Olaus Jorgensen Abelseth
Norwegian-born livestock farmer Olaus Abelseth had been visiting family in Norway. He was traveling back to his farm in South Dakota via the UK with a party of family and friends. All booked second-class passages on Titanic for the final leg of their journey. As soon as the boat hit the iceberg, the little party assembled on the poop deck. After seeing the women safely into a lifeboat, Abelseth, his cousin, and brother-in-law waited on the deck to see if they too could board a boat.
Suddenly, the men heard a call for sailors to help man one of the remaining, collapsible lifeboats. Not enough experienced crew members were available. Abelseth was on the point of volunteering, as he had six years of experience as a fisherman before leaving Norway. But he was anxious to ensure his relatives would be safe if he left them. “I was standing there, and I asked my brother-in-law if he could swim, and he said no.’ said Abelseth later. ” I asked my cousin if he could swim and he said no. ” So Abelseth elected to stay with them.
The men watched the sea coming closer as the bow of the ship went down. Then there was an explosion. “We could hear the popping and cracking, and the deck raised up and got so steep that the people could not stand on their feet on the deck,” said Abelseth. He and his companions clung to a lifeboat davit near the fourth funnel as they watched people lose their footing and slide down the deck into the water. When the water was just five feet away from them, they all decided to jump.
But, Abelseth lost his family. He remained in the water for twenty minutes before collapsible lifeboat A found him. For a while, he clung to the side of the boat before eventually dragging himself on board. While others rowed, Abelseth tried to revive a man. He managed to keep him alive until the Carpathia was in sight. Once home in South Dakota, Abelseth married, raised a family and continued to farm until his retirement in 1946.