Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 305, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 December 1912 — VISION OF TITANIC [ARTICLE]

VISION OF TITANIC

Great Disaster Pictured by W. T. Stead in 1886. Enormous Loss of Life Predicted by the Distinguished English Journalist in His Own Newspaper. London. —An Investigator, searching for material for a biography of W. T. Stead, the Englishman who went down with the Titanic, has discovered a strange prediction of his own doom made by Mr. Stead in the Pall Mall Gazette on March 22, 1886. This article, written by Mr. Stead, was headed, “How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic.” The article appeared a couple of days after the Oregon was lost, and purported to give a description of the scene of horror that ensued on the then biggest Atlantic liner, whqn at last the passengers realized the ship was doomed. In a footnote, Stead wrote: “This is exactly what might take place and what will take place If the liners are sent to sea short of boats.” Here are sotne extracts from Stead’s grim prediction: “From below there came a queer sucking sound, with an occasional long gurgle, and I saw that thekhip seemed to ‘hang* as the seas met her. “The boats were made fast to stand heavy weather, and only skilled sailors could launch them.

“I calculated that, by loading all the eight boats down to the water’s edge and by packing the children along the bottom boards, we might accommodate 300 pepole. We were carrying 916 altogether. “A loud crack, followed by a wallowing noise like a thunder, rendered all other sounds insignificant, and a captain who was going out to New York, said: "The bulkhead’s gone. We must take our chance.’ The ship stopped nearly dead, and began to tremble curiously, but it was only the river of water pouring aft, and we Boon saw the firemen driven up like rats from a burrow. ‘Stand by the boats.’ ‘The order was given, and the boatswain’s call rose in a long, tremulous screech. One of the starboard boats was Bu««essfully launched, and the officer stood, revolver in hand. "Women first here. Thompson, you will steer her. Take four men and no more.' The young English lady was lowered down, although she clung to her father and begged him to let her stay. ‘No. darling, goodbye. Be happy,’ he said, and then stood composedly amid the hurly-burly.” By an extraordinary coincidence Stead describes the girl as "a dark beauty, about eighteen years of age.” One could almost fancy that he saw as in a glass darkly the then yet unborn Mrs. John Jacob Astor. "At last only one light boat remained, and still there were over 700 of us Jammed in the narrow space left by the awful list. The captain has dropped his hands —he could do no more. One sailor said: "We’ve stood it long enough, Tom. Let’s have our turn.’ “And he, with three sturdy Swedes, managed to get at the davits. They were just In time, for the steams* began to sway as they floated, and tjfcey were all but swamped by tbe charge and leap of a crowd who flung themselves Into tbe water. Then I was left with a great multitude, whose agonized clamor stunned me. T felt a mighty convulsive movement, then the sea seemed to flash down on me in one mass, as If the wall of water fell from a high crag. Then { heard a humming noise in my ears, and with a gasp I was up amid a blackened, wriggling sheet of drowning creatures. “A boat came past me and I struck out lustily. I raised myself tb the funwalfc. ‘Shall I hit his fingers?’ said

a man. ‘No, let him come,’ and I laid, sick and dizzy, on the bottom boards of a crowded boat. You know that we were picked up after a nasty time.” The great journalist’s friends would have wished that last sentence of his vivid forecast could have applied to his own case, when the mammoth White Star liner’s “great multitude” were hirled to their ocean tomb.