Alfred Albert White

http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/alfred-white....

Mr Alfred Albert White

• Titanic Survivor
• Born: Sunday 25th January 1880 in Southampton, Hampshire, England
• Age: 32 years 2 months and 21 days (Male)
• Last Residence: at 2 Southampton Place, Southampton, Hampshire,England
• Nationality: English
• Marital Status: Married
• Occupation: Greaser
• Engineering crew
• First Embarked: Southampton on Saturday 6th April 1912
• Rescued: (Boat 4)
• Disembarked Carpathia: New York City on Thursday 18th April 1912
• Died: Saturday 7th January 1922 aged 41 years
• Buried: Old Cemetery Southampton Commons, Hampshire, England on Thursday 12th January 1922
• Reference: https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-lifeboat-4/ Life Boat No. 4
• Reference: https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-deckplans/ R.M.S. Titanic deck plans

Mr Alfred White, 32 or 36 (1), signed-on to the Titanic on 6 April 1912. He gave his address as 3 Southampton Place, (Southampton). He had transferred from the Oceanic. As a greaser he received monthly wages of £6 10s.

White was rescued in lifeboat 4 after being pulled from the water.

Shortly after the sinking the Newton Abbot Western Guardian reported:

White, Alfred, one of the Titanic's crew who is reported to be among the survivors, resided at Shaldon before going to Southampton and at the last General Election made himself prominent at the Liberal meeting by asking questions with regard to the Merchant Shipping Act.'

Notes White gave his age as 36. Once source (BT) gives his birthplace as Southampton and birth date as 25 January 1880, another (SC) gives the birthplace as Shaldon, Devon.

Documents Crew Particulars of Engagement

References Newton Abbot Western Guardian

Contributors Steve Coombes, UK Chris Dohany, USA Brian Ticehurst, UK

Alfred White: Death in the Engine Rooms and the Stubborn Persistence of Light

ALFRED WHITE worked closely with an engineer named Archie Frost – who, according to papers of shipbuilder Thomas Andrews’ family, had once been saved from a fatal accident by Mr. Andrews, during Titanic’s construction. Mr. Frost had tried to remain near Andrews ever since, “hoping to one day make him proud of the life he had saved."

White and Frost were part of the team that kept the lights and winches working up to the moment the ship broke in two. The men in the engine rooms never left their posts, even after Thomas Andrews had suggested, early in the crisis, that if they stayed too long, there would be no chance for any of them to reach the lifeboats or even to reach the top decks and have some small possibility of swimming away to floating debris. According to the Andrews family’s oral history (as presented, in part, by A Night to Remember Producer Bill MacQuitty), the men replied, “We’ll stay as long as we can."

Men like Frost and White – and their friends Parr, Sloan, and Bell, appear to have heralded an engineer’s tradition still in effect eighty-nine years later, during the fires of September, 2001. Port Authority police officers Aaron Greenstein and Robert Vargas were helping people to evacuate New York’s World Trade Center complex, on that day; and because escalators and lighting systems continued to work, Vargas and Greenstein would never be able to forget the engineers who chose to stay beneath the fires, in the World Trade Center generator rooms. Officially, the half-mile-wide city within New York City was being abandoned; but Frank DeMartini and his team remained below with their machines, and doubtless saved many lives. Many thousands of lives. Robert Vargas would always remember, with a measure of reverence, how on a day of horrors when monsters took wing, men such as those behind the stubborn persistence of the lights and power grids could also be found, on that same day. He would never forget DeMartini’s team, who perished, every one of them, below ground.

In like manner, none of Titanic’s engineers ever returned home. None of them, according to accepted historical reasoning – until, quite by surprise some forty-four years later, film-maker Bill MacQuitty (who as a child watched the Titanic being built and launched - and who, when he grew up, sank her a second time for his film studio) received a letter from a survivor’s nephew, and made an acquaintance with him:

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November 20, 1956.

Dear Sir: Following the appeal in the Belfast Newsletter I enclose a copy of a letter from the greaser Alfred White to the brother-in-law of Mr. Parr who was lost on the “Titanic." I have no doubt but that partly owing to Mr. Parr’s presence below, the lights were kept going and also the power to enable the boat winches to be available. The lights were actually going as the ship went down. Please pass this information to your brother in case it is of any use to him in the production of his film. Yours Truly, Frank Johnston.

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Until 1956, historians overlooked Alfred White. Indeed, aside from providing some background for brief engine room scenes in the film version of A Night to Remember the White account never made the final cut – primarily because historians universally doubted, until it was discovered in 1985, that the Titanic actually broke in two (as Alfred White insisted she had), and because even if believed, scenes of White’s remarkable escape as the ship’s spine disintegrated beneath him and he rode the fourth smokestack into the sea would have been a prohibitively expensive special effect in 1956. Alfred White’s story was thus filed away and largely forgotten until Walter Lord and I (Pellegrino) began, about 1991, preparing to join the Tulloch expeditions to the Titanic. The following passages, which in our original notes preface, as annotations, the June 21, 1912 Alfred White letter, are (with grammatical alterations and [bracketed definitions] where necessary) notes made during discussions of the White letter, between MacQuitty, Lord, and Pellegrino, in the summer of 1994:

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Alfred White was rescued from Boat A. This was the flooded collapsible lifeboat – “A" [and it] was literally pulled under with the Titanic’s starboard bow, in the last minutes. [Before submergence,] “A" was filled with women [at Murdoch’s back] and all passengers were washed out as the boat was pulled under. It broke loose and floated to the surface. Alfred White, passenger George Rheims, and passenger Rosa Abbott ended up in Boat A. Everyone who was rescued from this boat had been aboard Titanic when she sank, and swam to “A." George Rheims wrote that there were many people in the water, struggling to climb into “A" – and he hinted that they had beat people away with oars. Significantly, White and Abbott suffered severe head injuries – probably from the sinking and final breakup of Titanic, but possibly from initial attempts [by people already inside “A" with Rheims] to keep them away from a flooded, damaged, and threatening-to-sink lifeboat in the immediate vicinity of Titanic’s sinking, and surrounded by hundreds of desperate people in the water. Alfred White suffered a retrograde amnesia and could not remember any events between the fissure that opened beneath his perch, halfway up Titanic’s fourth smokestack, and his first awareness of being in a damaged and water-filled lifeboat.

Walter Lord, on why Alfred White was overlooked as an engine room survivor: White was rescued from a lifeboat known to have been launched from the starboard side forward and because, aboard the rescue ship Carpathia, he was quoted as evidently repeating something he had heard from Steward Ed Brown (also in Boat A), [he must easily have been mistaken as being with Boat A from the moment of its launch near Titanic’s bridge]. White was quoted in the press as having heard Captain Smith say, just before the forward starboard part of the ship dunked under, “Well, boys, I guess it’s every man for himself." Ed Brown testified (at the British Inquiry) that as he was attempting to free Boat A, he noticed Captain Smith standing behind him with an aluminum megaphone at his side: “Well, boys, do your best for the women and children and look out for yourselves," Smith said. This was very much as White had quoted Smith saying – a story that must have been told very early-on by Brown, either in the lifeboat or to other Boat A survivors aboard the Carpathia. (Smith turned away and walked onto the bridge, according to Brown, and “a very few seconds after that," the bridge disappeared under the water.) White’s retelling of Smith’s last moments seems to have been misunderstood, as White was relating a story told to him about Smith (during the last seconds of the starboard bow). In reality, the bridge and the Marconi Shack were already [deep] under water when White [climbed the forward ladder] up the fourth smokestack. Thus, a story told by Alfred White to a writer aboard the Carpathia during the voyage home wrongly described White as a standard “greaser" (not an engine room electrician) and wrongly credited, to White, an eyewitness account on the forward Boat Deck, starboard side, near Collapsible A, near the beginning of the final plunge [about 2:10AM, some ten minutes before the broken stern’s kerosene flagstaff lantern disappeared]. History removed him from the generator room [and from his friends Parr, Sloan, and Frost] and placed him in a part of the ship from which the British and American Inquiry directors already had more than a half dozen eyewitness accounts. Alfred White, in reality, had an amazing below-deck story to tell:

Reproduced below - June 21, 1912 letter from (Electric) “Light Room" Greaser Alfred White to the Reverend M. Langley, brother-in-law of Mr. Parr, the Assistant Manager of the Electrical Department of Harland and Wolff, RMS Titanic [with bracketed annotations by Pellegrino and Lord, 1994]:

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Dear Sir: I am truly sorry that I could not answer your letter before as I have been very ill and have been unable to do anything at all. I knew Mr. Parr very well for the short time we were together. I was with him nearly till the last[;] that was at twenty-to-two [AM] on the 15th of April in the main light room of the “Titanic." [At 1:40AM, Alfred White was with Mr. Parr in the main light switching center, located on the lowest deck, behind the 4th smokestack.] You are asking me if he was on the [upper] deck when the ship went down and I honestly say that he was not and all the rest of the engineers were below. That was the last I saw of them. At one O’clock [1hr, 20 minutes after the impact; however, a discrepancy in Alfred White’s timing suggests that this might actually have occurred a half-hour later, at 1:30 AM], Mr. Parr and Mr. Sloan came below. I was on watch at that time and he said to me, “We are going to start one more engine." [According to this plan, remaining steam pressure stored in the aft boilers could be used to run the turbine for electrical generation; the light room and the Marconi Shack’s Sound Room also had acid batteries for supplemental emergency power.] I generally did that [job; the starting of the generators]. They went to the main switch board to change over.

[NOTE: A portion of this switching system was jetted out through the stern section’s starboard side after its 2.5 mile free-fall to the ocean floor; and pieces of a switching panel were recovered in 1993 – 1994, during the Tulloch era of Titanic exploration.]

We knew that the ship had struck something but took no notice. Work was going on as if nothing had happened. When at twenty-to-two the ship seemed as if she had started [up] again and flung us off our feet – Mr. Sloan and Mr. Parr said to me, “Go up and see how things are going and come and tell us." [The only event matching a lurch forward, as described here, about this time, was the implosion of Boiler Room #4, some 300 feet forward, under the second smokestack. It is possible that, like several fellow crewmen – among them Fireman George Kemish – Alfred White had not been keeping up that day with the periodic fifteen minute and half hour resettings of watches, if indeed he possessed a watch at all. It seems likely that White was running a half hour out-of-synch in his reporting. The boiler room implosion was felt on the top deck, and the critical loss of buoyancy under the second smokestack instantly shifted the Titanic’s center of mass and triggered the final plunge; this was manifested as a tidal wave on the starboard bow – which washed more than twenty women out of Boat A and which was actually body-surfed by Colonel Archibald Gracie. This event, time-stamped by such evidence as the moment Gracie’s properly reset watch stopped, occurred between 2:10 and 2:12AM. The interval between the lurch described by White and the breakaway of the stern section would therefore have been between five and seven minutes – with the journey to the top deck, as ordered by Sloan and Parr, becoming more difficult with each sweep of the second hand, while the slant toward the bow angled down from 10 degrees to 45 degrees.

Telling you the truth, Sir, I had a job to get up the engine room ladder. I had to go up the dummy funnel [the name given to the fourth smokestack, because save for venting generator steam and smoke piped out from coal-fired kitchen stoves, the “dummy funnel" was built merely to give Titanic an added appearance of power and speed]. There was a doorway [and a ledge] there [on the forward side of the dummy funnel, about half way up]. The sight I saw – I can hardly realize it. The second funnel [or smoke stack] was under the water and all the boats had left the ship. I could not get back [to the engine rooms] as the boat was sinking fast. We did not know – they were [,my friends,] all at boat stations [at emergency stations, at the engines]. I am sure that was where Mr. Parr was and so should I have been if they had not sent me up. That is all I can tell you. I must close this letter and I am truly sorry for Mr. Parr’s wife and all his friends. I remain yours truly, Alfred White.

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Through further contacts with the owner of the Alfred White letter, Bill MacQuitty obtained more details – but he took subsequent descriptions – “or likely embellishments" – of the Titanic’s decks yawning open beneath White’s “Cinemascope vantage point," and of the ship itself appearing to break in half below him, “with more than a fair degree of skepticism" in 1956. Survivors Lawrence Beesley and Joseph Boxhall, who were advising MacQuitty on the film, had told him that they saw the Titanic go under gently and in one piece. No one really believed that the ship could have torn apart at the surface until thirty-nine years after the details of White’s story began arriving on MacQuitty’s desk – thirty nine years later, when the first robot reconnaissance of the wreck, more than two miles below the Atlantic, revealed the bow and stern sections to be separated by a debris field more than a third of a mile wide.

The annotations below are from notes, referring specifically to the Alfred White letter, and dating from 1991 and 1994 [bracketed annotations were added later by Pellegrino, based on further discussions after Bill MacQuitty and Pellegrino joined George Tulloch at the Titanic in 1996]:

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C. Pellegrino: The raw footage [from the 1991 Keldysh/MIR Imax expedition] shows the Mir submersible[s] trying to move toward the giant reciprocating engines, through wires, and in the direction of the main light room, the turbine engine, and the generators. [During Titanic Expedition XIII in 2001, the robots Jake and Elwood probed behind the 4 story tall reciprocating engines, to the watertight compartment that once towered like a dam above the tops of the engines. The door at the bottom of the dam was closed, though forensic archaeologists would be unable to tell whether the door had been cranked down before water reached the turbine room, or whether it had slammed down upon impact on the seabed, at upward of 60 miles per hour.] The light room and the electric engines had been lifted completely out of the sea [along with the entire after portion of the keel, between 2:15 and 2:17AM], just before the stern broke away.

Bill MacQuitty: White and Kemish both said they heard what they believed to be the engines and boilers breaking away as the ship stood on end.

C. Pellegrino: Long standing myth had it that these engines and turbines had broken loose and rattled down through (and out through the hull of) the bow. But now [in a forensic archaeological sense] we can see that that’s not what happened at all. The engines [at least where the decks are intact, outside the sites of the break-up], the boilers, and all the heavy pieces of equipment are still there, bolted to the floor, tangled in wires, ladders, and smashed catwalks. Testimony to their solid construction. Alfred White (“electrician" – oiler of electrical equipment – and not a “greaser" proper) was the only known survivor from the generator and engine rooms. He was certain that his companions were still in there.

Walter Lord: Alfred White was also a friend of Archie Frost, who is mentioned in the Andrews family records. A descendant of a friend of Frost has said that he was planning to immigrate to America after the maiden voyage, but this does not seem likely. Frost probably intended to stay with the Titanic. Seventeen-year-old Jack Thayer became friends with Archie Frost, and in his memoir he mentioned Frost’s [then] recent promotion to “Chief Engineer."

Bill MacQuitty: [In any event], Frost has one of my favorite lines from that incredible night – “Okay, pals. It looks like we’re going to be putting in a little overtime on this one." Grim. He said this to Alfred White, about 2:10 AM, right after the ship made its forward lurch. [They must have known that they did not have a chance and would soon die, down there in the engine rooms.] Gallows humor; not unlike the exchanges between Phillips and Bride in the Marconi Shack that night, or their exchanges with other ships [To the Olympic: “Looks like it will be fish for breakfast for us tomorrow – or vice-versa."] Mr. Parr knew that the turbines would continue running for the [remainder] of their mechanical life-spans without [need of] any further oiling from Alfred White, so he sent White topside. And [Mr. White] ended up in the swamped Collapsible A – the only [reasonably intact] boat to rescue a substantial number of swimmers near Titanic, apparently because it was floated off as the ship went down and had no choice but to be right there.

Mr. White was on the fourth smokestack. Then the smokestack fell [and rolled over the break-away stern section’s port side]. Mr. White did not remember the fall, or how he ended up in the water, or how he got picked up by Boat A. From atop the stack[, before the break-away, he saw a man in white clinging to an empty lifeboat davit: saw him still clinging even after the davit glided under and his hat floated off… And he saw a crowd of people running over the top of a huge skylight between two smokestacks. And when the breakup began - ] he saw the ship begin to yawn open – “a clean cut" – just ahead of [White%E2%80%99s] memory loss… [just ahead of the fourth smokestack, this cut through the decks – and then, for a moment all the lights winked out…] The ship [was being] cut in half below him… “as if by a butcher’s blade." The deck opened up. The lights snapped on after this – and he had the lasting impression that the bow had been, in that instant, cut away – cut loose… In the flashes of [electrical] light as the ship broke beneath him – a flashing back to life that told Alfred White his friends below had been pulling the right switches with their last seconds of life – in those flashes of [briefly resurgent] light, Alfred White thought he had seen the ship splitting open near the skylight above the after first class stairway, behind the vents between the [third] and fourth smokestacks… He saw people below – shadows surging and running over the tops of deck structures. Clinging to wires and davits even as they [sank below] the surface. This [flash-view] lasted only seconds – seemed to him, though, that [it lasted] hours, [when he relived it] later. And then the stern tilted aft and even before others in the sea [including crewman Frank Osman] saw the fourth smokestack begin to fall with a man still on it, Alfred White’s memory cut-off [and ceased recording].

Walter Lord: One other Alfred White observation, Bill [MacQuitty] has referred to… He says that his climb from the engine rooms was a difficult job. The family history that comes to us mentions why it was so difficult and why he had to take a hard path – had to go – up through the ladder inside the dummy funnel. The Third Class quarters (mostly women’s steerage, [in that part of the ship,] with the men quartered in the forward bow) were [located] directly above the noisy engines and generators. The gates were locked; the paths to the top, to the Boat Deck, were locked. 

Bill MacQuitty: The slant of the deck made it difficult to stand at that time without holding onto a gate, or rail, or ladder rung. White had mentioned in one or two sentences a group of men huddled [or piled] in a corner, far below the Boat Deck in the Third Class, praying. [The electrician had to climb through the Third Class to get to the top deck.] A closed gate separated him from [the huddled men] and they took no notice of his own cries for help, but just continued praying. So, White returned to the engine room ladder that led up through the fourth smokestack.
Walter Lord: Up to this point, Thomas Andrews appears to have been one of the very few in charge who gave any thought to rescuing people from the Third Class regions of the ship, and the only one who worried about them even before the extent of the damage became clear. According to testimony in the British Inquiry, during the first fifteen to thirty minutes after the [11:40PM] impact (and closer to the first fifteen minutes), Andrews went below decks in the bow and led the people he found there (mostly men but there were reportedly women amongst this group) to the forward well deck and pointed the way to the lifeboats. Most of this first group reached the lifeboats and survived. Everywhere I have searched, I have found the same sorts of accounts about Mr. Andrews’ character, and his genuine caring for the needs of his fellows, above his own.

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After this rescue, Thomas Andrews spent the next two hours making sure lifeboats were safely away, breaking down E-Deck stateroom doors and closing open portholes while passing the broken doors to assistants, so they could be cast overboard as potential rescue floats. He gave everything he could, to sealing potential new leaks (generated by problems with overheating in staterooms – which had caused many passengers to sleep with their portholes open), hoping to keep the Titanic afloat a while longer, so the maximum number of lifeboats could get away.

As Walter Lord has pointed out, many of the Third Class families led by Andrews onto the forward well deck, and up the steel stairway connecting the well deck to First Class and the starboard Boat Deck, survived in some of the first boats launched under William Murdoch’s command.

By 1:30AM, someone had closed the gate at the top of the well deck stairs, so that no more brigades of the sort led by Andrews could get through. About this time, a young Irish steerage passenger named Daniel Buckley found a group of men trying to force their way up the stairs and over the closed gate. Like other gates described by a handful of survivors from the lower decks, this one was guarded and locked. As Walter Lord records the Buckley account, the man ahead of him was beaten and thrown down the stairs by a seaman standing guard: “Furious, the [beaten] passenger jumped to his feet and raced up the steps again." The seaman (and his fellow guards) fled, with the passenger evidently leaping over the barrier, with others following as he “howled what he would do if he caught the sailor." The gate was either temporarily opened by the passengers (and re-locked by crew), or the passengers simply swarmed over it. In any case, Buckley estimated that he and dozens of others escaped into First Class. And in any case, the gate was certainly locked when the sea covered it.

At the British Inquiry, Mr. W.D. Harbinson, who was officially the Court Appointed Guardian

for Third Class, raised no objection whatsoever when it was decided that not a single third Class Survivor should be called as a witness. Then, at the investigation’s conclusion, Harbinson used the in-chambers silence of his own muzzled protectorates as a weapon against their credibility: “No evidence has been given, in the course of this case, that would substantiate a charge that any attempt was made to keep back the third class passengers." He addressed “rumors" of death behind locked gates with a vehement denial: “There is not an atom or a tittle of evidence upon which any such allegation could be based."

And yet, on September 10, 2001, we saw the well-deck gate still securely drawn and locked. Eighty-nine years earlier, deep-diving submersibles were pure fiction, beyond Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. It seemed impossible, in 1912, that such a future had any chance of becoming history. It was possible for Harbinson to believe, “The ship is nearly three miles down. Who will ever see it again? Who will ever know?" And he must have believed with equal ease that in only a few decades, people would forget the Titanic. Harbinson could not have believed or even guessed, with the First World War looming on the horizon, that in another century anyone would care one way or the other what Alfred White or Daniel Buckley had to say about the fate of Third Class, or whether the Titanic’s well deck gate was open or locked. Much as he had addressed the court with his conclusion, he must have satisfied himself with smugness: In another century who will even remember Alfred White’s or Daniel Buckley’s names – or even the name, Titanic?

• Reference: Full text- https://archive.org/details/truthabouttitani00grac/page/n6 "The Truth About the Titanic" by Colonel Archibald Gracie, IV 1913 pp. 181-199 BOAT No. 4.* No man passenger in this boat.

Passengers: Mrs. Astor and maid (Miss Bidois), Miss Bowen, Mrs. Carter and maid (Miss Serepeca), Mrs. Clark, Mrs. Cummings, Miss Eustis, Mrs. Ryerson and children, Miss S. R., Miss E. and Master J. B. and maid (Chandowson), Mrs. Stephenson, Mrs. Thayer and maid, Mrs. Widener and maid.

Women and children: 36. (Br. Rpt.)

Crew: Perkis, Q. M., in charge. Seamen: McCarthy, Hemmings,t Lyons; J Storekeeper Foley and Assistant Storekeeper Prentice ;t Firemen: Smith and Dillon ;t Greasers: Granger and Scott ;t Stewards: Cunningham,! Siebert.J

Bade good-bye to wives and sank with ship: Messrs. Astor, Clark, Cummings, Ryerson, Thayer, Widener and his son Harry.

Stowaway: One Frenchman.

Total: 40. (Br. Rpt.)

British Report (p. 38) says this was the eighth and last lifeboat that left the ship and lowered at 1.55 a. m. t Picked up from sea. % Picked up from sea but died in boat.

INCIDENTS C. H. Lightoller, Second Officer (Am. Inq., p. 8i):

Previous to putting out Engelhardt Boat "D," Lightoller says, referring to boat No. 4: *'We had previously lowered a boat from A Deck, one deck down below. That was through my fault. It was the first boat I had lowered. I was intending to put the passengers in from A Deck. On lowering the boat I found that the windows were closed; so I sent someone down to open the windows and carried on with the other boats, but decided it was not worth while lowering them down — that I could manage just as well from the Boat Deck. When I came forward from the other boats I loaded that boat from A Deck by getting the women out through the windows. My idea in filling the boats there was because there was a wire hawser running along the side of the ship for coaling purposes and it was handy to tie the boat in to hold it so that nobody could drop between the side of the boat and the ship. No. 4 was the fifth boat or the sixth lowered on the port side."

I agree with this statement though other testimony and the British Report decide against us. The diiference may be reconciled by the fact that the loading of this boat began early, but the final lowering was delayed.

W. J. Perkis, Quartermaster (Am. Inq., p. 581):

I lowered No. 4 into the water and left that boat and walked aft; and I came back and a man that was in the boat, one of the seamen, sang out to me: "We need another hand down here," so I slid down the lifeline there from the davit into the boat. I took charge of the boat after I got in, with two sailormen besides myself. There were forty-two, including all hands. We picked up eight people afterwards swimming with lifepreservers when about a ship's length away from the ship. No. 4 was the last big boat on the port side to leave the ship. Two that were picked up died in the boat — a seaman (Lyons) and a steward (Siebert). All the others were passengers. After we picked up the men I could not hear any more cries anywhere. The discipline on board the ship was excellent. Every man knew his station and took it. There was no excitement whatever among the officers or crew, the firemen or stewards. They conducted themselves the same as they would if it were a minor, everyday occurrence.

Senator Perkins (addressing Perkis, Symon and Hogg:)

All three of you seem to be pretty capable young men and have had a great deal of experience at sea, and yet you have never been wrecked ?

Mr. Perkis : Yes, sir.

Senator Perkins: Is there any other one of you who has been In a shipwreck?

Mr. Hogg: I have been in a collision. Senator, but with no loss of life.

Senator Perkins: Unless you have something more to state that you think will throw light on this subject, that will be all, and we thank you for what you have said.

Mr. Hogg: That is all I have to say except this: I think the women ought to have a gold medal on their breasts. God bless them. I will always raise my hat to a woman after what I saw.

Senator Perkins: What countrywomen were they?

Mr. Hogg: They were American women I had in mind. They were all Americans.

Senator Perkins: Did they man the oars? Did they take the oars and pull?

Mr. Hogg: Yes, sir; I took an oar all the time myself and also steered. Then I got one lady to steer; then another to assist me with an oar. She rowed to keep herself warm.

Senator Perkins: One of you stated that his boat picked up eight people, and the other that he did not pick up any. Could you not have picked up just as well as this other man?

Mr. Hogg: I wanted to assist in picking up people, but I had an order from somebody in the boat (No. 7) — I do not know who it was — not to take in any more; that we had done our best.

Senator Perkins : I merely ask the question because of the natural thought that if one boat picked up eight persons the other boat may have been able to do so. — You did not get any orders, Mr. Symon (boat No. i), not to pick up any more people?

Mr. Symon: No, sir; there were no more around about where I was.

Senator Perkins: As I understand, one of the boats had more packed into it than the other. As I understand it, Mr. Symon pulled away from the ship and then when he came back there they picked up all the people that were around?

Mr. Symon made no reply.

S. S. Hemming, A. B. (Am. Inq.) : Everything was black over the starboard side. I could not see any boats. I went over to the port side and saw a boat off the port quarter and I went along the port side and got up the after boat davits and slid down the fall and swam to the boat about 200 yards. When I reached the boat I tried to get hold of the grab-line on the bows. I pulled my head above the gunwale, and

1 said: "Give us a hand, Jack/* Foley was in the boat; I saw him standing up. He said: *'Is that you, Sam?" I said: "Yes" to him and the women and children pulled me in the boat.

After the ship sank we pulled back and picked up seven of the crew including a seaman, Lyons, a fireman, Dillon, and two stewards, Cunningham and Siebert. We made for the light of another lifeboat and kept in company with her. Then day broke and we saw two more lifeboats. We pulled toward them and we all made fast by the painter. Then we helped with boat No. 12 to take off the people on an overturned boat ("B"). From this boat ("B") we took about four or five, and the balance went into the other boat. There were about twenty altogether on this boat ("B").

A. Cunningham, Steward (Am. Inq., p. 794) : I first learned of the very serious character of the collision from my own knowledge when I saw the water on the post-office deck. I waited on the ship until all the boats had gone, and then threw myself into the water. This was about 2 o'clock. I was in the water about half an hour before the ship sank. I swam clear of the ship about three-quarters of a mile. I was afraid of the suction. My mate, Siebert, left the ship with me. I heard a lifeboat and called to it and went toward it. I found Quartermaster Perkis in charge. Hemmings, the sailor, Foley (storekeeper) and a fireman (Dillon) were in this boat. I never saw any male passengers in the boat. We picked up Prentice, assistant storekeeper. I think No. 4 was the nearest to the scene of the accident because it picked up more persons in the water. About 7.30 we got aboard the Carpathia. When we sighted her she might have been four or five miles away.

R. P. Dillon, trimmer (Br. Inq.) : I went down with the ship and sank about two fathoms. Swam about twenty minutes in the water and was picked up by No. 4. About 1,000 others in the water in my estimation. Saw no women. Recovered consciousness and found Sailor Lyons and another lying on top of me dead.

Thomas Granger, greaser (Br. Inq.) : I went to the port side of the Boat Deck aft, climbed down a rope and got into a boat near the ship's side, Nq. 4, which had come back because there were not enough men to pull her. She was full of women and children. F. Scott, greaser, also went down the falls and got into this boat. Perkis, quartermaster, and Hemmlngs then in it. Afterwards picked up Dillon and another man (Prentice) out of the water.

F. Scott, greaser (Br. Inq.) :

We went on deck on starboard side first as she had listed over to the port side, but we saw no boats. When I came up the engineers came up just after me on the Boat Deck. I saw only eight of them out of thirty-six on the deck. Then we went to the port side and saw boats. An officer fired a shot and I heard him say that if any man tried to get in that boat he would shoot him like a dog. At this time all the boats had gone from the starboard side. I saw one of the boats, No. 4, returning to the ship's side and I climbed on the davits and tried to get down the falls but fell in the water and was picked up. It was nearly two o'clock when I got on the davits and down the fall.

Mrs. E. B. Ryerson's affidavit (Am. Inq., p. 1107) :

We were ordered down to A Deck, which was partly enclosed. We saw people getting into boats, but waited our turn. My boy. Jack, was with me. An officer at the window said: "That boy cannot go." My husband said: Of course that boy goes with his mother; he is only thirteen" ; so they let him pass. I turned and kissed my husband and as we left he and the other men I knew, Mr. Thayer, Mr. Widener and others, were standing together very quietly. There were two men and an officer inside and a sailor outside to help us. I fell on top of the women who were already in the boat and scrambled to the bow with my eldest daughter. Miss Bowen and my boy were in the stern, and my second daughter was in the middle of the boat with my maid. Mrs. Thayer, Mrs. Widener, Mrs. Astor and Miss Eustis were the only ones I knew in our boat.

Presently an officer called out from the upper deck: **How many women are there in that boat?" Someone answered: "Twenty-four." "That's enough; lower away."

The ropes seemed to stick at one end. Someone called for a knife, but it was not needed until we got into the water as it was but a short distance; and then I realized for the first time how far the ship had sunk. The deck we left was only about twenty feet from the sea. I could see all the portholes open and the water washing in, and the decks still lighted. Then they called out: "How many seamen have you?" and they answered: "One." "That is not enough," said the officer, "I will send you another'* ; and he sent a sailor down the rope. In a few minutes several other men, not sailors, came down the ropes over the davits and dropped into our boat. The order was given to pull away, and then they rowed off. Someone shouted something about a gangway, and no one seemed to know what to do. Barrels and chairs were being thrown overboard. As the bow of the ship went down the lights went out. The stern stood up for several minutes black against the stars and then the boat plunged downc Then began the cries for help of people drowning all around us, which seemed to go on forever. Someone called out: "Pull for your lives or you will be sucked under,'* and everyone that could rowed like mad. I could see my younger daughter and Mrs. Thayer and Mrs. Astor rowing, but there seemed to be no suction. Then we turned and picked up some of those in the water. Some of the women protested, but others per- sisted, and we dragged in six or seven men. The men rescued were stewards, stokers, sailors, etc., and were so chilled and frozen already that they could hardly move. Two of them died in the stern later and many of them were raving and moaning and delirious most of the time. We had no lights or compass. There were several babies in the boat.

Officer Lowe called out to tie together, and as soon as we could make out the other boats in the dark five were tied together. We could dimly see an overturned boat with about twenty men standing on it, back to back. As the sailors in our boat said we could still carry from eight to ten people, we called for another boat to volunteer and go and rescue them, so we cut loose our painters and between us got all the men off. Then when the sun rose we saw the Carpathia stand- ing up about five miles away, and for the first time saw the icebergs all around us. We got on board about 8 o'clock.

Mrs. Thayer's affidavit:

The after part of the ship then reared in the air, with the stern upwards, until it assumed an almost vertical position. It seemed to remain stationary in this position for many seconds (perhaps twenty), then suddenly dove straight down out of sight. It was 2.20 a. m. when the Titanic disappeared, according to a wrist watch worn by one of the passengers in my boat.

We pulled back to where the vessel had sunk and on our way picked up six men who were swimming — two of whom were drunk and gave us much trouble all the time. The six men we picked up were hauled into the boat by the women. Two of these men died in the boat.

The boat we were in started to take in water; I do not know how. We had to bail. I was standing in ice cold water up to the top of my boots all the time, and rowing continuously for nearly five hours. We took off about fifteen more people who were standing on a capsized boat. In all, our boat had by that time sixty-five or sixty-six people. There was no room to sit down in our boat, so we all stood, except some sitting along the side.

I think the steerage passengers had as good a chance as any of the rest to be saved.

The boat I was in was picked up by the Carpathia at 7 a. m. on Monday, we having rowed three miles to her, as we could not wait for her to come up on account of our boat taking in so much water that we would not have stayed afloat much longer.

I never saw greater courage or efficiency than was displayed by the officers of the ship. They were calm, polite and perfectly splendid. They also worked hard. The bedroom stewards also behaved extremely well.

Mrs. Stephenson's and Miss Eustis's story kindly handed me for publication in my book con- tains the following:

'We were in the companionway of A Deck when order came for women and children to Boat Deck and men to starboard side. Miss Eustis and I took each other's hands, not to be separated in the crowd, and all went on deck, we following close to Mrs. Thayer and her maid and going up narrow iron stairs to the forward Boat Deck which, on the Titanic, was the captain's bridge.

"At the top of the stairs we found Captain Smith looking much worried and anxiously waiting to get down after w^e got up. The ship listed heavily to port just then. As we leaned against the walls of the officers' quarters rockets were being fired over our heads, which was most alarming, as we fully realized if the Titanic had used her wireless to ill effect and was sending rockets it must be serious. Shortly after that the order came from the head dining room steward (Dodd) to go down to A Deck, when Mrs. Thayer remarked,

Tell us where to go and we will follow. You ordered us up here and now you are taking us back,' and he said, "Follow me."

'0n reaching the A Deck we could see, for the decks were lighted by electricity, that a boat was lowered parallel to the windows; these were opened and a steamer chair put under the rail for us to step on. The ship had listed badly by that time and the boat hung far out from the side, so that some of the men said, *No woman could step across that space.' A call was made for a ladder on one of the lower decks, but before it ever got there we were all in the boat. Whether they had drawn the boat over with boathooks nearer the side I do not know, but the space was easily jumped with the help of two men in the boat.

"I remember seeing Colonel Astor, who called 'Good-bye' and said he would follow in another boat, asking the number of our boat, which they said was 'No. 4.' In going through the window I was obliged to throw back the steamer rug, for, with my fur coat and huge cork life-preserver, I was very clumsy. Later we found the stewards or crew had thrown the steamer rugs into the boat, and they did good service. Miss Eustis' around a baby thinly clad, and mine for a poor member of the crew pulled in from the sea.

"Our boat I think took off every woman on the deck at that time and was the last on the port side to be lowered.

"When we reached the sea we found the ship badly listed, her nose well in so that there was water on the D Deck, which we could plainly see as the boat was lighted and the ports on D Deck were square instead of round. No lights could be found in our boat and the men had great difficulty in casting off the blocks as they did not know how they worked. My fear here was great, as she seemed to be going faster and faster and I dreaded lest we should be drawn in before we could cast off.

"When we finally were ready to move the order was called from the deck to go to the stern hatch and take off some men. There was no hatch open and we could see no men, but our crew obeyed orders, much to our alarm, for they were throwing wreckage over and we could hear a cracking noise resembling china breaking. We implored the men to pull away from the ship, but they refused, and we pulled three men into the boat who had dropped off the ship and were swimming toward us. One man was drunk and had a bottle of brandy in his pocket which the quartermaster promptly threw overboard and the drunken man was thrown into the bottom of the boat and a blanket thrown over him. After these three men were hauled in, they told how fast the ship was sinking and we all implored them to pull for our lives to get out from the suction when she should go down. The lights on the ship burned till just before she went. When the call came that she was going I covered my face and heard some one call, 'She's broken/ After what seemed a long time I turned my head only to see the stern almost perpendicular in the air so that the full outline of the blades of the propeller showed above the water. She then gave her final plunge and the air was filled with cries. We rowed back and pulled in five more men from the sea. Their suffering from the icy water was intense and two men who had been pulled into the stern afterwards died, but we kept their bodies with us until we reached the Carpathia, where they were taken aboard and Monday afternoon given a decent burial with three others.

"After rescuing our men we found several lifeboats near us and an order was given to tie together, which we obeyed. It did not seem as if we were together long when one boat said they could rescue more could they get rid of some of the women and children aboard and some of them were put into our boat. Soon after cries of 'Ship ahoy' and a long low moan came to us and an officer in command of one of the boats ordered us to follow him. We felt that we were already too crowded to go, but our men, with quartermaster and boatswain in command, followed the officer and we pulled over to what proved to be an overturned boat crowded with men. We had to approach it very cautiously, fearing our wash would sweep them off. We could take only a few and they had to come very cautiously. The other boat (No. 12) took most of them and we then rowed away."

This rescue, which Mrs. Stephenson so well describes, occurred at dawn. Her story now returns to the prior period of night time.

"The sea was smooth and the jiight brilliant with more stars than I had ever seen.

"Occasionally a green light showed which proved to be on the Emergency boat, and our men all recognized it as such. We all prayed for dawn, and there was no conversation, everyone being so awed by the disaster and bitterly cold.

"With the dawn came the wind, and before long quite a sea was running. Just before daylight on the horizon we saw what we felt sure must be the lights of a ship. The quartermaster was a long time in admitting that we were right, urging that It was the moon, but we insisted and they then said it might be the Carpathia as they had been told before leaving the Titanic that she was coming to us. For a long time after daylight we were in great wreckage from the Titanic, principally steamer chairs and a few white pilasters.

"We felt we could never reach the Carpathia when we found she had stopped, and afterwards when we asked why she didn't come closer we were told that some of the early boats which put off from the starboard side reached her a little after four, while it was after six when we drew under the side of the open hatch.

"It had been a long trying row in the heavy sea and impossible to keep bow on to reach the ship. We stood in great danger of being swamped many times and Captain Rostron, who watched us come up, said he doubted if we could have lived an hour longer in that high sea. Our boat had considerable water in the centre, due to the leakage and also the water brought in by the eight men from their clothing. They had bailed her constantly in order to relieve the weight. Two of the women near us were dying seasick, but the babies slept most of the night in their mothers' arms. The boatswain's chair was slung down the side and there were also rope ladders. Only few, however, of the men were able to go up the ladders. Mail bags were dropped down in which the babies and lttle children were placed and hoisted up. We were told to throw off our life-preservers and then placed in a boatswain's chair and hoisted to the open hatch where ready arms pulled us in; warm blankets waited those in need and brandy was offered to everybody. We were shown at once to the saloon, where hot coffee and sandwiches were being served."

Titanic survivor.

Worked on the Titanc as a Greaser.

When the Titanic sank on April 15th, 1912, he jumped from the sinking liner and was pulled into Lifeboat #4.

Continued to work at sea after surviving the Titanic disaster.

Alfred White died while waiting in line at the City and Midland Bank in Southampton.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: May 28 2019, 16:04:27 UTC
• Reference: FamilySearch Family Tree - SmartCopy: May 28 2019, 16:23:47 UTC