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in third class there are only two baths for 710 passengers,
‘I expect the iceberg has scratched off some of her new paint, and the captain doesn’t like to go on until she is painted up again!’
‘If the Titanic sinks, will they transfer the luggage?’
‘Imagine, wouldn’t something like this happen when his nanny isn’t with us?’
Peuchen is impressed by how obedient the men are, putting up no resistance. Helen Candee can see the anguish on their faces ‘though their bravery was supreme’.
They are watching third-class passengers emerge, many of them carrying bags and suitcases. A man nearby makes a mocking remark about how protective they are being of their property. Kate snaps back, ‘Those trunks may contain all they have in the world!’
To avoid creating panic on the boat deck, they keep the third-class women and children below until 12.30am.
There are a number of other factors which hold back the third-class passengers: some obediently wait to be told what to do out of social deference
there are no signs in the lower decks showing passengers how to get to the upper decks; many of the third-class passengers are migrants who don’t speak English; some routes are blocked by watertight doors closed by the crew trying to contain the flooding.
‘Why should we lose all of our lives in a useless attempt to save others from the ship?’
‘It’s 31 lives against yours. You can’t come aboard – there’s no room.’
About 1600 people went down with the Titanic, but only 18 were pulled out of the water.
second- and third-class corpses were sewn into canvas bags; first-class corpses put in coffins.
62% of first-class passengers survived; 41% of second-class; 25% of third-class.
hired as a special advisor for the 1958 film A Night to Remember, and in an unthinking act of cruelty, was put into a caravan at Pinewood Studios and asked to record what the cries of the drowning sounded like.
