Long before dark on Thursday night a few people passed the police lines and with a yellow card were allowed to go on the dock; but reports had been published that the Carpathia would not be in till midnight, and by 8 o'clock there were not more than two hundred people on the pier. In the next hour the crowd with passes trebled in number. By 9 o'clock the pier held half as many as it could comfortably contain. The early crowd did not contain many women relatives of the survivors. Few nervous people could be seen, but here and there was a woman, usually supported by two male escorts, weeping softly to herself.
On the whole it was a frantic, grief-crazed crowd. Laborers rubbed shoulders with millionaires.
The relatives of the rich had taxicabs waiting outside the docks. The relatives of the poor went there on foot in the rain, ready to take their loved ones.
A special train was awaiting Mrs. Charles M. Hays, widow of the president of the Grand Trunk Railroad. A private car also waited Mrs. George D. Widener.
EARLY ARRIVALS AT PIER
Among the first to arrive at the pier was a committee from the Stock Exchange, headed by R. H. Thomas, and composed of Charles Knoblauch, B. M. W. Baruch, Charles Holzderber and J. Carlisle. Mr. Thomas carried a long black box which contained $5000 in small bills, which was to be handed out to the needy steerage survivors of the Titanic as they disembarked.
With the early arrivals at the pier were the relatives of Frederick White, who was not reported among the survivors, though Mrs. White was; Harry Mock, who came to look for a brother and sister; and Vincent Astor, who arrived in a limousine with William A. Dobbyn, Colonel Astor's secretary, and two doctors. The limousine was kept waiting outside to take Mrs. Astor to the Astor home on Fifth Avenue.
EIGHT LIMOUSINE CARS
The Waldorf-Astoria had sent over eight limousine car to convey to the hotel these survivors:
Mrs. Mark Fortune and three daughters, Mrs. Lucien P. Smith, Mrs. J. Stewart White, Mrs. Thornton Davidson, Mrs. George C. Douglass, Mrs. George D. Widener and maid, Mrs. George Wick, Miss Bonnell, Miss E. Ryerson, Mrs. Susan P. Ryerson, Mrs. Arthur Ryerson, Miss Mary Wick, the Misses Howell, Mrs. John P. Snyder and Mr. and Mrs. D. H. Bishop.