“I had not been in bed half an hour,” said Mrs. Douton, “when the steward rushed down to our cabin and told us to put on our clothes and come upon deck. We were thrown into lifeboats and packed like sardines. As soon as the men passengers tried to get to the boats they were shot at.
“I don’t know who did the shooting. We rowed frantically away from the ship and were tied to four other boats. I arose and saw the ship sinking.
“The band was playing ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee.’ There was a baby in the boat with one of the women. The baby’s hands had been cut off. I think it was still alive. The mother did not give it up. During the night, when waiting for the Carpathia, four of the crew died in the boat and were thrown overboard.
“It was bitter cold, and we had to wait until 8 o’clock in the morning before being taken off by the lifeboats of the Carpathia.”
John R. Joyce, a banker of Carslbad, N. M., a passenger on the Carpathia, said: “When the Carpathia reached the scene of the wreck we saw eighteen boats and one raft on the water. The Carpathia picked them all up. Four persons on the raft were dead. They were buried at sea on our way back to New York. A survivor told me that some of the Titanic’s passengers jumped for the lifeboats, missed them and were drowned. I heard nothing of Major Butt.”
Mrs. Dickinson Bishop, of Detroit, declared that she was the first woman in the first boat. “We floated around a half mile or so from the scene of the disaster for four hours before we were picked up by the Carpathia,” she said.
“I was in bed when the crash came. I was not much alarmed, but decided to dress and go on deck. By the time I was dressed everything seemed quiet, and I lay down in my berth again, assured that there was no danger. I rose again at the summons of a stewardess. There were very few passengers on the deck when I reached there.
DISCIPLINE WAS PERFECT.
“There was no panic and the discipline of the Titanic’s crew was perfect. My husband joined me on the Carpathia, and we knelt together and thanked God for our preservation.”
That the stokers of the Titanic were the first to realize the seriousness of the accident and came rushing pell mell to the upper decks for safety was the tale related by one of the survivors to John R. Joyce, a passenger aboard the Carpathia, who hails from Carlsbad, N. M.