Mr. Brown, for his part, said the days of agony which he had experienced, when the lists of Titanic survivors were altered, diminished and published incomplete, leaving him indecisive as to his wife’s fate, was almost on a par what she had undergone.
In contradiction to several other statements, Mrs. Brown declared that she saw no signs of panic or disorder on the Titanic and did not know until later that there had been shooting on board the vessel.
“I was in my berth when the crash came,” Mrs. Brown said, “and after the first shock when I knew instinctively that the vessel was sinking I was comparatively calm.
“I had hardly reached deck when an officer called to me to enter a lifeboat. I did so, and saw the huge liner split in half, with a pang almost as keen as if I had seen somebody die.”
Mrs. Brown said that John B. Thayer, Jr., after jumping from the deck of the liner, clad only in pajamas, swam through cakes of floating ice to a broken raft. He was picked up by the boat of which Mrs. Brown was an occupant.
Mrs. Brown said that it was about two hours after the Titanic sank that their boat came within sight of an object bobbing up and down in the cakes of ice, about fifty yards away.
Nearing, they made out the form of a boy clinging with one leg and both arms wrapped around the piece of wreckage. Young Thayer uttered feeble cries as they pulled alongside.
LAD PULLED INTO LIFE-BOAT.
The lad was pulled into the already crowded lifeboat exhausted. With a weak, faint smile, Mrs. Brown said, the lad collapsed.
Women, who were not rowing or assisting in maneuvering the boat, by vigorous rubbing soon brought Thayer to consciousness and shared part of their scanty attire to keep him from dying from exposure. In the meantime the boat bobbed about on the waves like a top, frequently striking cakes of ice.