Johan Asplund's Letter to His Mother

We were asleep when the collision happened. Einar woke me up and said, "The ship has gone aground." I laughed and said, "Gone aground here in the middle of the Atlantic! We can go back to bed." When we had been lying there for about 15 minutes, a passenger came and knocked on the door of our cabin and said that we had collided with an iceberg. We got out of bed and got dressed, and took our time. We didn't believe the ship would sink because they bragged about the watertight bulkheads. When we had got ready, we went up to the afterdeck, and after we had stood there for a few minutes, they said that the entire bow was broken in and that the entire ballast was full of ice. Then I told Einar that we should go and see. We went and found out the truth of what they had said and then we looked down into the room and saw how the water was rushing in. Then we went aft again. It was a long walk below. We weren't allowed to go up on deck amidships to get to the stern.

We, who were third-class passengers, when we came aft, we saw that they opened the gates to First Class and third-class passengers could go up there. We followed the crowd, and when we got up there, they were getting ready to lower the lifeboats in the sea and said that the women would go first. The first boat was lowered, and Einar and I agreed that we would go in the second.

I entered, but when Einar was ready to enter, he was boxed on the ear by a mate, and when I saw that, I jumped out of that lifeboat and onto the Titanic again. Then we thought that we would get in the one after the next boat. But it couldn't be done until it was the second to last one. I said that when the next to last boat had been lowered a bit, we should jump in it. Einar agreed. When they had lowered it about 3 meters, we jumped in it. If we hadn't done that, we probably wouldn't have been saved.

When they had lowered us into the water, we untied the boat from the "guys?" and rowed 50 meters away from the ship. Then the Titanic went with the bow down. You must think that it was a sad sight to see and hear so many people fighting for their lives and giving up their cries for help. Their cries lasted about an hour and then they had gone out, so it was quiet. We sat in the lifeboat for about six hours, maybe a little longer, when we were picked up on the Carpathia (it was around seven o'clock). You can imagine that it was not too much fun to be there. You didn't know how long you would be there. Some said we could sit here and starve to death and some said something else. It was probably because the ocean was so calm, otherwise not so many people would have been saved as it was. The ocean was as calm as the water back home in our barrel that stands by the woodshed.

When we got on the Carpathia, we were treated as well as we could be. The first thing we got was a cup of coffee, and we needed that because we were so cold we were shivering. I wouldn't have had to freeze if I hadn't lent my coat to a fireman who was in the lifeboat we were in. He had nothing on but "long johns" or whatever they're called. I thought he needed it more than I did. When we arrived at New York, we were received most warmly by the charity people. We were received by the Salvation Army, Einar and I, and three other Swedes. (You read that in the newspaper).

Curator's note: This translation is sourced from "Not My Time to Die" by Lilly Setterdahl, Google Translate, and DeepL. The full letter in Swedish was published by Jerker Pettersson in the April 2011, Nr. 97 edition of PLF-Nytt in Oskarshamn, Sweden. Punctuation has been added for greater clarity and readability.