The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-04-19

lllilllllIIlIIIIIIiIIIIl lIIIIIIIIIlN
 say that the orchestra played till the very last and that the men went down
 into the sea singing Nearer, My God, to Thee.''
 As soon as the ship sank we started
 to row in good rowing order and in earnest
 All night long we made the two
 sailors and the steward, who were in
 our boat, keep to the oars. When the dawn crept out over the sea the silent, cold light seemed only very little larger than when we started for it. The suffering was terrible. Some of
 the women had scarcely any clothes
 on at all and they suffered greatly with the cold. One woman had white satin slippers and an evening dress on don't know whether she had that
 attire when we struck or whether in
 her excitement she put it on by mis- take
 We were provided with the most miserable little oil lamp I have ever
 seen. I guess it didn't have any
 kerosene in it; for it kept going out matches which the steward happened to bring along. We couldn't have
 seen at all nor signalled had it not
 been for the fact that one woman
 had a cane that had a little electric light in the center of it. As far as I know there was some water in the craft but I will not complain, as the other boats all leaked and the women told us afterwards that the water was up to their knees. And that water was below the freezing point-31 de- grees to be exact!
 During the darkness it was bad
 enough, but the dawn brought a fresh
 danger. It disclosed the fact that we were beset by vast fields of ice
 and icebergs. Mountains of glassy ice
 were everywhere. We were almost tress a stiff breeze was springing up churning the sea into a nasty chop piness. Still we kept on rowing to- ward the light. The men were ex- hausted so we women took hand
 But those oars-they were the heaviest ones I have ever seen. I am good oarswoman but with the aid of an- other women I could scarcely swing
 them. There were three sets Of them
 and they all had to be used to make
 any progress Toward o'clock we gave up hope of ever reaching that light. It had gotten a trifle larger, 1t seemed, but it was absolutely no l nearer and we had no food, very little clothing, no heat and nearly every lifeboat was shipping water to an
 alarming extent.
 And on top of all that those women
 didn't know whether they were ever
 going to see their husbands and loved ones again in this world or not. It
 was terrible. To say they were the
 most wonderful women to keep their
 minds is putting it mildly by far. l And then somebody looked back and
 there was a big searchlight burning on the prov of a great liner That light was the most beautiful sight I
 shall ever see. Distress was turned
 to hope as we put directly about and l
 vessel. At the end of that time we
 were alongside of the Carpathia. 1 It wasn't long before they let down
 a little wooden seat about two feet
 long and foot wide Men on the
 deck held the ends of the cables to
 which this seat attached The life
 boat was bobbing up and down on
 the waves and it was pretty hard to
 stand up in it long enough to climb
 into the seat, but you can wager we
 all did it.
 l As soon as we got on deck we were rolled in blankets and given brandy
 and water. And nothing has ever tasted quite so good as that brandy | and water.
 By 10 o'clock the Carpathia had 1 picked up all the 16 lifeboats contain ing the survivors. In addition to the | people who had gotten into the life-
 boats in the first place, there were l several others. These men had been l They were very weakened from the 1 exposure and four of them died on the | Carpathia.
 These men were w. H. White and | Abraham Horner, passengers, and S. l c. Sievert steward and T. Lyons | stars and stripes and buried off the | Carpathia, Monday, returning to the l sea from which they had been So | vainly rescued
 After We had picked up all of the | lifeboats we steamed again about the scene of the disaster In among the 1 glassy, towering peaks of ice we l threaeded our way, seeing a bit of wreckage here and a baby's bonnet Or a mans glove there. But no more boats and at noon we turned toward l Ambrose lightship-and home! Aboard the Carpathia everything was confusion. Women were torn | with grief, the worst kind of grief, | the grief of uncertainty
 "Oh! If I only knew whether my l husband has been saved or not.",