I KNOW of the conditions existing on the port side of the ship from personal knowledge, as set forth in the first five chapters describing my personal experience, while the previous [Chapter VI] is derived from an exhaustive study of official and of other authoritative information relating to the same side from experiences of others. I have devoted an equal amount of study to the history of what happened on the starboard side of the ship, and the tabulated statements in this chapter are the outcome of my research into the experiences of my fellow passengers on this side of the ship where I was located only during the last half hour before the ship foundered, after all passengers on the port side had been ordered to the starboard in consequence of the great list to port, and after the departure of the last boat “D,” that left the ship on the port side. During this last half hour, though it seemed shorter, my attention was confined to the work of the crew, assisting them in their vain efforts to launch the Engelhardt boat “B” thrown down from the roof of the officers’ house. All the starboard boats had left the ship before I came there.
Many misunderstandings arose in the public mind because of ignorance of the size of the ship and inability to understand that the same conditions did not prevail at every point and that the same scenes were not witnessed by every one of us. Consider the great length of the ship, 852 feet; its breadth of beam, 92.6 feet; and its many decks, eleven in number; counting the roof of the officers’ house as the top deck, then the Boat Deck, and Decks A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and, in the hold, two more. Bearing this in mind I illustrated to my New York friends, in answer to their questions, how impossible it would be for a person standing at the corner of 50th Street and Fifth Avenue to know just what was going on at 52nd Street on the same Avenue, or what was going on at the corner of 52nd Street and Madison Avenue. Therefore, when one survivor’s viewpoint differs from that of another, the explanation is easily found.
Consideration must also be taken of the fact that the accident occurred near midnight, and though it was a bright, star-lit night, and the ship’s electric lights shone almost to the last, it was possible to recognize only one’s intimates at close quarters.
My research shows that there was no general order from the ship’s officers on the starboard side for “Women and children first.” On the other hand, I have the statements of Dr. Washington Dodge, John B. Thayer, Jr., and Mrs. Stephenson, also the same of a member of the crew testifying before the British Court of Inquiry, from which it appears that some sort of a command was issued ordering the women to the port side and the men to the starboard, indicating that no men would be allowed in the port boats, and only in the starboard side boats after the women had entered them first. If such were the orders, they were carried out to the letter. Another point of difference, especially conspicuous to myself, is the fact that on the starboard side there appears to have been an absence of women at the points where the boats were loaded, while on the port side all the boats loaded, from the first up to the last, found women at hand and ready to enter them. It was only at the time of the loading of the last boat “D,” that my friend, Clinch Smith, and I ran up and down the port side shouting: “Are there any more women?” This too is the testimony of Officer Lightoller, in charge of loading boats on the port side.
BOAT NO. 7.[21]
[21] First to leave ship starboard side at 12.45 [Br. Rpt., p. 38.]
No disorder in loading or lowering this boat.
Passengers: Mesdames Bishop, Earnshaw, Gibson, Greenfield, Potter, Snyder, and Misses Gibson and Hays, Messrs. Bishop, Chevré, Daniel, Greenfield, McGough, Maréchal, Seward, Sloper, Snyder, Tucker.
Transferred from Boat No. 5: Mrs. Dodge and her boy; Messrs. Calderhead and Flynn.
Crew: Seamen: Hogg (in charge), Jewell, Weller.