“Deeply regret advise you TITANIC sank this morning after collision with iceberg, resulting in serious loss of life. Full particulars later.”
-J. Bruce Ismay, Director of the White Star Line
Library of Congress
“Many brave things were done that night but none more brave than by those few men playing minute after minute as the ship settled quietly lower and lower in the sea…the music they played serving alike as their own immortal requiem and their right to be recorded on the rulls of undying fame.”
-Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor
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“The partly filled lifeboat standing by about 100 yards away never came back. Why on Earth they never came back is a mystery. How could any human being fail to heed those cries.”
-Jack B. Thayer, Titanic Survivor
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“The sounds of people drowning are something that I can not describe to you, and neither can anyone else. It’s the most dreadful sound and there is a terrible silence that follows it.”
-Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor
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“I was only seven but I remember thinking that everything in the world was standing still.”
-Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor
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“Striking the water was like a thousand knives being driven into one’s body. The temperature was 28 degrees, four degrees below freezing.”
-Charles Lightoller, Second Officer aboard Titanic
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“Then creeping over the edge of the sea we saw a single light and presently a second below it. It seemed
almost too good to be true and I think everyone’s eyes were filled with tears, men’s as well as women’s. All around us we heard shouts and cheers.”
-Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor
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“To my poor fellow-sufferers: My heart overflows with grief for you all and is laden with sorrow that you are weighed down with this terrible burden that has been thrust upon us. May God be with us and comfort us all.”
-Eleanor Smith, wife of the late Captain Smith
Library of Congress
“Icebergs loomed up and fell astern and we never slackened. It was an anxious time with the Titanic’s fateful experience very close in our minds. There were 700 souls on Carpathia and those lives, as well as the survivors of the Titanic herself, depended on the sudden turn of the wheel.”
-Captain Arthur H. Rostron, Commander of Carpathia
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“When day broke, I saw the ice I had steamed through during the night. I shuddered, and could only think that some other hand than mine was on that helm during the night.”
-Captain Arthur H. Rostron, Commander of Carpathia
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“About this time people began jumping from the stern, my friend Milton Long and myself stood beside each other and jumped on the rail. We did not give each other any messages for back home cause neither thought we would ever get back.”
-Jack B. Thayer, Titanic Survivor
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“At 8:30 all the people were on board. I wanted to hold a service, a short prayer of thankfulness for those rescued and a short burial service for those who were lost. While they were holding the service I maneuvered around the scene of the wreckage. We saw nothing but one body.”
-Captain Arthur H. Rostron, Commander of Carpathia
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“When arranging a tour around the United States I had decided to cross on the Titanic. It was rather a novelty to be on the largest ship yet launched. It was no exaggeration to say that it was quite easy to lose one’s way on such a ship.”
-Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor
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“I enjoyed myself as if I were on a summer palace by the seashore surrounded by every comfort. I was up early before breakfast and met the professional racquet player in a half hour’s warming up preparing for a swim in the six-foot-deep tank of saltwater heated to a refreshing temperature.”
-Colonel Archibald Gracie, Titanic Survivor
Library of Congress
“Each night the sun sank right in our eyes along the sea, making an undulating glittering pathway, a golden track charted on the surface of the ocean which our ship followed unswervingly until the sun dipped below the edge of the horizon, and the pathway ran ahead of us faster than we could steam and slipped over the edge of the skyline – as if the sun had been a golden ball and had wound up its thread of gold too quickly for us to follow.”
-Lawrence Beesley, Titanic Survivor
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“I still think about the ‘might have beens’ about the Titanic, that’s what stirs me more than anything
else. Things that happened that wouldn’t have happened if only one thing had gone better for her. If only, so many if only’s. If only she had enough lifeboats. If only the watertight compartments had been higher. If only she had paid attention to the ice that night. If only the Californian did come. The ‘if only’ kept coming up again and again and that makes the ship more than the experience of studying a disaster. It becomes a haunting experience to me, it’s the haunting experience of ‘if only’.”
-Walter Lord, Titanic historian, and author
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“My mother had a premonition from the very word ‘GO.’ She knew there was something to be afraid of and the only thing that she felt strongly about was that to say a ship was unsinkable was flying in the face of God. Those were her words.”
-Eva Hart, Titanic Survivor
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Sources For Further Reading:
History Collection – 40 Facts about the Titanic They Definitely Didn’t Teach Us in the Movie
BBC Channel – What Was Life Like On Board Titanic?
Dummies – Suites and Cabins for Passengers on the Titanic
Ultimate Titanic – Inside the Titanic
Charles Lightoller, Second Officer of RMS Titanic was Also a Hero on the Beaches of Dunkirk