“The women in the boat, according to the story told me, wanted the captain to get into the boat with them, but he refused, saying: ‘No, there is a big piece of wreckage over here, and I shall stick to that. We are bound to be rescued soon.’ Nothing more was seen of Captain Smith.
FIFTEEN BRIDES LOSE THEIR HUSBANDS.
“There was an absolute calm and silence on the Carpathia. There were hundreds of women who had lost their husbands, and among them fifteen brides. Few of these had been married more than five or six months. No one cared to talk. The gloom was awful. I buried myself in my cabin and did not come on deck again.”
From Robert Hichens, quartermaster at the wheel of the Titanic when the great vessel crashed into the iceberg, and then in command of one of the boats which left the steamship before it went down, have come details of the terrible sight at sea which could have been known to perhaps no other person.
And standing out in memory of this young Cornishman are shrieks and groans that went up from the dark hulk of the giant steamship before she sank.
Hichens, a type of young Englishman who follows the sea, had for years been on the troopship Dongolo, running to Bombay, and thought himself fortunate when he obtained his berth as quartermaster of the Titanic, the greatest and largest of all steamships. He told in their sequence the events of the night and morning of April 14 and 15.
It was in his boat that Mrs. John Jacob Astor took her place, after Col. Astor had kissed her good-by, and handed her a flask of brandy, then taking his place in the line of men, some of whom realized even then that the steamship was doomed. And his last sight as his boat was lowered was of Captain Smith, standing on the bridge, giving his orders as calmly as if he were directing her entrance into a harbor.
He told of how the officers stood with revolvers drawn, to enforce, if the emergency should arise, that rule of the sea of women first; but the emergency did not arise, and the men stood back or helped the women to their seats.
A SEAMAN’S NARRATIVE.
In the way of a seaman, he told the narrative of the night spent in the little boat, comforting as best he could the women who did not realize as he did that some of them had looked upon their loved ones for the last time.