TWO DISTINCT SHOCKS.
“The ice pack which we encountered,” explained Mrs. Candee, “was fifty-six miles long, I have since heard. When we collided with the mountainous mass it was nearly midnight Sunday. There were two distinct shocks, each shaking the ship violently, but fear did not spread among the passengers immediately. They seemed not to realize what had happened, but the captain and other officers did not endeavor to minimize the danger.
“The first thing I recall was one of the crew appearing with pieces of ice in his hands. He said he had gathered them from the bow of the boat. Some of the passengers were inclined to believe he was joking. But soon the situation dawned on all of us. The lifeboats were ordered lowered and manned and the word went around that women and children were to be taken off first. The men stood back as we descended to the frail craft or assisted us to disembark. I now recall that huge Woolner Bjomstrom was among the heroic men.”
“The Philadelphia women behaved heroically.”
This was the way Mrs. Walter B. Stephenson, of Haverford, a survivor of the wreck of the fated Titanic, began her brief but graphic account of the disaster at her home in Haverford, which she reached on the special train that brought Mrs. John B. Thayer and others over from New York.
Worn by hours of terrible uncertainty on the frail lifeboats in the open sea, almost distracted by the ordeal of waiting for news of those left behind on the big liner, Mrs. Stephenson bore herself as did the women whom she described heroically indeed.
She told how John B. Thayer, Jr., fell overboard when the boats were launched, and how he was saved from the death that his father met, by the crew of the lifeboat. She described tersely, to linger sadly as she finished with the words, “But we never saw Mr. Thayer, Sr., at all.”