Mrs. Walter D. Douglas’s affidavit (Am. Inq., p. 1100):
Mr. Boxhall had difficulty in getting the boat loose and called for a knife. We finally were launched. Mrs. Appleton and a man from the steerage faced me. Mrs. Appleton’s sister, Mrs. Cornell, was back of me and on the side of her the officer. I think there were eighteen or twenty in the boat. There were many who did not speak English. The rowing was very difficult, for no one knew how. We tried to steer under Mr. Boxhall’s orders, and he put an old lantern, with very little oil in it, on a pole, which I held up for some time. Mrs. Appleton and some other women had been rowing, and did row all the time. Mr. Boxhall had put into the Emergency boat a tin box of green lights like rockets. These he sent off at intervals, and very quickly we saw the lights of the Carpathia, whose captain said he saw our green lights ten miles away and steered directly towards us, so we were the first boat to arrive at the Carpathia. When we pulled alongside, Mr. Boxhall called out: “Slow down your engines and take us aboard. I have only one seaman.”
Mrs. J. B. Mennell (née Allen):
My aunt, Mrs. Robert’s maid, came to the door and asked if she could speak to me. I went into the corridor and she said: “Miss Allen, the baggage room is full of water.” I replied she needn’t worry, that the water-tight compartments would be shut and it would be all right for her to go back to her cabin. She went back and returned to us immediately to say her cabin, which was forward on Deck E, was flooded.
We were on the Boat Deck some minutes before being ordered into the lifeboat. Neither my aunt, Mrs. Robert, my cousin, Miss Madill, nor myself ever saw or heard the band. As we stood there we saw a line of men file by and get into the boat—some sixteen or eighteen stokers. An officer[16] came along and shouted to them: “Get out, you damned cowards; I’d like to see everyone of you overboard.” They all got out and the officer said: “Women and children into this boat,” and we got in and were lowered.
[16] Probably the same officer, Murdoch, described by Maj. Peuchen, p. [122], this chapter.
With the exception of two very harrowing leave-takings, we saw nothing but perfect order and quiet on board the Titanic. We were rowed round the stern to the starboard side and away from the ship, as our boat was a small one and Boxhall feared the suction. Mrs. Cornell helped to row all the time.
As the Titanic plunged deeper and deeper we could see her stern rising higher and higher until her lights began to go out. As the last lights on the stern went out we saw her plunge distinctively, bow first and intact. Then the screams began and seemed to last eternally. We rowed back, after the Titanic was under water, toward the place where she had gone down, but we saw no one in the water, nor were we near enough to any other lifeboats to see them. When Boxhall lit his first light the screams grew louder and then died down.
We could hear the lapping of the water on the icebergs, but saw none, even when Boxhall lit his green lights, which he did at regular intervals, till we sighted the Carpathia. Our boat was the first one picked up by the Carpathia. I happened to be the first one up the ladder, as the others seemed afraid to start up, and when the officer who received me asked where the Titanic was, I told him she had gone down.
Capt. A. H. Rostron, of the Carpathia (Am. Inq., p. 22):