It was not until the Carpathia reached her dock that relatives who were on hand to meet the survivors of the Ryerson family knew that little “Jack” Ryerson was among the rescued. Day by day since the first tidings of the accident to the Titanic were published, “Jack” had been placed among the missing.
Perhaps of all those who came up from the Carpathia with the impress of the tragedy upon them, the homecoming of Mrs. Ryerson was peculiarly sad.
While motoring with J. Lewis Hoffman, of Radnor, Pa., on the Main Line, on Monday a week before, Arthur L. Ryerson, her son, was killed. His parents abandoned their plans for a summer pleasure trip through Europe and took passage on the first home-bound ship, which happened to be the Titanic, to attend the funeral of their son. And now upon one tragedy a second presses.
Upon leaving the Carpathia Mrs. Ryerson, almost too exhausted and weak to tell of her experiences, was taken in a taxicab to the Hotel Belmont. With her were her son “Jack” and her two daughters, Miss Emily and Miss Susan Ryerson.
The young women were hysterical with grief as they walked up from the dock, and the little lad who had witnessed such sights of horror and tragedy clung to his mother’s hand, wide eyed and sorrowful.
Mrs. Ryerson said that she and her husband were asleep in their staterooms, as were their children, when the terrible grating crash came and the ship foundered.
The women threw kimonos over their night gowns and rushed barefooted to the deck. Master Ryerson’s nurse caught up a few articles of the little boy’s clothing and almost as soon as the party reached the deck they were numbered off into boats and lowered into the sea.
HARROWING AND TERRIBLE.
Mrs. John M. Brown, whose husband was formerly a well-known Philadelphian, but now lives in Boston, described her experience on the Titanic as the “most harrowing and terrible that any living soul could undergo.”
“Oh, it was heart-rending to see those brave men die,” Mrs. Brown said, half-sobbingly, after she had left the pier in a taxicab brought by her husband.