1st Class

Miss Marie Grice Young, 36, from New York, NY boarded the Titanic at
Cherbourg. She was returning to Washington DC where she had once lived.

She was an accomplished musician and was once employed as music instructor to
Miss Ethel Roosevelt, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt.

During the voyage Miss Young made the acquaintence of carpenter/joiner John
Hutchinson. Miss Young was returning to America with some expensive poultry. Each
day Hutchinson took her below to check on the chickens. As a reward for his kindness
Miss Young tipped him with some gold coins, Hutchinson was very grateful, and
exclaimed, ''It's such good luck to receive gold on a first voyage''.

Miss Young was rescued in lifeboat 8.

Following the disaster rumours circulated that Ms Young had conversed with Major
Archibald Butt during the sinking. She wrote to the president to set the record clear.

Ms Young began to write a narrative of the sinking from the Carpathia's library on
April 18, 1912 which was published in the April 21 issue of the Washington Post. An
updated version was finally run in the Oct. 1912 issue of the National Magazine.

Lest We Forget

by Marie G. Young - A Survivor of the
Titanic

Miss Marie G. Young, Former Music Teacher
at the White House, Rescued From the
Titanic, Describes the Sufferings of Some
of the Survivors

Six months have elapsed since the Titanic
-- the most splendid of all passenger
ships sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, in
sight of fifteen boatloads of survivors,
numbering less than a third of the
passengers and crew who had embarked at
her three ports of call.

Perhaps no two survivors would answer
alike the question. "What is your most
poignant memory of the fatal voyage, and
of its fifth and final night?"

A panorama of incidents passes before the
mind -- trivial events ordinarily, but
rendered tragic because of the death of
many who sailed on the Titanic, but who
never heard the eager roll call of the
Carpathia. What became of the merry group
of boys who were beside me, in the
telegraph office at the dock at Cherbourg,
hurrying off last messages to friends on
shore?

Who can forget the cruel change in the
faces of those who waved gay farewells as
the tender left the French harbor, and
'ere they again sighted land, had yielded
up all that made life beautiful to them?

Figures, faces and even varying facial
expressions are remembered of those, who
though strangers, were fellow passengers,
beloved of many ashore to whom even our
fading impressions and slight knowledge
would be a consolation, should the paths
of our lives ever cross.

In my thoughts I often lie again in my
steamer chair, and watch the passing
throng on the Titanic's promenade deck.
After the usual excitement of buying lace
from the Irish girls who came aboard at
Queenstown, was over, the routine of life
on deck was established. Two famous men
passed many times every day in a vigorous
constitutional, one talking always -- as
rapidly as he walked -- the other a good
and smiling listener.

Babies and nurses, dear old couples,
solitary men, passed sunlit hours of those
spring days on deck, while the Titanic
swept on to the scene of the disaster;
approaching what might not have been so
much a sinister fate awaiting her, as it
was an opportunity for her commander and
the President of the White Star Line to
prove true steamanship and their great
discretion in the presence of reported and
recognized peril.

It so happened that I took an unusual
interest in some of the men below decks,
for I had talked often with the carpenter
and the printer, in having extra crates
and labels made for the fancy French
poultry we were bringing home, and I saw a
little of the ship's life, in my daily
visits to the gaily crowing roosters, and
to the hens, who laid eggs busily,
undismayed by the novelty and commotion of
their surroundings.

I had seen the cooks before their great
cauldrons of porcelain, and the bakers
turning out the huge loaves of bread, a
hamper of which was later brought on deck,
to supply the life boats.

In accepting some gold coins, the ship's
carpenter said, "It is such a good luck to
recieve gold on a first voyage!" Yet he
was the first of the Titanic's martyrs,
who, in sounding the ship just after the
iceberg was struck, sank and was lost in
the inward rushing sea that engulfed him."

Who can imagine the earthly purgatory of
anguish endured by Captain Smith, during
the pitifully short time vouchsafed him to
prepare for death -- whose claim upon him,
he, more than all others, must
acknowledge?

Who exchanged a last word with any of the
joyous bridal couples, to whom each day at
sea had brought a deeper glow of
happiness? Expectant, they stood at the
threshold of earthly life, yet they passed
together that night through the gates of
Eternity, to a fairer day than that which
dawned for those left to face an unknown
fate.

What scenes were enacted to immortalize
forever the engineers who kept the ship
lighted, and afloat, giving a last chance
of escape to passengers and even officers?
How can we ever realize what it meant to
find courage to reject the thought of
beloved dependents on shore, and to face
death in stoke-hold and engine room?

The "greater love" that lays down life
that another may live burned in many a
heart in the Titanic's list of dead, and
those who survive owe them a debt, only to
be acknowledged and wiped out by a
flawless record of lives nobly lived,
because so cruelly bought.

Vivid and endless are the impressions of
that great night. They remain as closely
folded in the brain as the chock of the
discharge of guns, the cries of the
drowning and the sobs of the broken
hearted.

Clearest of all is the remembrance of the
eighteen self-controlled women in our boat
(Number 8), four of whom had parted,
bitterly protesting, from their husbands.

In those hours spent face to face with the
solemn thoughts of trials still to
undergo, before possible rescue, it was
inspring to see that these Twentieth
Century women were, in mentality and
physique, worthy descendants of their
ancestors, who had faced other dire perils
in Colonial and Revolutionary periods.
Women rowed all night, others in the bow
waved the lantern light in air as a signal
to the ship, toward whose light our boat
crept slowly till dawn, with only a young
girl at the tiller to keep the boat headed
straight in spite of the jerky, uneven
rowing.

Treasured above all else was the electric
light in the handle of a cane belonging to
Mrs. J. Stuart White, who waved it
regularly while counting strokes for the
haphazard crew.

The assurance that it's light would burn
continuously for thirty hours helped
comfort many minds, aghast at the
possibility of another night to be endured
before rescue. We had no knowledge of
wireless response to the Titanic's frantic
calls for help, nor of the glorious rush
through the sea of ice which was bringing
near the fearless little Carpathia. If we,
the survivors, spent a night of exhausting
struggle, of emotion, and of prayer, what
of the Captain, the crew, and the
awakening passengers of the rescue ship?

Nevertheless, we turn to a brighter side
of the picture, for hope must have filled
all the hearts of those who turned back so
promptly at the first distress signal. The
United States Senate investigation brought
to the world's notice a document
containing Captain Rostron's written
orders to his officers and crew, a copy of
which should be framed on every ship, as a
model of perfect organization in time of
stress. No detail of careful preparation
was omitted. All the reading world knows
now, that, after answering the Titanic's
wireless appeal, Captain Rostron put an
additional officer on the Carpathia's
bridge, doubled his lookouts in the crow's
nest, and called out an extra fire room
force.

But of his final and complete
preparations, enough cannot be said. His
three physicians -- English, Italian and
Hungarian -- were detailed to look after
the different classes of rescued
passengers; his lifeboats were supplied
with food, medicine and blankets, and they
were ready to lower as soon as he should
approach the wreck, which alas! he was
indeed never to see.

He ordered his own crew to be fed and
fortified for the coming hours of strain,
and they promised their brave commander to
show the world of what stuff the British
seaman is made.

His own steerage passengers were placed in
closer quarters, and their natural
excitement quieted by a few judicious
words. And these given instances of
careful forethought are but a few,
remembered at random, and only a
suggestion of the great work accomplished
by Captain Rostron in the cause of
humanity.

When the Carpathia reached the scene of
the disaster, finding fifteen boats, some
only half filled, the survivors of the
tragedy that had been enacted between the
setting and the rising sun were lifted on
board, with pity and tenderness almost
divine in their gentleness.

The details of the shipwreck, it's perils,
horrors and racking uncertainties, have
filled the magazines and newspapers. but
of the wonderful, unique days that
followed, little has been said.

Many of the survivors were dazed by the
paralyzing events of the night, the shock
of collision, and the terror of the
realization that their only chance for
life was in escaping in the lifeboats. The
perilous descent into these boats, their
ignorant handling, the immediate sinking
of the Titanic, the heartrending cries of
the dying, the night spent adrift on the
bitterly cold sea, and finally the
hazardous ascent in the boatswain's seat
from the lifeboat to the Carpathia's
gangway, were all experiences to haunt and
tax the most stoical.

For those who had lost members of their
families, friends or servants, it was a
bitter moment when, at ten o'clock on
Monday morning, April 15, Captain Rostron
steamed away from the scene of the wreck,
leaving two tardy and cruelly negligent
steamers to watch the scene of the
greatest maritime tragedy.

The day was cold, but brilliant. All
morning the Carpathia passed a field of
ice, forty miles in length, and extending
northward as far as the eye could see.

After food and blankets had been
distributed amongst the survivors, their
names were carefully noted; then the weary
task began, lasting for days, of sending
them by wireless to an awestricken,
listening, longing world. The Carpathia's
own exhausted operator was relieved by the
equally worn-out second operator (Harold
Bride) from the Titanic, who had been
lifted more dead than alive from the
ocean.

Meanwhile, the Carpathia's sympathetic
passengers were sharing rooms and clothing
with those rescued; every possible berth
was assigned, and all available space in
the library and dining saloon used for
sleeping quarters. Mattresses were laid on
the dining tables, and at night, old and
young "made up" beds on the library
floors, a most informal proceeding
consisting of spreading a folded steamer
rug on the florr, with a second rug to
sleep under, and, perhaps, if one had
luck, a sofa cushion for a pillow.

Such beds were smilingly and
uncomplainingly occupied. One bright old
lady, who slept thus beside her sister's
bed on a bench, called it the "lower berth
in the Carpathia Pullman!"

No such makeshift, however, for the
President of the White Star Line -- hidden
in the English physician's comfortable
room, he voyaged to New York, as
heedlessly indifferent to the discomfort
of his Company's passengers as he had been
to the deadly peril that had menaced them.
Richer, far, in experience, were those who
mingled freely in that ship's company.

There were lessons to be learned in every
hour of that voyage. Who could ever forget
the splendid work of one young girl, whose
father was a missionary? After giving
garments of her own to many survivors, she
collected more clothing to supply further
needs -- she cut out dresses for the many
forlorn babies, and spent days ministering
to the terrified emigrants of the
steerage.

Cruel, indeed was the plight of these
foreigners; many of them were young
mothers, with wailing babies who refused
food -- widowed, penniless, ignorant of
the language of an unknown country, they
faced the New World. But indeed, the wind
was truly tempered to these shorn lambs,
for North and South, East and West were
gathering together a golden store for
their needs on landing and for their
future assistance.

The last three days of the voyage were
taxing because rain kept the passengers
crowded in the library, the wail of the
foghorn sounding continuously, strained
overwrought nerves, as the Carpathia
steered cautiously and slowly toward New
York, with her doubly precious freight of
human souls.

Many were the experiences and tales of
adventures on sea and land exchanged in
those penned-in, irksome hours; hot and
bitter were the denunciations of the
criminal neglect of those whose authority
could and should have averted the
disaster.

Inevitable were the collections and
disagreements over loving cups and votes
of thanks, to be presented to the
embarrassed, bashful, but truly heroic
Captain.

Fire Island! Ambrose Channel! Welcoming
sirens of hundreds of tugs, newspaper
boats, steamers and yachts! And the lights
of New York!

Hardly were the many telegrams from our
friends handed us, before we neared the
Cunard docks; never was homecoming so
sweet, as on that immortal night of
nights, when again the world waited,
hushed, for the coming epic of abysmal
horror, of consuming, unending grief, and
of sublime heroism.

Even now, one must doubt whether the
terrible lesson to be learned from such an
appalling tragedy has been given due
consideration by those who govern the
courses of the ocean liners. One reads of
steamers again venturing over the
northerly course, and reporting ice in
sight. The captains of the best patronized
lines state they would have followed
Captain Smith's route, under similar
conditions, apparantly prefering insane
speeding among icebergs, to take a more
southerly course.

Almost from the time of the world's
creation, men have "gone down to the sea
in ships." Human intelligence has labored
long to conquer the elements, and today
inventive genius seems to triumph over all
that vexed the soul and brain of the
sturdy adventurers who discovered our
land. But man can never be Omnipotent. An
unsinkable ship will never cross the sea.
Granting that the Titanic was a triumph of
construction and appointments, even she
could not trespass upon a law of nature,
and survive.

Helplessly that beautiful and gallant ship
struggled to escape from the hand of God,
but was only an atom in the Hold of
inexorable justice.

Majestically she sailed; but bowed, broken
and crouching, she sank slowly beneath the
conquering ocean; a hidden memorial shaft
to the unburied dead she carried with her,
and to the incredible wickedness of man,
until the coming of the day when "there
shall be no more sea."

Ms. Young apparantly never married. She spent her last days in a rest home in
Amsterdam, New York and died July 27, 1959 at the age of 83.

1st Class - XYZ

Miss Marie Grice Young

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