“I rose hastily from my berth and was about to hasten to the deck when my maid assured me that there was no immediate danger and that I would have time to dress; I put on this dress that I am wearing and threw a cape around my shoulders. Then I went on deck.
“Scarcely had I gotten out in the air when an officer ordered me to don a life belt. I returned to the cabin to buckle one around me. When I returned I heard the order to man the lifeboats. There was no disorder. The crew was under perfect discipline. Quickly and without any excitement I was lifted into a lifeboat. Beside me I found Mrs. Thayer, Mrs. Earnshaw and Mrs. Widener. Like myself they had no clothing except what they wore.
“John B. Thayer, Jr., was with us. As the boat was lowered by the davits, he slipped and fell into the water; luckily he wore a life belt and was kept afloat until a sailor lifted him safely aboard. We never saw Mr. Thayer, Sr., at all.
“As the boat pushed off from the ship Mrs. Widener collapsed. She was finally revived. The Philadelphia women behaved heroically. They stood up splendidly under the suspense, which was terrible. The sailors rowed our boat some distance away. We thought we saw the Titanic sink, but we couldn’t be sure. Behind us we could see a dark shape. Then it disappeared. We despaired of any others being saved, but some hope remained until long after the Carpathia had picked us up. Then the wireless told the sad tale.
WAIFS FROM TITANIC RESTORED TO MOTHER’S ARMS.
Lola and Momon, the little waifs of the Titanic disaster, snatched from the sea and kept for a month in a big, strange land, were clasped in the arms of their mother Mme. Marcelle Navratil, who arrived in New York, on May 16, from France on the White Star liner Oceanic.
Hurrying down the gangplank, after kindly customs officials had facilitated her landing, Mme. Navratil, who is an Italian, 24 years old, of remarkable beauty, rushed to Miss Margaret Hays, the rescuer of the two little boys, who, with her father, was waiting on the pier. They took her in a cab to the Children’s Society rooms, and there she was reunited with her children.
The little boys, four and two years old, were thrust into one of the last of the lifeboats to leave the sinking Titanic by an excited Frenchmen, who asked that they be cared for. A steward told him he could not enter the boat and he said he did not want to, but must save his boys.
Arriving in New York on the Carpathia, Miss Hays at first could learn nothing of the children’s identity, and she planned to care for them. Then developed another chapter of the weird story of the disaster in the ice fields. The Frenchman’s body was recovered and taken to Halifax, where it was found that he was booked on the passenger list under the name of “Hoffman.”
Cable messages to France brought the information that Mme. Navratil’s husband, from whom she was separated, had kidnapped her children and said he was going to America. He often used the name “Hoffman.” Photographs of the boys were sent to Mme. Navratil in France, and she identified them as her children.