Titanic Survivors Shared What The Sinking Was Actually Like

We’re all familiar with the heartbreaking romance that Jack and Rose shared in the 1997 blockbuster Titanic. But that was a glorious work of fiction — and the true tale of the most famous shipwreck in history is even more thrilling. There is, after all, still a lot of mystery surrounding what it was actually like to be on board before the ship went down. And these stories from real survivors of the RMS Titanic shed new light on that doomed voyage. 

Panic on board

Many third-class passengers struggled to find their out of their quarters as the Titanic took on water. One survivor was Elin Matilda Hakkarainen, who spoke to Lima News in 1953 about that horrific day. "The Titanic was painted plain white and was easily seen from my lifeboat, as it rose by the stern and slipped with a roar into the sea a little more than a half hour after colliding with the iceberg," she said.

The lifeboats only held so many

"I could see those still on board lined up against the ship's rails on the decks," Hakkarainen added. "There was no panic at that time, and it is true, they were all singing 'Nearer My God to Thee' as they stood there watching the lifeboats move away from the doomed ship and waited for death to overtake them. I can never forget those horrible screams as the ship started to go under."

Heroic ship workers

A single, 53-year-old feminist called Helen Churchill Candee also became one of the ship's survivors. She later said she was amazed at the heroism of many of the ship’s workers in the face of utter disaster. "The action of the men on the Titanic was noble," she wrote in the Washington Herald just one week after the disaster. "They stood back in every instance that I noticed and gave the women and children the first chance to get away safely."

She saw terrible scenes

When speaking to the Washington Times after the tragedy, Churchill Candee said, "As we pushed away from the ship the terrible scenes began. They had opened the steerage doors, and on the deck piled the foreigners in the steerage. Finns, Italians, and others rushed on deck and trampled down the women while on the air we heard the echoes of at least fifty shots. I saw four men fall, killed by the shots from the guns. But who fired the deadly bullets I do not know."