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"The sound of people drowning is something I cannot describe to you and neither can anyone else. It is the most dreadful sound and there is dreadful silence that follows it."
---Ms. Eva Hart, Titanic survivor (Died on February 15, 1996 - Age 91)
"We set foot on deck with very thankful hearts, grateful beyond the possibility of adequate expression to feel solid ship beneath us once more."
---Lawrence Beesley, Titanic survivor (Reference to boarding the rescue ship Carpathia
"I enjoyed myself as if I were in a summer place."
---Col. Archibald Gracie, Titanic survivor
"There was peace. The world hadn't even tended to its way. Nothing was revealed in the morning and the trembling was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a start, keeping it moving at a rapidly increasing pace ever since, with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15, 1912."
---John B. (Jack) Thayer, Titanic survivor
"When one asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident...or any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort."
---Captain E.J. Smith, prior to sailing the Titanic
"A rudder as big as an elm tree...propellers as big as a windmill. Everything was on a nightmare scale."
---One eyewitness
"It was a really big boat."
---Andrew Hook, Titanic survivor
"I'll bet you a dollar you couldn't pick it up."
---Luke Chambers
"Slowly she reared up on end until at last she was absolutely perpendicular. Then quite quietly but quicker and quicker, she seemed to slide away and disappear."
---Second Officer, Mr Lightoller
Colonel Gracie said when the ship went under he was spun around for an interminable time, but made it back to the surface to find a quantity of wreckage around him. He climbed onto a raft of canvas and cork with another man, and together they picked people up out of the water. "When dawn broke, there were thrity of us on the raft," said Colonel Graci,. "knee-deep in the icy water, and afraid to move for fear we should capsize it. The hours that elapsed before we were picked up were the longest and most terrible that I have ever spent."
In a special edition the Martin issued the following account signed by three French survivors:
We were quietly playing auction bridge with Mr. Smith from Philadelphia, when we heard a violent noise similar to the produced by the screw racing. We were startled and looked at one another under the impression that a serious accident had happened. We did not, however, think for a catastrophe, but through the portholes we saw ice rubbing against the ship's sides. We rushed on deck and saw that the Titanic had a tremendous list. There was every where a momentery panic, but it speedily subsided
