It had been learned that some of the passengers, in fact all of the women passengers of the Titanic who were rescued, refer to “Lady Margaret,” as they called Mrs. Brown as the strength of them all.
Officers of the Carpathia report that when they reached the scene of the Titanic’s wreck there were fifty bodies or more floating in the sea. Only one mishap attended the transfer of the rescued from the life-boats. One large collapsible life-boat, in which thirteen persons were seated, turned turtle just as they were about to save it, and all in it were lost.
Not the least among the heroes of the Titanic disaster was Rigel, a big black Newfoundland dog, belonging to the first officer, who went down with the ship. But for Rigel the fourth boat picked up might have been run down by the Carpathia. For three hours he swam in the icy water where the Titanic went down, evidently looking for his master, and was instrumental in guiding the boatload of survivors to the gangway of the Carpathia.
Jonas Briggs, a seaman abroad the Carpathia, now has Rigel and told the story of the dog’s heroism. The Carpathia was moving slowly about, looking for boats, rafts or anything which might be afloat. Exhausted with their efforts, weak from lack of food and exposure to the cutting wind and terror-stricken, the men and women in the fourth boat had drifted under the Carpathia’s starboard bow. They were dangerously close to the steamship, but too weak to shout a warning loud enough to reach the bridge.
The boat might not have been seen were it not for the sharp barking of Rigel, who was swimming ahead of the craft, and valiantly announcing his position. The barks attracted the attention of Captain Rostron; and he went to the starboard end of the bridge to see where they came from and saw the boat. He immediately ordered the engines stopped, and the boat came alongside the starboard gangway.
Care was taken to get Rigel aboard, but he appeared little affected by his long trip through the ice-cold water. He stood by the rail and barked until Captain Rostron called Briggs and had him take the dog below.
Mr. Wallace Bradford, of San Francisco, a passenger aboard the Carpathia, gave the following thrilling account of the rescue of the Titanic’s passengers.
“Since half-past four this morning I have experienced one of those never-to-be-forgotten circumstances that weighs heavy on my soul and which shows most awfully what poor things we mortals are. Long before this reaches you the news will be flashed that the Titanic has gone down and that our steamer, the Carpathia, caught the wireless message when seventy-five miles away, and so far we have picked up twenty boats estimated to contain about 750 people.
“None of us can tell just how many, as they have been hustled to various staterooms and to the dining saloons to be warmed up. I was awakened by unusual noises and imagined that I smelled smoke. I jumped up and looked out of my port-hole, and saw a huge iceberg looming up like a rock off shore. It was not white, and I was positive that it was a rock, and the thought flashed through my mind, how in the world can we be near a rock when we are four days out from New York in a southerly direction and in mid-ocean.
“When I got out on deck the first man I encountered told me that the Titanic had gone down and we were rescuing the passengers. The first two boats from the doomed vessel were in sight making toward us. Neither of them was crowded. This was accounted for later by the fact that it was impossible to get many to leave the steamer, as they would not believe that she was going down. It was a glorious, clear morning and a quiet sea. Off to the starboard was a white area of ice plain, from whose even surface rose mammoth forts, castles and pyramids of solid ice almost as real as though they had been placed there by the hand of man.
“Our steamer was hove to about two and a half miles from the edge of this huge iceberg. The Titanic struck about 11.20 P. M. and did not go down until two o’clock. Many of the passengers were in evening dress when they came aboard our ship, and most of these were in a most bedraggled condition. Near me as I write is a girl about eighteen years old in a fancy dress costume of bright colors, while in another seat near by is a women in a white dress trimmed with lace and covered with jaunty blue flowers.
“As the boats came alongside after the first two all of them contained a very large proportion of women. In fact, one of the boats had women at the oars, one in particular containing, as near as I could estimate, about forty- five women and only about six men. In this boat two women were handling one of the oars. All of the engineers went down with the steamer. Four bodies have been brought aboard. One is that of a fireman, who is said to have been shot by one of the officers because he refused to obey orders. Soon after I got on deck I could, with the aid of my glasses, count seven boats headed our way, and they continued to come up to half past eight o’clock. Some were in sight for a long time and moved very slowly, showing plainly that the oars were being handled by amateurs or by women.
“No baggage of any kind was brought by the survivors. In fact, the only piece of baggage that reached the Carpathia from the Titanic is a small closed trunk about twenty-four inches square, evidently the property of an Irish female immigrant. While some seemed fully dressed, many of the men having their overcoats and the women sealskin and other coats, others came just as they had jumped from their berths, clothed in their pajamas and bath robes.”
Of the survivors in general it may be said that they escaped death and they gained life. Life is probably sweet to them as it is to everyone, but what physical and mental torture has been the price of life to those who were brought back to land on the Carpathia—the hours in life-boats, amid the crashing of ice, the days of anguish that have succeeded, the horrors of body and mind still experienced and never to be entirely absent until death affords them its relief.
The thought of the nation to-day is for the living. They need our sympathy, our consolation more than do the dead, and, perhaps, in the majority of the cases they need our protecting care as well.
CHAPTER X. ON BOARD THE CARPATHIA
IF the scenes in the life-boats were tear-bringing, hardly less so was the arrival of the boats at the Carpathia with their bands of terror-stricken, grief-ridden survivors, many of them too exhausted to know that safety was at hand. Watchers on the Carpathia were moved to tears.
“The first life-boat reached the Carpathia about half-past five o’clock in the morning,” recorded one of the passengers on the Carpathia. “And the last of the sixteen boats was unloaded before nine o’clock. Some of the life- boats were only half filled, the first one having but two men and eleven women, when it had accommodations for at least forty. There were few men in the boats. The women were the gamest lot I have ever seen. Some of the men and women were in evening clothes, and others among those saved had nothing on but night clothes and raincoats.”
After the Carpathia had made certain that there were no more passengers of the Titanic to be picked up, she threaded her way out of the ice fields for fifty miles. It was dangerous work, but it was managed without trouble.
The shrieks and cries of the women and men picked up in life-boats by the Carpathia were horrible. The women were clothed only in night robes and wrappers. The men were in their night garments. One was lifted on board entirely nude. All the passengers who could bear nourishment were taken into the dining rooms and cabins by Captain Rostron and given food and stimulants. Passengers of the Carpathia gave up their berths and staterooms to the survivors.
As soon as they were landed on the Carpathia many of the women became hysterical, but on the whole they behaved splendidly. Men and women appeared to be stunned all day Monday, the full force of the disaster not reaching them until Tuesday night. After being wrapped up in blankets and filled with brandy and hot coffee, the first thoughts were for their husbands and those at home. Most of them imagined that their husbands had been picked up by other vessels, and they began flooding the wireless rooms with messages. It was almost certain that
