I Was There… At the Sinking of the Titanic 14/15 April 1912

‘The most graphic and most intensely human document relating to that shocking disaster that has yet been published’ — The Washington Post

‘There came the terrible cry: ‘Lower the boats. Women and children first! Women and children first!’ They struck utter terror into my heart, and now they will ring in my ears until I die. They meant my own safety; but they also meant the greatest loss I have ever suffered – the life of my husband.’

Charlotte Collyer’s experience epitomises the intense drama and tragedy of the Titanic disaster of the night of 14/15 April 1912.

She stayed aboard the doomed liner long enough to experience at first-hand key moments in the sinking and the growing panic that gripped the crew and passengers as they realised many would not survive the night.

Charlotte together with her eight-year old daughter Marjorie, then witnessed from the freezing-cold lifeboat number 14, the horror of the last moments of the Titanic as she broke in two and plunged to the ocean floor leaving hundreds of passengers screaming in the icy waters – including her own husband, Harvey.

Of modest means, she lost everything in the catastrophe and is one of the surprisingly few women to leave a detailed account of that fateful night.