“I was asleep in my berth when the collision came and so cannot tell how we happened to hit that berg or what occurred immediately afterwards. I got up and looked out of my stateroom door, but all seemed to be quiet and I went back to bed again.
“A little later I heard some one crying that the boats were being manned and I got frightened. So I wrapped an overcoat about me and went on deck. On the way I grabbed a life belt and tied it on.
“The boat had already sunk so far down that the lower decks were awash. I didn’t waste any time in thinking. I just jumped overboard. I clung to the same overturned lifeboat that young John B. Thayer, Jr., swam to later and saw him jump from the Titanic. It looked to me as though his father pushed him off and jumped after him, but the boat sank so soon afterwards and things were so mixed up that I couldn’t be sure about that.
“A boat came by after a while that was full of women. They were frightened and seeing me, pulled me aboard, saying they needed a man to take charge. I did my best to cheer them up, but it was a poor effort and didn’t succeed very well. Still I kept them busy with one thing and another and so helped pass the weary hours until we were picked up by the Carpathia.”
JUMPED AS THE LINER WAS GOING DOWN.
Mr. Daniel stated with emphasis that Colonel John Jacob Astor stayed on the Titanic until the last second, then jumped just as the liner was going down, and he did not see the millionaire again.
Captain Smith also stuck to the bridge, until the ship sank, said Mr. Daniel, when the skipper also jumped, but disappeared below the waves and apparently never came up again.
“I spoke to the fourth officer just before I went to my cabin,” said Mr. Daniel, “and he told me he was in charge while the captain was at dinner. Then I remembered I had heard Ismay was giving a banquet.
“The fourth officer said the skipper was coming up ‘pretty soon’ to relieve him,” added Mr. Daniel.
On the Carpathia, Mr. Daniel said, were nineteen women who had been made widows by the Titanic disaster. Six of them were young brides who were returning on the steamship from honeymoon trips on the Continent. None of them, he said, was able to obtain from the passengers of the Carpathia mourning garb.