Tuesday afternoon, in the saloon, a meeting of survivors was held and plans for a testimonial to the officers and crew of the Carpathia and the survivors of the Titanic’s crew were discussed. It was decided that relief of the destitute should first be considered, and the chairman of the meeting, Samuel Goldenberg, appointed a committee consisting of I. G. Frauenthal, Mrs. J. J. Brown, William Bushnell and George Stone to raise a fund. The first subscriptions were for $100 each, and the amounts were paid largely in travelers’ checks or personal checks, cash being somewhat scarce among the refugees, who had kept their currency in the purser’s safe.
Resolutions were adopted praising the Titanic’s surviving officers and crew and the officers, crew and passengers of the Carpathia, and declaring that a memorial is needed for “those who in heroic self-sacrifice made possible the rescue of so many others.” One speaker suggested that a memorial fund be raised by popular subscription, mentioning the “World” as a suitable medium. This and other suggestions were left to the committee to develop.
Rain and fog marked the Carpathia’s homeward course, and those who were not seasick when New York was reached were none the less sick of the sea.
CAPTAIN ROSTROM’S RULE.
Captain Rostrom’s rule that personal messages should take precedence of press messages was not relaxed, even when Tuesday a message from Guglielm Marconi himself asked the reason why press dispatches were not sent. The captain posted Marconi’s message on the bulletin board, and beside it a bulletin stating that no press messages, except a bulletin to the Associated Press, had been sent. The implication was that none would be sent, and the most urgent and respectful appeals failed to change his determination, which, he seemed convinced, was in the best interest of the survivors and their friends.
My wife was my only active helper in a task which ten newspaper men could not have performed completely. Mr. S. V. Silverthorne, of St. Louis, aided greatly by lending me his first cabin passenger list, one of the few in existence.
Robert Hichens, one of the surviving quartermasters of the Titanic, the man who was on duty at the wheel when the ship struck the iceberg, told me the tale of the wreck on the Carpathia Thursday.
Save for the surviving fourth officer, Boxhall, whose lips are sealed, Hichens saw Sunday night’s tragedy at closer range than any man now living.
In the hastily compiled list of surviving members of the crew, the names of Hichens and other quartermasters appear among the able-bodied seamen; but the star and anchor on the left sleeve of each distinguishes them in rank from the A. B.’s.
Hichens has followed the sea fifteen years and has a wife and two children in Southampton. His tale of the wreck, as he told it to me and as he expects to tell it to a Marine Court of Inquiry, is here given: