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Updated: June 17, 2025
For the first time we saw where we were. Near us was open water, but on every side was ice. Ice ten feet high was everywhere, and to the right and left and back and front were icebergs. Some of them were mountain high. This sea of ice was forty miles wide, they told me. We did not wait for the Carpathia to come to us, we rowed to it.
No one on the Carpathia could have supplied such information; there was no one else in the world at that moment who knew any details of the Titanic disaster, and the only possible conclusion is that the whole thing was a deliberate fabrication to sell the paper.
SURROUNDED by his wife and members of his family, James McGough, of Philadelphia, a buyer for the Gimbel Brothers, whose fate had been in doubt, recited a most thrilling and graphic picture of the disaster. As the Carpathia docked, Mrs. McGough, a brother and several friends of the buyer, met him, and after the touching reunion had taken place the party proceeded to Philadelphia.
"If the same course was pursued on the starboard side as you pursued on the port, in filling boats, how do you account for so many members of the crew being saved?" asked Chairman Smith. "I have inquired especially and have found that for every six persons picked up, five were either firemen or stewards." Thomas Cottam, of Liverpool, the Marconi operator on the Carpathia, was the next witness.
When one reads in the Press that lifeboats arrived at the Carpathia half full, it seems at first sight a dreadful thing that this should have been allowed to happen; but it is so easy to make these criticisms afterwards, so easy to say that Captain Smith should have told everyone of the condition of the vessel. He was faced with many conditions that night which such criticism overlooks.
Vivid in detail, Mr. McGough's story differs essentially from one the imagination would paint. He declared that the boat was driving at a high rate of speed at the time of the accident, and seemed impressed by the calmness and apathy displayed by the survivors as they tossed on the frozen seas in the little life-boats until the Carpathia picked them up.
A considerable part of these experiences was related to the writer first hand by survivors, both on board the Carpathia and at other times, but some are derived from other sources which are probably as accurate as first-hand information.
These were the husbands and wives, children, parents, sweethearts and friends of those who had sailed upon the Titanic on its maiden voyage. They pressed to the head of the pier, marking the boats of the wrecked ship as they dangled at the side of the Carpathia and were revealed in the sudden flashes of the photographers upon the tugs.
"I confirmed the distress message by asking the Titanic if I should report the distress message to the captain of the Carpathia." "How much time elapsed after you received the Titanic's distress message before you reported it to Captain Rostron?" "About a couple of minutes," Cottam answered. When the committee resumed the investigation on April 20th, Cottam was recalled to the stand.
Again the newspaper men asked for some word of the catastrophe to the Titanic, but there was no answer, and the Carpathia continued toward her pier. As she passed the revenue cutter Mohawk and the derelict destroyer Seneca anchored off Tompkinsville the wireless on the Government vessels was seen to flash, but there was no answering spark from the Carpathia.
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