“The women were shoved into the lifeboats,” said Dr. Vincent. “The crew did not wait until the lifeboat was filled before they lowered it. As a matter of fact there were but twenty-six people in the boat, mostly all women, when an officer gave instructions to lower it. Mr. Smith was standing alongside the boat when it was lowered. There was plenty of room for more people to get into the lifeboats, the capacity being fifty.
APPEALS TO CAPTAIN WERE IGNORED.
“Mrs. Smith implored Captain Smith to allow her husband in the boat, but her repeated appeals, however, were ignored. This lifeboat was permitted to be lowered with but one sailor in it and he was drunk. His condition was such that he could not row the boat and therefore the women had to do the best they could in rowing about the icy waters.
“As the boat swung out from the side it was evident that the three men knew absolutely nothing about rowing and Mrs. Kenyon said she and another woman seized the oars and helped the sailors to pull clear. Gradually the small boat was worked away from the Titanic. The boat had gone quite a distance when suddenly all heard a terrific explosion and in the glare which followed they saw the body of a man hurled from the bridge high in the air. Then darkness fell. At 6.30 the boat was picked up by the Carpathia.”
Mrs. Elizabeth Dyker, of Westhaven, Conn., a bride whose husband perished, lost besides her husband all her worldly possessions.
“When the crash came,” said Mrs. Dyker, “I met Adolph on deck. He had a satchel in which were two gold watches, two diamond rings, a sapphire necklace and two hundred crowns. He couldn’t go in the boat with me but grabbed a life preserver and said he would try to save himself. That was the last I saw of him. When the lifeboat came alongside the Carpathia one of the men in it threw my satchel to the deck. I have not seen it since.”
Kate Mullin, of County Longford, Ireland, told of how stewards had tried to keep back the steerage women. She said she saw scores of men and women jump overboard and drown.
Bunar Tonglin, a Swede, was saved in the next to the last boat which left the Titanic. Before getting into the boat he placed two hysterical women in another boat. Then he heard a cry, and, looking up, saw a woman standing on the upper deck. The woman, he said, dropped from her arms her baby, which Tonglin caught, and gave to one of the women he had put in the boat. Then he got into his own boat, which was lowered, and shortly afterwards came the two explosions, and the plunge downward of the Titanic. Tonglin declared that he had seen numerous persons leap from the decks of the Titanic and drown.
HELPS HIS WIFE TO A PLACE IN THE BOAT.
Mrs. Fred R. Kenyon, of Southington, Conn., was one of the Titanic’s survivors. Her husband went down with the vessel rather than take the place of a woman in a boat. Mrs. Kenyon said that when the call was given for the women to take places near the boat davits, in readiness to be placed in the boats as they were swung off, Mr. Kenyon was by her side. When it came her turn to enter the boat, Mr. Kenyon helped his wife to a place and kissed her good-bye. Mrs. Kenyon said she asked him to come with her, and he replied: “I would not with all those women and children waiting to get off.”