Edith Brown's Great Liners Interview

Edith Eileen Brown (Haisman)

Second-class passenger

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We had music that night. A band was playing and we went to bed about, say, half past ten. And all of a sudden, the ship sort of went into the iceberg. She sort of first gone off, you know, because you know, she was going full speed, and she was thrown back, and the second time she did the same thing, and third time, she stopped dead. 

So, my father said he'll go up on deck and see what's wrong. So he went up on deck and he came back. He says, "You better get dressed and come up on deck," he says, "They've only struck an iceberg."

While we were waiting for the lifeboat, my dad was standing there smoking a cigar, you know, and he says, "Oh, I'll see you in New York," you know. But my father went down with the Titanic and my mother and I were rescued.

We were nine hours in the lifeboat. I had no water and nothing to eat, you know. And we just sat there, because we had to get right away because of the suction, you see. And her lights sort of, didn't go all out, disappeared, all the time in the water until she got to the top, to the boilers, and sort of explode. I turned my head away. I wouldn't look to see it go down. And you could hear the screams of the people on the ship, you know. Just really terrible.