“NEARER MY GOD TO THEE.”
To relate that the ship’s string band gathered in the saloon, near the end, and played “Nearer, My God, To Thee,” sounds like an attempt to give an added solemn color to a scene which was in itself the climax of solemnity. But various passengers and survivors of the crew agree in the declaration that they heard this music. To some of the hearers, with husbands among the dying men in the water, and at the ship’s rail, the strain brought in thought the words
“So, by my woes I’ll be
Nearer, My God, to Thee,
Nearer to Thee.”
“Women and children first,” was the order in the filling of the Titanic’s lifeboats. How well that order was fulfilled, the list of missing first and second cabin passengers bears eloquent witness. “Mr.” is before almost every name, and the contrast is but made stronger by the presence of a few names of women—Mrs. Isidor Straus, who chose death rather than to leave her husband’s side; Mrs. Allison, who remained below with her husband and daughter, and others who, in various ways, were kept from entering the line of those to be saved.
To most of the passengers, the midnight crash against the ice mountain did not seem of terrific force. Many were so little disturbed by it that they hesitated to dress and put on life preservers, even when summoned by that thundering knocks and shouts of the stewards. Bridge players in the smoking room kept on with their game.
Once on deck, many hesitated to enter the swinging lifeboats. The glassy sea, the starlit sky, the absence, in the first few moments, of intense excitement, gave them the feeling that there was only some slight mishap—that those who got into the boats would have a chilly half-hour below, and might later be laughed at.
It was such a feeling as this, from all accounts, which caused John Jacob Astor and his wife to refuse the places offered them in the first boat, and to retire to the gymnasium. In the same way, H. J. Allison, Montreal banker, laughed at the warning, and his wife, reassured by him, took her time about dressing. They and their daughter did not reach the Carpathia. Their son, less than two years old, was carried into a lifeboat by his nurse, and was taken in charge by Major Arthur Peuchen.
ADMIRATION AND CONFIDENCE.
The admiration felt by passengers and crew for the matchlessly appointed vessel was translated, in those first few moments, into a confidence which for some proved deadly.
In the loading of the first boat restrictions of sex were not made, and it seemed to the men who piled in beside the women that there would be boats enough for all. But the ship’s officers knew better than this, and as the spreading fear caused an earnest advance toward the suspended craft, the order, “Women first!” was heard, and the men were pushed aside.