“This boat pulled away from the ship a half hour before any of the lifeboats were put into the water.
“There were thirteen first-class passengers and five sailors in the emergency boat. Both boats were away from the ship within ten or fifteen minutes of the ship’s crashing into the berg.”
FIRST BOATS TO GET AWAY.
Asked to explain how it was possible for two boats to be put over the ship’s side into the water without being subjected to a rush on the part of the great ship’s passengers, the Titanic seamen said: “Ismay and those who left in the two emergency boats occupied cabins de luxe. The two boats were swinging from davits ready for lowering. We have no idea who notified Mr. Ismay and his friends to make ready to leave the ship, but we do know that the boats in which they were got away first.”
The sailors’ seemingly unvarnished tale then went on as follows:
“It was perhaps a half hour before the first of the lifeboats was ready for lowering. Not a man was allowed in one of the lifeboats so far as we could see, only women and children. The boats were all thirty-six feet long and carried about sixty passengers. There were about thirty-five or forty passengers to a boat when they were lowered, but two sailors went in each boat. Besides the sixteen lifeboats and the two emergency boats, four collapsible boats, each with a carrying capacity of forty passengers, were put over the sides of the Titanic, every boat on the ship was put into the water.
“One of the collapsible boats filled with water. The women and children in the boat were mostly third-class passengers. The boat turned keel and nearly two score persons clung to it. Many of these were rescued by the lifeboats.”
The spokesman for the sailors here asserted: “We want to make it plain that the officers and crew of the Titanic did their duty. Not a male passenger got into the lifeboats. During the early excitement men tried to force their way into the boats, but the officers shot them down with revolvers. I saw probably a half dozen men shot down as the lifeboat to which I was assigned was being filled. The men shot were left to die and sink on the upper deck of the Titanic.”
The Titanic’s sailors described how frail women, steeled by a desperate emergency, seized oars and labored with the seamen to get the lifeboats at a safe distance from the great liner, sinking deep and deeper under the weight of water.