On its maiden voyage, the great ship TITANIC had aboard 2227 passengers
and crew. That night on April 14, 1912, the icy Atlantic waters
claimed 1522 lives, leaving a remainder  of only 705 survivors
... nearly 70% of the passengers on Titanic were lost that fateful night.

 
• Loss of 815 out of the 1348 passengers, and 688 out of the 860 crew members.
• Number of lifeboat seats not used: 472
• Number of passengers and crew who died: 1,503
• Number of children from first-class who died: 1
• Number of children from steerage who died: 49
• Temperature of Atlantic on night Titanic sank: 31 degrees F
• Number of dogs that survived: 2
• Number of orchestra members who survived: 0
• Number of lifeboat seats required by law: 962
• Number of lifeboat seats carried aboard: 1,178
• Number of lifeboat seats needed: 2,228
• Servants accompanying approximately 190 first-class families: 40
• Only man who disguised himself as woman to get on lifeboat: Daniel Buckley,

who reportedly put a shawl on his head
• Only person to survive in frigid Atlantic: chief baker Charles Joughin, who reportedly

had been drinking heavily
• Titanic officers who went on to their own commands: 0

Edith Russell
First Class Passenger:

"This is the most wonderful boat you can think of. In length it would reach from the corner of the Rue de la Paix to about the Rue de Rivola. Everything imaginable: swimming pool, Turkish bath, gymnasium, squash courts, cafes, tea gardens, smoking rooms, a lounge bigger than the Grand Hotel Lounge; huge drawing rooms, andbedrooms larger than in the average Paris Hotel. It is a monster, and I can't say I like it, as I feel as if I were ina big hotel, instead of on a cozy ship; everyone is so stiff and formal. There are hundreds of help, bell boys,stewards, stewardesses and lifts. To say the ship is wonderful is unquestionable, but not the cozy ship boardfeeling of former years."

"All went along very well until 20 minutes to 12, when three gongs came from the lookout, and immediately afterwards a report on the telephone, 'Iceberg right ahead.' The Chief Officer (First Officer Murdoch) rushed from the wing to the bridge. He rushed to the engines. I heard the telegraph bell ring, also give the order 'Hard astarboard'. The sixth officer repeated the order, 'The helm is hard astarboard, sir.' But during the time, she was crushing the ice, or we could hear the grinding noise along the ship's bottom. I heard the telegraph ring. The skipper came rushing out of his room - Captain Smith - and asked, 'What is that?'  Mr. Murdoch said, 'An iceberg.' "  Robert Hichens Quartermaster

Norman Chambers
First Class Passenger:

"... I looked at the starboard end of our passageway, where there was the companion leading to the quarters of the mail clerks and farther on to the baggage room, and I  believe, the mail sorting room, and at the top of these stairs I found a couple of mail clerks wet to their knees, who had just come up from below, bringing their registered mail bags. As the door in the bulkhead in the next deck was open, I was able to look directly into the trunk room which was then filled with water, and within 18" or 2 feet of the deck above. We were standing there joking about our baggage being completely soaked and about the correspondence which was seen floating about on the top of the water. While we were standing there three of the ship's officers descended the first  companion and looked into the baggage room, coming back up immediately, saying that we were not making any more water. This was not an announcement, but merely a remark passed from one to the other. Then my wife and myself returned in the direction of our stateroom, a matter of a few yards only, and as we were going down our own alleyway to the stateroom door our room steward came by and told us that we could go on back to bed again, that there was no danger."

Third Officer  Herbert John Pitman: "I should say about a dozen rockets were fired.  They were fired from the rail. They  make a report while leaving the rail, and also an explosion in the air, and they throw stars, of course, in the air."

Hugh Woolner
First Class Passenger:

"... the electric lights along the ceiling of A Deck were beginning to turn red, just a glow, a red sort of glow.So I said to Steffanson: 'This is getting rather a tight corner. I do not like being inside these closed windows.Let us go out through the door at the end.' And as we went out through the door the sea came in onto the deck at our feet. Then we hopped up onto the gunwale preparing to jump out into the sea, because if we had waiteda minute longer we should have been boxed in against the ceiling. And as we looked out we saw this collapsible, the last boat on the port side, being lowered right in front of our faces. It was full up to the bow, and I said to Steffanson: 'There is nobody in the bows. Let us make a jump for it. You go first.' And he jumped out and tumbled in head over heels into the bow, and I jumped too, and hit the gunwale with my chest, which had on this life preserver, of course, and I sort of bounced off the gunwale and caught the gunwale with my fingers,and slipped off backwards. As my legs dropped down I felt that they were in the sea. Then I hooked my right heel over the gunwale, and by this time Steffanson was standing up, and he caught hold of me and lifted mein. Then we looked over into the sea and saw a man swimming in the sea just beneath us, and pulled him in. By that time we were bumping against the side of the ship. She was going down pretty fast by the bow.We were exactly opposite the end of the glass windows on the A Deck."

---

Fifth Officer Harold Lowe "Numbers 12, 14, and 16 were down about the same time. I told Mr. Moody that three boats had gone away and that an officer ought to go with them. He said: 'You go.' There was difficulty in lowering when I got near the water. I dropped her about five feet because I was not going to take the chance of being dropped down upon by somebody. While I was on the Boat Deck, two men tried to jump into the boat. I chased them out. We filled boats 14 and 16 with women and children. Lightoller was there part of the time. They were all women and children, barring one passenger, and he sneaked in dressed like a woman. He had a shawl over his head... As I was being lowered, I expected  every moment that my boat would be doubled up under my feet. I had  overcrowded her, but I knew that I had to take a certain amount of risk.I thought if one additional body was to fall into that boat - that slight additional weight might part the hooks, or carry away something. So as we were coming down past the open  decks, I saw a lot of people all along the ship's rails. They were glaring more or less like wild beasts, ready to spring.  That is why I yelled out to 'look out' and let go, bang! ... right along the ship's side. There was a space I should say of about three feet between the side of the boat and the ship's side, and as I went down I fired these shots without any intention of hurting anybody  and with the positive knowledge that I did  not hurt anybody. I fired, I think three times."

Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller: "Just then the ship took a slight but definite plunge - probably a bulkhead went - and the sea came rolling along up in a wave, over the steel fronted bridge, along the deck below us, washing the people back in a dreadful huddled mass. Those that didn't disappear under the water right away, instinctively started to clamber up that part of the deck still out of water, and work their way towards the stern, which was rising steadily out of the water as the bow went down. It was a sight that doesn't bear dwelling on - to stand there, above the wheelhouse, and on our quarters, watching the frantic struggles to climb up the sloping deck, utterly unable to even hold out a helping hand."

Lawrence Beesley  (London Schoolmaster) Second Class Passenger, Lifeboat No. 13:  "... And all the time we got closer to the sea and the exhaust roared nearer and nearer -  until finally we floated with the ropes still holding us from above, the exhaust washing us away and the force of the tide driving us back against the side. The resultant of these three forces was that we were carried parallel to the ship, directly under the place where boat 15 would drop from her davits into the sea. Looking up we saw her already coming down rapidly from B deck; she must have filled almost immediately after ours. We shouted up, 'Stop lowering 14' (He did not know the correct  number of the boat at the time) and the crew and passengers in the boat above, hearing us shout and seeing our position immediately below them, shouted the same to the sailors on the boat deck; but apparently they did not hear, for she dropped down foot by foot - 20 feet, 15, 10 - and a stoker and I in the bows reached up and touched her bottom swinging above our heads, trying to push away our boat from under her. It seemed now as if nothing could prevent her dropping on us, but at this moment another stoker sprang with his knife to the ropes that still held us and I heard him shout, 'One! Two!' as he cut them through. The next moment we had swung away from underneath 15, and were clear of her as she dropped into the water in the space we had just before occupied."  (Lawrence Beesley went on to write a book surrounding his ordeal on the Titanic)

"She went down as far as the afterfunnel, and then there  was a little roar, as though the engines had rushed forward,  and she snapped in two, and the bow part went down and  the afterpart came up ... She uprighted herself for about  five minutes, and then tipped over and disappeared."  Edward John Buley Able Seaman

Colonel Archibald Gracie IV First Class Passenger "What impressed me at the time that my eyes beheld the horrible scene was a thin light-gray smoky vapor that hung like a pall a few feet above the broad expanse of sea that was covered with a mass of tangled wreckage. That it was a tangible vapor, and not a product of my imagination, I feel well assured. It may have been caused by smoke or steam rising to the surface around the area where the ship had sunk. At any rate it produced a supernatural effect, and the pictures I had seen by Dante and the description I had read in my Virgil of the infernal regions of Charon, and the River Lth, were then uppermost in my thoughts. Add to this, within the area described,which was as far as my eyes could reach, there arose to the sky the most horrible sounds ever heard by mortal man except by those of us who survived this terrible tragedy. The agonizing cries of death from over a thousand throats, the wails and groans of the suffering, the shrieks of the terror-stricken and the awful gaspings for breath of those in the last throes of drowning,none of us will ever forget to our dying day." (Archibald Gracie himself survived the disaster only to die in  December that same year, from illness.)

William McMaster Murdoch First Officer

Mrs. Emily Ryerson First Class Passenger

Mrs. James Joseph Brown  (became known as  "The Unsinkable Molly Brown") First Class Passenger

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