Norwich bulletin., 1912-04-19

knots an hour. was not slackened. That the number of lifebOats on the Titanic was insufficient to aCcommo- date more than One-third of the pas | sengers to say nothing of the crew. l Most members of the crew say there were sixteen lifeOoats and two col i lapsing boats. None say there were more that 20 boats in all. The TOO who ! escaped filled nose of the sixteen life 1 boats and the one c0liapsible which got away to the limit of their capacity. Warning at 1f.45 p. m.
 "The Titanic was 1789 milse from Queenstown and 1191 miles from New York The night vas starlight and sea. glassy. Lights were out and most of the staterooms were dark.
 Tn the crows nest or lookout, and on the bridge, officers and members of i the crew were at their places, awaiting relief at midnight from their two hour watch.
 At 1L45 came the sudden sound of two guns, a warning of immediate danger.
 The crash against the iceberg, which | had ben sighted only a quarter of a mile away came almost simultaneous s- ly with the click or the levers operated | by those on the bridge which stopped l the engines and closed the Watertight i doors
 Order to Lower Lifeboats,
 Captain Smith was on the bridge a moment later, giving orders for the summOning of all on board and for the | putting on of life preservers and the l lowering ofellfebuats,
 | "The first boats lowered contained more men passengers than the later l ones. as the men were on deck first and no enough women were there to ill ! them,
 l When, a moment later, the rush of | frightened women and crying children 1 to the deck began, enforcement of the l women first rule became rigid. Ofi- 1 cers loading some of the boats drew revOlvers, but in most cases the men l both passengers and crew, behaved in a way that called for no such re- straint.
 Revolver Shots Caused Rumors.
 Revolver shots heard by many per sons shortly before the end of the Ti- tanic caused many rumOrs. One was that Captain Smith shot himself, an othar was that First Officer MurdocB ended his life. Smith. MuTdock and Sixth Officer Moody are known to have been lost. The surviving officers lLightroller, Pitman Bothall and Lowe I-haVe made no statement.
 ] Members of the crew discredit al reports of suicide. and say Capttir Smith remained on the bridge unti just before the ship sank, leaving only after those on the deck had been wash ed away It is also related that, Wher a cook later sought to pull him aboard a 'lifeboat, he exclaimed Let me go, and, jerking away, went down. l Dead Bodies Floating,
 "What became of the men with life ipreservers is d question asked since the disaster by many persons. Int preserVers did their work of supporting
 their wearers in the water until tht ship went down. Many of those draW1 into the vortex, despite the preseryers
 did not come up again. Dead bodies
 foated on the surface as the last boat moved away.
 ITO relate that the ships strine
 band gathered into the saloon, near tn,
 end, and played Nearer, My God, tC Thee sounds like an attempt to giv,
 an added sonbre color to a seen, which was in itself the climax of sol
 emnity. But various passengers ant survivors of the crew agree In the dec
 laratiou that they heard this music T.
 some of the hearers, with husbands among the dying men in the water ant
 at the ships rail, the strain brough
 in through the words
 50, by my woes I'll be
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, ! Nearer to Thee