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Message |
    
Tim Brandsoy
Member
Username: timb
Post Number: 282
Registered: 2-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 - 10:20 pm: | 
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I'm intrigued by Thayer's accounts. He details the movements (accurately??) but I've never seen it depicted in the movies accurately.
"He returned to the stateroom (C-68) to get his parents They went to the starboard side of A deck where John B. Thayer senior thought he saw small pieces of ice floating around, but Jack saw nothing. As they crossed to the port side they noticed that the ship had developed a list to port."
"Eventually, however, they could wait no more and after saying goodbye to each other they jumped up on the rail. Long put his legs over and held on a minute and said 'You are coming, boy, aren't you?' Jack replied 'Go ahead, I'll be with you in a minute.' Long then slid down the side of the ship. Jack never saw him again."
I assume he's on the starboard/high side, before the break-up that he later witnessed, but where did they jump? And why did Thayer wait?
(Is there another account where someone skittered down the side? Or was I just imagining that?) They had some trouble lowering the starboard lifeboats earlier, so the list must have been pretty extreme by this point.
'Her deck was turned slightly toward us. We could see groups of the almost fifteen hundred people aboard, clinging in clusters or bunches, like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or singly, as the great part of the ship, two hundred and fifty feet of it, rose into the sky, till it reached a sixty-five or seventy degree angle. Here it seemed to pause, and just hung, for what felt like minutes. Gradually she turned her deck away from us, as though to hide from our sight the awful spectacle."
To this day he is the most accurate personal account. Thayer seemed to get so much of it right, he observed so well....I sometimes wonder if that led to his suicide in the 40s. Did he see and remembered too much? |
Jeff Brebner
Member
Username: wheeds
Post Number: 38
Registered: 4-2008
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 - 11:20 pm: |
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He got so much right, but it always baffled me why his drawing showed the very bow re-surfacing before sinking. I don't see how it could have. |
Michael H. Standart
Moderator
Username: mstandart
Post Number: 25030
Registered: 12-2000
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 4:55 am: |
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>>but it always baffled me why his drawing showed the very bow re-surfacing before sinking. I don't see how it could have.<<
The gentleman who actually did the drawings...a man named Skidmore...probably indulged in a measure of artistic license. As far as I know, the bow popping up was a claim which Jack Theyer never made. It's certainly not in his book.
Cordially,
Michael H. Standart
Equal Opportunity Curmudgeon
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Jeff Brebner
Member
Username: wheeds
Post Number: 39
Registered: 4-2008
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 5:12 pm: |
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That would make more sense. I just don't see any way the flooded bow could have popped back up. Overall Thayer proved a remarkably accurate observer under extreme duress. |
