dwarfed events that in the ordinary way would seem to be full of
imminent peril. It is easy to imagine it,--a voyage of four days on a
calm sea, without a single untoward incident; the presumption, perhaps
already mentally half realized, that we should be ashore in
forty-eight hours and so complete a splendid voyage,--and then to feel
the engine stop, to be summoned on deck with little time to dress, to
tie on a lifebelt, to see rockets shooting aloft in call for help, to
be told to get into a lifeboat,--after all these things, it did not
seem much to feel the boat sinking down to the sea: it was the natural
sequence of previous events, and we had learned in the last hour to
take things just as they came. At the same time, if any one should
wonder what the sensation is like, it is quite easy to measure
seventy-five feet from the windows of a tall house or a block of
flats, look down to the ground and fancy himself with some sixty other
people crowded into a boat so tightly that he could not sit down or
move about, and then picture the boat sinking down in a continuous
series of jerks, as the sailors pay out the ropes through cleats
above. There are more pleasant sensations than this! How thankful we
were that the sea was calm and the Titanic lay so steadily and quietly
as we dropped down her side. We were spared the bumping and grinding
against the side which so often accompanies the launching of boats: I
do not remember that we even had to fend off our boat while we were
trying to get free.
As we went down, one of the crew shouted, "We are just over the
condenser exhaust: we don't want to stay in that long or we shall be
swamped; feel down on the floor and be ready to pull up the pin which
lets the ropes free as soon as we are afloat." I had often looked over
the side and noticed this stream of water coming out of the side of
the Titanic just above the water-line: in fact so large was the volume
of water that as we ploughed along and met the waves coming towards
us, this stream would cause a splash that sent spray flying. We felt,
as well as we could in the crowd of people, on the floor, along the
sides, with no idea where the pin could be found,--and none of the
crew knew where it was, only of its existence somewhere,--but we never
found it. And all the time we got closer to the sea and the exhaust
roared nearer and nearer--until finally we floated with the ropes
still holding us from above, the exhaust washing us away and the force
of the tide driving us back against the side,--the latter not of much
account in influencing the direction, however. Thinking over what
followed, I imagine we must have touched the water with the condenser
stream at our bows, and not in the middle as I thought at one time: at
any rate, the resultant of these three forces was that we were carried
parallel to the ship, directly under the place where boat 15 would
drop from her davits into the sea. Looking up we saw her already
coming down rapidly from B deck: she must have filled almost
immediately after ours. We shouted up, "Stop lowering 14," [Footnote:
In an account which appeared in the newspapers of April 19 I have
described this boat as 14, not knowing they were numbered
alternately.] and the crew and passengers in the boat above, hearing
us shout and seeing our position immediately below them, shouted the
same to the sailors on the boat deck; but apparently they did not
hear, for she dropped down foot by foot,--twenty feet, fifteen,
ten,--and a stoker and I in the bows reached up and touched her bottom
swinging above our heads, trying to push away our boat from under her.
It seemed now as if nothing could prevent her dropping on us, but at
this moment another stoker sprang with his knife to the ropes that
still held us and I heard him shout, "One! Two!" as he cut them
through. The next moment we had swung away from underneath 15, and