I Survived True Stories: Five Epic Disasters Read online

  stood what was really happening on the Titanic , it

  was the man who knew the ship inside and out.

  And the truth was terrifying. The iceberg’s

  jagged fingers had clawed through the steel hull.

  Water was gushing into the ship’s lower levels.

  “The Titanic will sink,” Andrews said. “We have

  one hour.”

  That, though, was only half of the horrifying

  story. As Jack would soon learn, the Titanic had

  twenty lifeboats. That was more than the law

  required. But it was only enough for about half of

  the passengers and crew. Looking around the

  ship, he knew that many of the passengers were

  doomed. The Titanic was eight hundred miles

  from New York. The temperature of the ocean

  was 28 degrees Fahrenheit. Immersed in water

  that cold, a human body goes into shock almost

  immediately. The heart slows. The skin begins to

  freeze. Death comes within eighty minutes.

  For those who couldn’t escape by lifeboat, there

  was almost no hope of survival.

  LOST IN THE CROWD

  Jack put on a warm wool suit and a sweater. He

  tied on his life preserver and slipped into his

  overcoat, and then he rushed back up to the deck

  with his parents. What they found was confusion

  and noise — people shouting, rockets being fired

  into the air. Jack was with his parents and his

  mother’s maid, Margaret Fleming. A young man

  named Milton Long, whom Jack had befriended

  at dinner earlier that night, soon joined them.

  The group made their way through the ship,

  hoping to find a lifeboat.

  Suddenly they were in the middle of a crowd

  of panicked passengers. To Jack’s horror, he

  and Milton were separated from his parents and

  Margaret. He searched desperately but could not

  find them. He became convinced that they had

  all boarded a lifeboat, leaving him behind. And

  there were no lifeboats left.

  Jack and Milton were on their own.

  Amid the noise and panic, the screams and

  shouts and explosions, Jack and Milton tried to

  bolster each other’s courage as the ship continued

  to sink. “I sincerely pitied myself,” Jack said, “but

  we did not give up hope.”

  They decided that their best chance for survival

  was to wait until the ship was low enough in the

  water that they could jump in without injuring

  themselves. This would be difficult. Already the

  water around the ship was filled with chairs and

  objects that had slid off the sinking ship. If Jack

  hit something on his way down, he could be

  knocked unconscious. But Jack tried not to think

  about that as he waited for the right time.

  That moment came at about 2:15 a.m. The ship

  lurched forward, its bow plunging deeper into the

  black waters of the Atlantic. Jack and Milton

  shook hands and wished each other luck.

  Milton went first, climbing over the railing and

  sliding down the side of the ship. Jack would

  never see him again.

  Jack threw off his overcoat and, he later said,

  “With a push of my arms and hands, [I] jumped

  into the water as far out from the ship as I could. . . .

  Down, down I went, spinning in all directions.”

  He struggled to the surface, gasping from the cold,

  his lungs near bursting. He had been floating for

  only a few minutes when one of the ship’s enormous

  funnels broke free. In a shower of sparks and black

  smoke, it crashed into the water just twenty feet from

  Jack. The suction pulled him under the water once

  again. This time he barely made it back up.

  But as he surfaced, his hand hit something —

  an overturned lifeboat. Four men were balancing

  on its flat bottom. One of them helped Jack up.

  From there, they watched the Titanic in its final

  agonizing moments — the stern rising high into

  the sky, hundreds of people dropping into the

  sea, the lights finally going out.

  Then, in a moment of eerie quiet, the ship

  disappeared into the dark water.

  “A WAILING CHANT”

  The silence was broken by the first frantic cries

  for help. People — hundreds of them — were

  scattered everywhere in the water, kept afloat by

  their life vests. The individual cries became “a

  continuous wailing chant” of terror and pain and

  desperation, Jack said.

  Over the next few minutes, he and the others

  on the lifeboat managed to pull twenty-four men

  out of the water alive. The group was “packed

  like sardines” on the boat, their arms and legs

  tangled together. Freezing waves washed over them.

  Nobody moved for fear of slipping into the water.

  A photographer on the

  Carpathia

  captures

  Titanic

  survivors

  huddled on a lifeboat.

  Little by little, the terrible wailing faded.

  Floating in the silent blackness, numb with

  cold and terror, Jack waited for death.

  But then came a light — at 4:10 a.m., a ship

  called the Carpathia broke through the darkness.

  Its captain had received the Titanic’s distress call

  and rushed his ship through the icy waters.

  Among the first faces Jack saw when he boarded

  the rescue ship was his mother’s. Margaret was

  also aboard.

  The joy of their reunion was overwhelming —

  but so was the shock when Jack’s mother asked a

  simple question.

  “Where is your father?”

  As it turned out, Mr. Thayer had not boarded a

  lifeboat.

  “Of course, I should have known that he would

  never have left without me,” Jack later said.

  The Carpathia , carrying the Titanic’s 705 grief-

  stricken survivors, docked in New York City on

  April 18, and was greeted by a crowd of thirty

  thousand people. For months after, the Titanic

  was front-page news. People around the world

  demanded answers. How could the mighty

  Titanic be lost? Who was to blame? There was no

  doubt that Titanic ’s crew knew that there were

  icebergs looming in the North Atlantic. Indeed,

  they had received several urgent warnings from

  ships traveling the same route. And yet the ship

  had been traveling at high speeds. Many wondered

  if the ship’s captain, Edward Smith, had felt

  A newsboy,

  Ned Parfett,

  holds a paper

  announcing

  the sinking

  of the

  Titanic

  .

  pressure to make the voyage as speedy as possible,

  to showcase Titanic’s state-of-the-art engines. But

  Captain Smith went down with his ship, as

  did Mr. Andrews and other senior members of

  the crew.

  And so in the end, many directed their fury

  toward a man named Bruce Ismay. He was the

  president of the company that owned the Titanic,

  the White St
ar Line. Ismay had been on the ship’s

  doomed voyage. Unlike Titanic’s captain and Mr.

  Andrews, Mr. Ismay had escaped on a lifeboat.

  Ismay was accused of

  ordering Captain Smith

  to ignore the iceberg

  risks. Some reports even

  suggested that he had

  pushed aside women

  and children to take a

  precious spot on a

  lifeboat. There was

  no proof of any of this.

  Edward J. Smith,

  captain of the

  Titanic

  Ismay denied that he’d pressured Captain Smith

  to ignore the iceberg warnings. And those who

  knew Captain Smith doubted that the respected

  seaman would knowingly endanger his ship and

  passengers. Ismay insisted that the lifeboat he’d

  boarded had been half-empty, and witnesses

  supported this. In fact, many saw Ismay helping

  women and children onto the boats, and assisting

  the crew in lowering the boats into the sea. The

  British government cleared Ismay of any wrong-

  doing. But his reputation never recovered, and he

  was forever branded a coward.

  After docking in New York, Jack and his

  mother returned to Philadelphia. He wrote a long

  letter to the parents of Milton Long, describing

  their friendship and their last moments together.

  Jack went on to marry, have two sons, and attain a

  powerful position at the University of Pennsylvania.

  Years later he wrote his own account of the

  sinking of the Titanic, dedicated to his father’s

  memory. In it he described his last glimpse of the

  ship, breaking in two as it sank. Most experts

  disputed this. But many decades later, when the

  wreckage of the Titanic was finally located, Jack’s

  account was proven correct.

  Today, more than one hundred years after the

  ship’s sinking, stories of its survivors still fascinate

  and inspire. In this way the mighty ship sails on.

  The

  New York Times

  describes the

  Titanic

  disaster

  and provides a partial list of those saved.

  Said to be Jack Thayer’s description of the

  Titanic

  ’s

  sinking, sketched by Thayer and filled in later by

  L. P. Skidmore

  11:45 p.m. Strikes starboard bow

  12:05 a.m. Settles by head

  12:45 a.m. Boats ordered out

  1:40 a.m. Settles to forward stack

  Breaks between stacks

  1:50 A.M. Forward end floats, then sinks

  2:00 A.M. Stern section pivots amidships and

  swings over spot where forward section sank

  Last position in which

  Titanic

  stayed, five minutes

  before the final plunge

  L. P. Skidmore, S.S.

  Carpathia

  , April 15, 1912

  THE

  TITANIC

  FILES

  There are more books written about the

  Titanic than any other disaster in history, and

  I read dozens of them while researching my

  book, I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic,

  1912. That’s when I first discovered the story

  of Jack Thayer — plus many other amazing

  facts and details about the ship and its tragic

  voyage. Turn the page to find out more.

  Saved

  from the

  wreckage!

  The

  Titanic

  used 800

  tons a

  day of

  this

  !

  The ship cost $7.5 million to build. That equals

  $185 million in today’s dollars, about the same

  price as building one Boeing 767 jet.

  Titanic’s top speed was 23 knots, which is 26

  miles per hour. Today’s cruise ships can move

  much faster, but most actually maintain speeds that are slower

  than the Titanic’s, about 22 knots. The reason? Moving faster

  burns more fuel, which costs more money.

  Titanic was steam

  powered. Steam was

  created by burning massive amounts

  of coal. It took two hundred

  men — stokers, firemen, and

  trimmers — to tend to the ship’s

  162 coal furnaces. The ship

  burned eight hundred tons of coal each day.

  There were 1,317 passengers on

  the ship, only about half as

  many as there was room for. A strike of coal workers in

  England had caused many people to postpone their travel plans.

  The strike had ended only a few days before Titanic sailed.

  COST

  SPEED

  POWER

  PASSENGERS

  SOME SURPRISING

  TITANIC

  FACTS

  Coal

  The most expensive

  ticket was about

  $4,500, equivalent to

  about $103,000 in

  today’s dollars. The

  cheapest tickets cost

  about $40, about $172

  today — the same as it might cost

  to fly today from New York to Miami.

  The ship’s cargo included huge amounts of food

  for the passengers and crew — 40 tons of

  potatoes, 40,000 eggs, 6,000 apples, and 86,000 pounds of meat.

  Eight hundred eighty-five people made up

  Titanic’s crew. Sixty-six worked on the decks,

  325 were in the engine room, and the rest were maids,

  stewards, cooks, waiters, and others who tended to the

  passengers.

  The last letter written on

  Titanic recently sold for

  more than $200,000. It was written by survivors Esther Hart

  and her seven-year-old daughter Eva eight hours before the

  ship hit the iceberg. Mrs. Hart wrote that they were enjoying

  “a wonderful journey.”

  CREW

  FOOD

  LAST LETTER

  A

  first-class ticket

  from the

  Titanic

  TICKET PRICE

  Dr. Robert Ballard

  FINDING

  THE

  TITANIC

  The

  Titanic

  was

  lost in the North

  Atlantic, eight

  hundred miles from

  land. For decades

  people searched for

  the wreckage. Finally,

  on September 2, 1985,

  the

  Titanic

  was

  found by Dr. Robert

  Ballard.

  TREASURE TROVE

  OR GRAVEYARD?

  Dr. Ballard and others believe that the

  Titanic

  should not have been touched — that it is a

  graveyard. Others disagree. They say that

  bacteria and salt water will slowly eat

  away at what remains and that

  artifacts should be collected and

  studied. There have been eight

  expeditions to the

  Titanic

  to collect

  artifacts. RMS TITANIC Inc (RMTI)

  has recovered more than 5,500 artifacts,

  including some on the

  next pages.

  The bow of the

  Titanic

  , on the

  ocean floor

  Conti
nued

  >

  A pair of binoculars

  TITANIC

  ’S PRICELESS

  TREASURES

  A bronze

  ship’s bell

  Some of the

  thousands

  of dishes

  salvaged

  from the

  wreck were

  not even

  chipped.

  Few people wore wristwatches.

  Men carried pocket watches,

  like this one.

  Lockets were extremely

  fashionable. Somehow,

  the photograph inside

  was not destroyed.

  In 1912, glasses were

  called

  spectacles

  .

  YES OR

  NO?

  Should

  Titanic

  ’s

  artifacts be

  salvaged, or

  left alone?

  #3

  THE GREAT

  BOSTON MOLASSES

  FLOOD, 1919

  It was a sunny January day in 1919, and eight-

  year-old Anthony di Stasio hurried along a

  crowded sidewalk in Boston’s North End. As

  usual, the streets were packed with honking

  motorcars and clattering horse-drawn wagons.

  After weeks of freezing cold, the day was warm

  and bright. Anthony’s tattered wool coat flapped

  open as he rushed toward the tiny apartment

  where he lived with his parents and four sisters.

  Like most of the people who lived in this poor

  Boston neighborhood, Anthony’s family had come

  from southern Italy, eager to start a new and

  happier life in America. What they found instead

  was hardship. Jobs were scarce. Anthony’s father

  worked long, bone-crushing hours on Boston’s

  waterfront. Anthony’s mother struggled to make

  their dingy apartment into a decent home — to

  chase away the cockroaches, to cover up the stink

  of garbage and horse manure that wafted up from

  the streets. Life had always been tough for the

  people of the North End. But the past two years

  had been especially challenging for them — and

  most Americans.

  World War I had raged in Europe since 1914.

  More than four million American soldiers had

  joined the fight to defeat Germany and its allies.

  For four years the fighting had dragged on.