One of the crew, it was said, threw it overboard. Mellors and Algernon H. Though they scrambled aboard different collapsibles from the water, they agreed on most aspects of the tragedy. Barkworth took an instant liking to the young Mellors and shared his cabin on the Carpathia with him.

Barkworth was quoted as saying he was looking after the young man due to his injuries and was going to be sure he had employment before returning to England. This is another example of how Will endeared himself to most people he met — a character trait which is noticeable throughout his life. Graphic accounts of the final plunge of the Titanic were related by two Englishmen, survivors by the merest chance.

One of them struggled for hours to hold himself afloat on an overturned collapsible lifeboat, to one end of which John B. The men gave their names as A. The latter, a young man, had started for this country with his savings to seek his fortune, and lost all but his life. Mellers, like Quartermaster Moody [ sic ], said Captain Smith did not commit suicide.


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Mellers and Barkworth both declare there were three distinct explosions before Titanic broke in two, and bow section first, and stern part last, settled with her human cargo into the sea. Her four [ sic ] whistles kept up a deafening blast until the explosions, declare the men. The death cries from the shrill throats of the blatant steam screechers beside the smokestacks so rent the air that conversation among the passengers was possible only when one yelled into the ear of a fellow-passenger.

Barkworth jumped, just before the Titanic went down. He said there were enough life-preservers for all the passengers, but in the confusion many may not have known where to look for them. Mellers, who had donned a life-preserver, was hurled into the air, from the bow of the ship by the force of the explosion, which he believed caused the Titanic to part in the center.

He did not shoot himself. He jumped from the bridge when he had done all he could. I heard his final instructions to his crew, and recall that his last words were: Now every man for himself.

William J. Mellors

I stood on the deck, awaiting my fate, fearing to jump from the ship. Then came a grinding noise, followed by two others, and I was hurled into the deep. Great waves engulfed me. In a letter to his mother dated April 22, , from the Hotel Imperial, he recounted those experiences:. Just a line to let you know I am getting along much better.

I have not recovered yet from my awful experience on the Titanic. But I will not say anything about it until I feel better. But we must thank God I am still alive. I might tell you that all I had belonging to me except for my clothes that is my grey suit went down with the boat.

Daniels not to worry about what I promised for they shall have their money next mail. It has cost heaps of money to buy me new clothes again. Dear Mother so sorry cannot write more as the mail is going out. Do not worry over me for you [know] I shall get on. He declares that, after being washed overboard by the massive wave near the bridge, he was pinned against a ventilator grating on the after side of the forward funnel. This wire grating, similar in appearance to chain link fencing, led directly to a boiler room below.

The inrush of water from this wave held him against the grate until a blast of hot air from the funnel shaft sent him hurtling out of the water and flying through the frigid Atlantic air. He landed near the partly submerged Collapsible A, onto which he eventually clambered, crouching precariously until picked up at daybreak.

He had a terrible ordeal in the water, as detailed in a letter written to his friend, Dorothy Ockenden, on May 9, He describes in detail being pulled under water by frantic swimmers, his fight for survival in the water and his arrival at Collapsible A, the canvas sides of which had never been raised, causing it to be waterlogged and barely afloat. During the night, all but 12 on the collapsible were lost to the depths of the Atlantic. Its survivors were picked up by lifeboat 14, with officer Harold Lowe in charge and Collapsible D in tow, at daybreak.

I was so pleased to receive your letter and to find you had not forgotten me. I had intended writing to you before but I was ashamed of my writing. You see I have no feeling yet from my knuckles to the tips of my fingers owing to having been frozen in the water, and so having heard from you I have got to write. I can assured [sic] you I felt it rather keenly when you left on the Thursday evening without saying good-bye.

Well I am glad to say I am getting along fairly well considering the experience I had on the Titanic. I did not take any notice of the slight shock caused by the collision. I was asleep at the time it happened, and I just turned over and went to sleep again, about ten minutes later the young chap who shared my cabin with me, came and began to yell out that the ship had struck an iceberg and he thought we were going down. I really thought he was joking and told him so, but was soon convinced of the fact by hearing people running about and shouting on the deck and the engines being stopped.

At this time it was almost impossible to walk on the deck without you [having] caught hold of something owing to the ship heeling right over. We were trying to fix up a collapsible boat when she gave the first signs of going under. There seemed to be a tremble run through the whole of the ship and the next thing we heard were loud reports inside which I think were the watertight doors giving way and before you could say Jack Robinson there seemed to be mountains of water rushing through the doors, and I was swept away from where I was right against the collapsible boat, and I simply clung on for all I was worth, whilst all this was going on she was going under water and it seemed as if thousands of men were dragging me under with her, when suddenly, her the forward nose on which I was, seemed to suddenly rise from underneath the water and I and a few more that were close by cut the ropes that held the boat to the falls davits [sic].

There was suddenly an explosion and I found myself whizzing through the water at an awful pace, having been blown away by the explosion. When I came to my senses a few minutes after I looked round and suddenly saw the ship part in the middle with the stern standing several hundred feet out of the water, at this time I was trying to swim away from her, but could not get more than a few yards away and I had as much as I could do to hold myself up from being dragged down with her.

But the suction was not so great as I imagined it would be.

A survivor emerges from the mists of time.

There were great masses of wreckage with hundreds of human beings fighting amongst hundreds of dead bodies for their lives. I had been swimming for about 5 mins when a woman caught hold of my coat collar and begged me to save her life. Well Dorothy I felt that I was doomed and the least I could do was to try to keep both of us afloat. I had been holding her up for about as far as I could tell 20 minutes when I noticed my hands began to become as swollen as if I had a pair of miniature boxing gloves on and I began to lose my grip of the woman who was almost dead and she must have noticed the fact herself for she began to struggle like a madman and clutched me round the throat with the strength of a man.

It was then I noticed she had no life-belt on and I found she was dragging me under the water with her. I had the most awful fight for life under water as I shall never forget, but eventually I broke away from her and rose at once to the surface.

I was so done up with the want of breath that I thought my lungs were affected through holding my breath so long but it did not take so long as it does to tell it. I had not been swimming for long when I was caught hold of by the leg and found a seaman was holding on to me, I tried to kick him off but found my legs were becoming numbed and he held on to me like a leech.

I struck at him but he only laughed and began to try to pull me under water. I managed to get hold of him by the hair of his head and push his head under the water. He became almost insensible and I got my feet clear of his hands and when he came to the surface he began to try and swim alongside of me but I managed to keep clear of him. I suddenly heard a most awful sound like a rattle and he threw up his arms and I knew he was dead. I shall never forget it for I am sure he went mad. I had been swimming for about 1 hour altogether when I saw an object a little way off which turned out to be a collapsible boat with about 20 or thirty people clinging to it.

I managed after a hard struggle to get on this and found that the sides were broken away and that she was well under water. After a time I saw some of the people gradually dropping down dead one at the time and we had to push their bodies off to keep the raft afloat. Every now and again we were all thrown into the water owing to the boat capsizing and when we climbed back I noticed there were less climbed on.

We suddenly noticed lights on the horizon which turned out to be the Carpathia and suddenly she turned round and went out of sight and we thought she had picked the other boats up and missed us. There were then several of our own boats in the distance and we were calling them for about two hours and they answered us back by flashing a green light and blowing whistles but would not put back to save us.

There was then only ten or twelve of us left on the raft alive and there were five or six laying dead on the bottom. By this time I had become exhausted and had to let a man I had been holding up fall to the bottom of the raft but he was saved. Eventually we were picked up and taken to the Carpathia. Having been in the water for about six hours and only about ten or twelve saved from 30 to 40 people hanging on the raft, I have since been rather bad through having been frozen from the hips downwards and my hands were the same. Somebody bet on that band. Wherever it goes, it will be real and glorious and fun.

The results of people with talent to burn writing, playing and directing as Mellor is also doing what they know always are.

Girlfriends review: Kay Mellor introduces a gaggle of women you’d love to know in real life

Please may be the year when it is no longer national news if those people are post-menopausal. Miriam Margolyes, the year-old award-winning actress, writer and all-round force of nature, as she proved in the recent The Real Marigold on Tour , travels across the US from Chicago to New Orleans in this three-part documentary in order to try to understand this increasingly baffling country.

Her preparations are few but vital. She checks that her Vegemite, sense of curiosity and lack of capacity for small talk are packed, lets off one good fart, and heads to the airport. The only ones who truly relax with her are those who know what real fear is. On the South Side of Chicago, Miriam — assigned a personal protection officer — talks to young men who by their late 20s have been dealing drugs for nearly 20 years and seen dozens of their friends shot and killed. A slightly older man is the only one momentarily discommoded by her. He tells her he spent 18 years in prison. Silence for a beat, and then he rallies.

Convicted, he says, but innocent. And it was a blessing as well as a curse because education was free in prison. He got his GED [high-school diploma] and worked up to a degree.