UTTERLY EXHAUSTED FROM HER EXPERIENCE.
When utterly exhausted from her experience, Mrs. John Jacob Astor was declared by Nicholas Biddle, a trustee of the Astor estate, to be in no danger whatever. Her physicians, however, have given orders that neither Mrs. Astor nor her maid, who was saved with her, be permitted to talk about the disaster.
On landing from the Carpathia, the young bride, widowed by the Titanic’s sinking, told members of her family what she could recall of the circumstances of the disaster. Of how Colonel Astor met his death, she has no definite conception. She recalled, she thought, that in the confusion, as she was about to be put into one of the boats, the Colonel was standing by her side. After that, as Mr. Biddle recounted her narrative, she had no very clear recollection of the happenings until the boats were well clear of the sinking steamer.
Mrs. Astor, it appears, left in one of the last boats which got away from the ship. It was her belief that all the women who wished to go had been taken off. Her impression was that the boat she left in had room for at least fifteen more persons.
The men, for some reason, which, as she recalled it, she could not and does not now understand, did not seem to be at all anxious to leave the ship. Almost every one seemed dazed.
“I hope he is alive somewhere. Yes, I cannot think anything else,” the young woman said of her husband to her father as she left the latter to go to the Astor home, according to some who overheard her parting remarks.
The chief steerage steward of the Titanic, who came in on the Carpathia, says that he saw John Jacob Astor standing by the life ladder as the passengers were being embarked. His wife was beside him, the steward said. The Colonel left her to go to the purser’s office for a moment, and that was the last he saw of him.