g
to launch a few minutes before the ship sank, was washed off by a wave
in its collapsed condition. Such boats contain air compartments in their
bottom, and thus, even although they are not opened, they float like
rafts, and can carry a considerable weight. Some of those who were swept
off the ship by the same wave that took the boat found themselves near
it and climbed on to it. Mr. Lightoller, the Second Officer, had dived
as the ship dived, and been sucked down the steep submerged wall of the
hull against the grating over the blower for the exhaust steam. Far down
under the water he felt the force of an explosion which blew him up to
the surface, where he breathed for a moment, and was then sucked back
by the water washing into the ship as it sank. This time he landed
against the grating over the pipes that furnished the draught for the
funnels, and stuck there. There was another explosion, and again he came
to the surface not many feet from the ship, and found himself near the
collapsible boat, to which he clung. It was quite near him that the huge
funnel fell over into the water and killed many swimmers before his
eyes. He drifted for a time on the collapsible boat, until he was taken
off into one of the lifeboats.

Bride also found himself strangely involved with this boat, which he had
last seen on the deck of the ship. When he was swept off, he found
himself in the horrible position of being trapped under water beneath
this boat. He struggled out and tried to climb on to it, but it took
him a long time; at last, however, he managed to get up on it, and found
five or six other people there. And now and then some other swimmer,
stronger than most, would come up and be helped on board. Some thus
helped died almost immediately; there were four found dead upon this
boat when at last the survivors were rescued.

There was another boat also not far off, a lifeboat, capsized likewise.
Six men managed to scramble on to the keel of this craft; it was almost
all she could carry. Mr. Caldwell, a second-class passenger, who had
been swimming about in the icy water for nearly an hour, with dead
bodies floating all about him, was beginning to despair when he found
himself near a crate to which another man was clinging. "Will it hold
two?" he asked. And the other man, with a rare heroism, said: "Catch
hold and try; we will live or die together." And these two, clinging
precariously to the crate, reached the overturned lifeboa