Mrs. Candee’s account of her experience is as follows:
She last saw Mr. Kent in the companionway between Decks A and B. He took charge of an ivory miniature of her mother, etc., which afterwards were found on his body when brought into Halifax. He appeared at the time to hesitate accepting her valuables, seeming to have a premonition of his fate.
She witnessed the same incident described by Major Peuchen, when a group of firemen came up on deck and were ordered by the officer to return below. She, however, gives praise to these men. They obeyed like soldiers, and without a murmur or a protest, though they knew better than anyone else on the ship that they were going straight to their death. No boats had been lowered when these firemen first appeared upon the Boat Deck, and it would have been an easy matter for them to have “rushed” the boats.
Her stateroom steward also gave an exhibition of courage. After he had tied on her life preserver and had locked her room as a precaution against looters, which she believed was done all through the deck, she said to this brave man: “It is time for you to look out for yourself,” to which the steward replied, “Oh, plenty of time for that, Madam, plenty of time for that.” He was lost.
As she got into boat No. 6, it being dark and not seeing where she stepped, her foot encountered the oars lying lengthwise in the boat and her ankle was thus twisted and broken.
Just before her boat was lowered away a man’s voice said: “Captain, we have no seaman.” Captain Smith then seized a boy by the arm and said: “Here’s one.” The boy went into the boat as ordered by the captain, but afterwards he was found to be disabled. She does not think he was an Italian.
Her impression is that there were other boats in the water which had been lowered before hers. There was a French woman about fifty years of age in the boat who was constantly calling for her son. Mrs. Candee sat near her. After arrival on the Carpathia this French woman became hysterical.
Notwithstanding Hitchens’ statements, she says that there was absolutely no upset feeling on the women’s part at any time, even when the boat, as it was being lowered, on several occasions hung at a dangerous angle—sometimes bow up and sometimes stern up. The lowering process seemed to be done by jerks. She herself called out to the men lowering the boat and gave instructions: otherwise they would have been swamped.
The Italian boy who was in the boat was not a stowaway, he was ordered in by the captain as already related. Neither did he refuse to row. When he tried to do so, it was futile, because of an injury to his arm or wrist.
Through the courtesy of another fellow passenger, Mrs. J. J. Brown, of Denver, Colorado, I am able to give her experiences in boat No. 6, told in a delightful, graphic manner; so much so that I would like to insert it all did not space prevent: