the wireless messages relayed to her, Mr. Daniel answered that so many land stations were trying to get the vessel that the air was full of cross currents, and it was almost impossible to catch any one message meant for the rescue ship, let alone trying to reply to any of them.
While Mr. Daniel was talking to the newspaper men on the pier, just after landing from the Carpathia, a man ran up and, showing him two newspaper photographs, asked if he remembered the face.
“It’s my brother, Mr. White, of California,” said the man. “Is he on board the Carpathia?”
“I don’t think so,” answered Mr. Daniel. “I remember meeting this gentleman on board the Titanic, but I have not seen him since.” Mr. White’s brother grabbed the photographs and rushed away.
Many of the men, said Mr. Daniel, refused to jump from the Titanic until the ship was actually disappearing beneath the waves.
“They seemed to think they were safer on board,” he said, “and by waiting too long lost their chance of being saved, for they were probably carried down by the suction. Howard B. Case, of New York, was one who declined to jump. C. Duane Williams was another. He was washed overboard, but his son, Richard Norris Williams, jumped and was saved.”
Mr. Daniel was in the water or on a cake of ice nearly an hour before he was pulled aboard a lifeboat. He had nothing to keep him from freezing save a light overcoat over his pajamas. While on the Carpathia he slept on the floor of the dining saloon and was so weak when he landed that he could hardly move.
When in Philadelphia, Mr. Daniel makes his home at the Southern Club, though he is a native of Richmond, Va., where his mother and brother live.