NEW YORK TIMES
20 April 1912

Page 3

Many tales were told yesterday by men and women who had been saved from the Titanic of their experiences when the big ship struck, while the lifeboats were being made ready and in the long hours that they floated in the ice filled sea awaiting the coming of the Carpathia. How different were the impressions made on different persons was illustrated by the many versions, told by witnesses, of how the Titanic sank, how Capt. Smith died, and of the scenes aboard the Titanic and afterward. Many were certain that they had seen Capt. Smith sink beneath the waves, still clinging to the bridge, of his vessel. Others assert that they saw him leap overboard to carry a baby to a boat, and then tear his life belt from him and leap again into the sea, when they would have kept him, too, in the lifeboat. Mrs. George D. Widener, whose husband was lost, said that she saw one officer put a revolver to his head and shoot, and a moment later saw Capt. Smith leap from the bridge and disappear in the water. Charles Williams, coach of the Racquet Club of Harrow, England, was equally positive that he saw the captain swimming in the water with the child in his arms, and afterward saw him pass the infant into a small boat which a few minutes before had picked Williams up after he jumped overboard. "What has happened to First Officer Murdock?" Williams says the Captain asked. He was told that the officer had shot himself, and then, Williams says, Capt. Smith pushed himself away from the lifeboat, freed the life belt which supported him, and dropped out of sight. He never rose to the surface, though the lifeboat lingered many minutes over the spot.

The wife and daughter of Emil Taussig, President of the West Disinfecting Company of 2 East Forty-second Street, who lived at 777 West End Avenue, were taken yesterday to the home of Mrs. Taussig's father, William Mandelbaum, at Park Avenue and Ninety-sixth Street. Both were ill from exposure and grief caused by the death of Mr. Taussig. They said that he and Henry B. Harris, who with his wife rushed with them to the deck on hearing the collision with the iceberg, were threatened with revolvers when they attempted to get into a lifeboat, although there was plenty of room for them. Mrs. Taussig said that the boat into which she stepped with her daughter Ruth and Mrs. Harris pulled away from the Titanic with several seat spaces empty. She is indignant and horrified to think that her husband and the theatrical man were sacrificed needlessly. Mrs. Taussig recalled that there were three distinct explosions, one following close upon another. Also there was a medley of pistol shots, breaking out every few minutes, but what the firing meant, the women were unable to learn. Being on the surface of the water, they were sixty-odd feet below deck levels, and could not see what was going on. Dr. J. J. Kemp, the Carpathia's physician, described the iceberg that sank the Titanic as at least 400 feet long and 90 feet high. He declared that one of the boats that the Carpathia picked up was filled with stokers from the sunken liner. "It had just two women aboard," he said. The doctor said that the Carpathia cruised twice through the ice field near the spot where the Titanic sank and picked up the bodies of three men and one baby.

On Monday at 8:30 o'clock in the evening we held a funeral service on board the Carpathia," continued Dr. Kemp. At this service there were thirty widows, twenty of whom were under 23 years of age, and most of them brides of a few weeks or months. Mrs. John Jacob Astor had to be carried aboard. She had to be taken into a cabin and received medical attention. She was more completely attired than many of the women who were rescued. Fifth Officer G. Lowe of the Titanic displayed unusual coolness and courage in the confusion before the vessel sank, according to a story told yesterday at the Cornell Club by Gilbert M. Tucker, Jr., one of the survivors. "Officer Lowe seemed to be the one officer in particular who kept his head in the confusion of getting the passengers into the boats," said Mr. Tucker. Five boats in charge of Lowe went off in a bunch. After rowing a considerable distance from the Titanic, Lowe discovered that some of the boats could hold a lot more people than they had in them. There were only twenty-seven people in the boat I was in, for example, although the boats were capable of holding about fifty apiece. Lowe made us transship until we were all in four boats. Then he organized a volunteer crew and went back to the sinking Titanic. He returned with a boatful of survivors." The reason given by Mr. Tucker for the fact that the boats were not sufficiently filled is that the passengers did not believe the Titanic was going to sink, and refused to get into them. Coming back on the Carpathia the story was told that Mrs. Straus, who went down with her husband, had refused to take a place in a boat which might have been occupied by younger persons who had longer to live," Mr. Tucker said. "I am old. Why should I live and let the younger people die?" Mrs. Straus was quoted as having exclaimed in resisting the persuasions of the other women to get into a rowboat.

Mr. Tucker said that he had seen Capt. Smith and a sailor standing together on the bridge until both were washed off in the sinking of the vessel. They seemed to be supporting each other," Mr. Tucker said. How a small boy was saved was told yesterday by Miss Margaret Hayes of 384 West Eighty-fourth Street. "A 14-year-old boy got into our boat," said she, and was told to get out because he was a man. Then some one put a woman's hat on his head and shouted, Now you are a woman.' He was saved." She said there was a sort of wooden stopper in the bottom of the boat and that some one knocked it out of its hole. "A sailor had warned every one to be careful not to touch it," added Miss Hayes. "We were almost swamped." The fact that the lifeboats were not provisioned and had no lights was mentioned by some. Mrs. Parrish and her daughter, who are at Mount Sinai Hospital, were in the last lifeboat to leave the wreck. There were only two men on their boat when it was first lowered. The lowering was accomplished with a great deal of difficulty, as the boat swung so far out. It was hard to place the women in it. As the boat was being lowered into the water one man jumped into it, and at the point of a revolver was made to take an oar and help. There were no lights in the boat nor provisions of any kind. There was no hysteria or fainting among the women, and neither Mrs. Parrish nor her daughter saw any quarreling or fighting on the Titanic. The most distressing scenes were those of the wives who did not wish to separate themselves from their husbands. Mr. and Mrs. Straus helped Mrs. Parrish and her daughter into the boat, but Mrs. Straus refused to leave her husband's side, and said good-bye. There was the utmost calm in the process of the embarkation of the women on the lifeboats, and all the men removed their overcoats and coats and placed them around the women and children.

Englehart C. Ostby of the Maiden Lane firm of Ostby & Barton, who, with his wife and daughter, Helen R. Ostby, was saved in a lifeboat when the Titanic sank, left for his home in Providence, R. I., yesterday. He said that Mrs. Ostby's brother, the Rev. Walter Webster, had been a victim of the Bourgoyne disaster, and that his business partner, Nathan Barton, had had just as narrow an escape at the Windsor Hotel fire some years ago as he and his family had experienced on the sea. Mrs. Emily Richards of Cornwall, England, left the Hotel Belmont yesterday to meet friends in Akron, Ohio. With her were her two children, aged 10 and 3 years. She said that she had kissed her brother, George Richards, good-bye on board the Titanic, and that she had not seen him since. She and her children escaped, she said, by being shoved through a porthole into a boat which was waiting directly below. She said this boat had picked up seven men and one woman. The woman was a second class passenger, and became hysterical in the lifeboat because she had lost her two young children. Later, Mrs. Richards said, the woman found her children on the Carpathia, her great relief and joy causing her to faint. Friends of Mrs. Frederick Joel Swift of 171 Arlington Avenue, East New York, helped her celebrate yesterday her rescue from the Titanic. Mrs. Swift helped row a lifeboat in which she and her friend, Dr. Alice Farnham Leader of Manhattan and sixteen other women and four men—three stewards and a sailor—got away from the Titanic. She and other women took the places of the exhausted men and rowed for hours. She praises the conduct of all the men aboard the doomed vessel, and says there was no panic up to the time their boat was launched. Capt. Smith tossed a loaf of bread into their boat and encouraged them with cheerful words as they rowed away. Major Arthur G. Peuchen of Toronto, Canada, floated about on a companion-way door for several minutes before he was picked up by one of the lifeboats. In his boat, also, he said, there were but three men, not enough to man the oars. An officer of the Titanic, who was in the boat, he said, refused to aid.

Steuart Collett, a young theological student from North London, who has come here to attend one of the theological seminaries, visited the Carpathia yesterday to meet his brother, Thomas, from Syracuse, who failed to arrive Thursday night. He said he was saved in Lifeboat 9, and produced the metal figure from the lifeboat as a souvenir. In the boat he said there were twenty-five, mostly women. He said that he was looking after two young women aboard the Titanic, Miss Marian Wright, who was coming to get married to a young man in Portland, Ore., and Miss Kate Buss, both English girls. According to young Collett, on the Sunday night of the collision with the iceberg, he had been assisting the Rev. William Carter, also of London, in a hymn and prayer service on the Titanic. At this service Miss Wright played the piano and sang three solos, which were "There Are Green Hills Far Away," "For Those in Peril at Sea," and "Lead, Kindly Light." After which the Rev. Mr. Carter prayed. There were thirty-five at the service, and after the prayer they sang "Now the Day Is Ended," in the middle of which they felt the crash of the ship against the berg and the service broke up and several scrambled to the decks to find the crew manning the lifeboats. Young Collett said he assisted Miss Wright and Miss Buss into the lifeboat, and after explaining to the crew about to man it that the young women had been intrusted to his care he was allowed to enter the lifeboat with them. When Collett met his brother, after they had embraced, the first thing he did was to take a small Oxford Bible from his pocket and hand it to his brother. It was given to him by his brother when they last parted with the admonition that the next time they met he should hand it back the first thing, to prove that he always carried it with him. Collett saved the Bible, if nothing else, from the Titanic.

Friends of Frank D. Millet, the artist, who was Major Butt's companion on the trip to Rome, eagerly scanned the stories the survivors told when the Carpathia arrived for some reference to Mr. Millet and were disappointed. Mrs. Churchill Candee of Washington recalled yesterday that Mr. Millet had been with her on deck before she was put in a boat. He had brought her some wraps and did all he could to make her comfortable. He was standing on the deck when her boat was lowered away.

When the survivors were taken aboard the Carpathia Capt. Rostron gave up his stateroom to Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Widener, and Mrs. Fair and her child. Mrs. Astor occupied the Captain's berth, Mrs. Widener the lounge, and Mrs. Fair and her son slept on the floor. In the lists of those lost the name of W. F. Host has appeared. It was learned yesterday that it was W. F. Hoyt, curtain importer of 15 West Thirty-fourth Street, who went down with the Titanic. Among the third class passengers who were lost was Zenai Kantor, a young Russian merchant, who was coming to this country with his wife, Miram Kantor. They had $1,000 in money and four trunks. All day yesterday the Russian Consul tried without success to reach David Mourson and Mann Schpiler, residents of this city, who were the only persons in America the destitute young widow knows, with the exception of Benjamin Bernmann of Boston, whose address she does not know. The Consul cabled yesterday to her father, Wulf-Sternin of the East Asiatic Society at Moscow, Russia, but the young woman wishes to remain here if she can reach her friends.

When the revised list of survivors was made up at the White Star Line office yesterday it became known that among those saved from the Titanic were six of eight Chinamen who were among the steerage passengers on the big liner. It seems that they climbed into one of the lifeboats without anybody making objection, despite the fact that many of the women in the steerage of the Titanic went down with the ship. The Chinamen were taken in hand by the immigration authorities and were placed in charge of one of the Inspectors of the Chinese Bureau of the service. They are all said to be in transit, and will be constantly under the eye of immigration officials during their journey across the country. For the present they are guests of the Government on Ellis Island. Scores of relatives of steerage survivors besieged the White Star offices yesterday for information. Mrs. John Toomey of 3,649 Olinville Avenue, The Bronx, asked about Kate and Margaret Murphy, both of whom were on the Titanic. She was told that both had been saved and that they were now in St. Vincent's Hospital recovering from the effects of the exposure in the Titanic lifeboats. Miss Alice Kysten, a Swedish immigrant girl, was another for whom inquiries were made. She, too, is among the saved, and is being cared for in the Swedish Home in this city. Miss Kysten is a native of Kisa, Sweden. Miss Helen Kelly asked for information of Bella Mahon, and was told that Miss Mahon was recovering from the effects of her terrible experience in St. Vincent's Hospital. Other steerage passengers who survived the disaster are all said to be in good hands.

SHIPS, NO MATCH FOR BERGS

Eight-ninths Under Water - Even Small Masses Are Formidable

Sea Captains who warned the Titanic of icebergs off the Newfoundland banks and other mariners who steered safely from them have said they are down unusually early this year. It seems also they are unusually far south. General reports indicate that there is quite a fleet of them. Their early or late movement southward is not so much accounted for by weather conditions either in this latitude or further north as to polar currents, on which they ride. The glaciers move in a thaw from mountains of perpetual snow out to sea. The lower margin of the glacier being exposed breaks up into fragments, though any one of the fragments may be a mass of millions of tons. Blocks of them drift to lower latitudes under the influence of the polar currents, and gradually melt away in the warmer water. This is the natural history of icebergs. It may have been several seasons since the one the Titanic struck started from Greenland. A scientific formula gives the densities of ice and sea water at .92 and 1.03, respectively, and only one-ninth of the iceberg can be above water. An iceberg observed by Sir John Ross and Lieut. Parry was 2½ miles long, 2 1-5 miles broad, and 133 feet high. Assuming the form to have been approximately a cone erected upon an eliptic base, the mass above water would be roughly 150,000,000 tons, giving a total mass of nearly 15,000,000,000 tons, which, according to the records, was by no means of extraordinary dimensions. It is recorded that in the Southern seas fleets of icebergs have been observed as far north as the latitude of Cape Horn, and some of these ice masses have towered to a height of 700 or 800 feet. In the Southern seas the icebergs drift to lower latitudes than in the northern hemisphere, because, it is conjectured, of the comparative scarcity of land in the south polar regions. Icebergs have been observed off the Cape of Good Hope in the thirty-fourth parallel of south latitude, while in the north none has been notice lower than in the thirty-sixth parallel. The limit is generally fixed at 40 degrees north latitude, and 35 degrees south latitude, but the Titanic met disaster at 41 degrees 46 minutes north. Icebergs being only able to drift along with some polar current, those sitting off the coasts of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia come on what is known as the Labrador Current. It was this fleet which the sea Captains dodged before the Titanic came up against it. If the iceberg it struck had a height above the sea of 200 feet, which would not be much, it would have a depth beneath the sea of 1,600 feet and its length or width might have been sufficient to form a big island. The hopelessness of the encounter of the little Titanic is manifest. An idea of the unsinkability of the ship, or the extent of its unsinkability, may be obtained by reckoning the weight and resistance of the ship against the impact of its driving force under a 23-knot speed in collision with even a small iceberg, rising 100 feet above the sea and lying 800 feet below, weighing only a few million tons and traveling in a counter direction to the iron monarch of the ocean.