Mike, Jan and Michael,
My apologies for not responding sooner to the messages about my article, but it's been a busy week for me. Thank you for the kind comments about the piece. Jan has seen through to my larger interest: the question of the third class passenger's access to the lifeboats that night. I think the answer is a complicated one and am writing a book on the subject.
Mike, certainly one of the sticking points with Hart's testimony is that there are no known third class passengers, or for that matter other stewards, who corroborate it. This is in contrast, by the way, to Father thomas Byles, who did apparently help a number of women in the extreme rear of the ship up to the boat deck (and refused a place in a lifeboat hmself to boot). There are several women who specifically attested to Byles' heroism, but none (out of a supposed 55!) who specifically attested to Hart's. In itself this is not determinative, of course, but in conjunction with the other evidence it does strengthen the case.
Michael, I would not say that stewards did not help certain third class women get to the boat deck. This would be true particularly I think from between 12:00 and 12:30AM--after there were instructions for stewards to get passengers out of their quarters, into lifebelts and up to the boat deck--until around 1:00AM or so, when the boat deck was seemingly closed off to third class passengers in the stern. But this generally involves directing individuals; there is no claim (other than Hart's) I know of, of a steward actually bringing someone from the lower decks all the way to the lifeboat into which they were loaded, let alone of bringing two groups, each of about 30 women and children.
There are, as you write, statements attributed (third-hand) to Elin Hakkarainen, a third class passenger, that seem to lend support to Hart's account. Hakkarainen is said to have told of an unnamed steward who directed her along with a 'small group' of women to the boat deck. She is known to have been in Lifeboat 15, and to that extend could be referring to Hart's second group. However, there is no mention by her of Hart by name, nor is any other woman identified as being in the group. Moreover, some of the assertions attributed to Hakkarainen seem to contradict Hart's account. Judith Geller writes of her sitting on the boat deck looking for her husband, but Hart testified that the passengers were immediately loaded into the lifeboat by him. Other statements attributed to Hakkarainen seem quite fanciful, as one would expect from a third-hand account. All in all, it requres a leap of faith to believe that such a vague allusion is sufficient to confirm Hart's testimony. At best, one might say, as you suggest, that perhaps on his way to the boat deck himself, Hart helped a handful of women to get there as well, and that he then blew this up into saving almost one half of all the third class women and children who survived the accident.
DG