She told how John B. Thayer, Jr., fell overboard when the boats were launched, and how he was saved from the death that his father met, by the crew of the lifeboat. She described tersely, to linger sadly as she finished with the words, “But we never saw Mr. Thayer, Sr., at all.”
OCCUPANTS OF THE SAME BOAT.
Mrs. Thayer, Mrs. J. Boulton Earnshaw, of Mt. Airy, and Mrs. George D. Widener were occupants of the same boat that carried Mrs. Stephenson to safety, and, like Mrs. Stephenson, they witnessed the final plunge of the Titanic.
“We were far off,” said Mrs. Stephenson, “but we could see a huge dark mass behind us. Then it disappeared.” That was all she could tell of the fate of those left on board.
“Then it disappeared,” she paused and her voice choked. “We weren’t sure but what we might have been mistaken. A lingering hope remained until long after the Carpathia picked us up. Then the wireless told the terrible tidings. We were the sole survivors.”
Mrs. Stephenson wore the same dress that she hastily donned when the crash occurred. It was a simple gown of dark texture, showing the wear in its crumpled shape. Over it she had managed to throw a cape, and to the covering she clung, as if yet fearful of the icy blasts of the Northern Ocean.
Conveyed in a taxicab to the Pennsylvania Railroad Station from the Cunard wharf, Mrs. Stephenson alighted, hastened across the train shed and into a waiting elevator. She walked unaided. Relatives who had rushed from Philadelphia to convey her in safety, were solicitous for her welfare, but she assured them that she was well.
“And she is well,” said T. DeWitt Cuyler, a director of the Pennsylvania Railroad who met the train. “She has borne up remarkably under the strain.”
“I was wakened in my cabin by the shock,” Mrs. Stephenson began. “It was nearly 12 o’clock, but I cannot be sure. The shock was great, but not as great as the one I experienced in the San Francisco earthquake. I was staying in the St. Francis Hotel at the time of the earthquake. Even this terrible disaster cannot shake the memory of that night from my mind.