The Story of the Titanic As Told by Its Survivors Quotes

“It is related that on the night of the disaster, right up to the time of the Titanic’s sinking, while the band grouped outside the gymnasium doors played with such supreme courage in face of the water which rose foot by foot before their eyes, the instructor was on duty inside, with passengers on the bicycles and the rowing-machines, still assisting and encouraging to the last. Along with the bandsmen it is fitting that his name, which I do not think has yet been put on record—it is McCawley —should have a place in the honorable list of those who did their duty faithfully to the ship and the line they served.”
― Jack Winocour, The Story of the Titanic As Told by Its Survivors

“Whoever reads the account of the cries that came to us afloat on the sea from those sinking in the ice-cold water must remember that they were addressed to him just as much as to those who heard them, and that the duty of seeing that reforms are carried out devolves on every one who knows that such cries were heard in utter helplessness the night the Titanic sank.”
― Jack Winocour, The Story of the Titanic As Told by Its Survivors

“The Titanic disaster combined the inevitability of a Greek tragedy with the ominous warning of the medieval morality play. it marked the end of an era, and with the Titanic sank the snugness and smugness of the Edwardian illusion that there were no limits to man’s ingenuity and progress. In place of this hard-lost illusion came the harsh recognition of the onset of the age of insecurity, of which the Titanic offered the first forebodings. The Titanic disaster marks a partition in human history, and for this reason, in addition to its essential drama, it will always arouse interest as a tragedy of historic and epic magnitude.”
― Jack Winocour, The Story of the Titanic As Told by Its Survivors

“A larger share of the answer to the question why the Titanic still arouses so much interest, however, may lie in the position that the Titanic held in the world of 1912. The Titanic was not simply a means of conveying people from a place they wished to leave to a place they wanted to be, as is the case with most modern ships. It was a floating symbol of status, almost a materialized article of social faith. Its owners had succeeded admirably in establishing it as a symbol of safety, luxury, exclusiveness, and social privilege. This world was smashed in an evening, indeed, in a matter of hours. The watertight compartments which the owners had puffed so extensively turned out to be worthless. The pride of twentieth-century technology floundered and plunged like the weakest seventeenth-century pink. Millionaires and immigrants from the third-class shared the common experience of death. Death, it was suddenly recognized, could strike down a Rothschild or a Guggenheim as quickly as it could a stoker. All in all, the sinking of the Titanic was a demonstration of man’s fate in microcosm.”
― Jack Winocour, The Story of the Titanic As Told by Its Survivors