As the prayers were being said, Captain Rostrom testified, he was on the bridge searching for survivors. He told of talking with the California, which had arrived. As he searched the sea, one body with a life preserver on floated by.
The man was dead, probably a member of the crew, the captain said. The body was not picked up, the officer explaining, “because the survivors of the Titanic were in no condition then to see a body brought aboard.”
“But I must say,” declared Captain Rostrom with positiveness, “every one of the survivors behaved magnificently. They sat in the boats until the order came for them to mount the ladder in turn, and then came up.”
Asked about the lifeboats, Captain Rostrom said he found one among the wreckage in the sea. Several of the lifeboats brought in on the Carpathia to New York, he said, were lowered last night and hauled away by tenders, he knew not where.
Captain Rostrom said that the Carpathia had twenty lifeboats of her own, in accordance with the British regulations.
“Wouldn’t that indicate that the regulations are out of date, your ship being much smaller than the Titanic, which also carried twenty lifeboats?” Senator Smith asked. “No. The Titanic was supposed to be a lifeboat herself.”
Captain Rostrom then explained that it was for the good of the shipwrecked people that he brought his ship to New York instead of going to Halifax.
WOMEN AT THE OARS.
At Representative Hughes’ suggestion, Captain Rostrom was asked further about the lifeboat with one officer and one seaman in it. This was the boat from which the Representative’s daughter was rescued. At least two women were rowing in this boat. In another lifeboat he saw women at the oars, but how many he could not tell.
In discussing the strength of the Carpathia’s wireless, Captain Rostrom said the Carpathia was only 58 miles from the Titanic when the call for help came. “Our wireless operator was not on duty,” said Captain Rostrom, “but as he was undressing he had his apparatus to his ear. Ten minutes later he would have been in bed and we never would have heard.”