Edith Haisman's Secrets Revealed Interview

Edith Eileen Brown (Haisman)

Second-class passenger

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My father had a very bad dream before we left, but he never told my mother what it was. We decided to sell up everything and go to America and open a hotel in Seattle.

I stood then and I looked at that great big ship, she was very high and I thought, "my word." It was a floating palace, it was really the most beautiful ship I've ever seen.

It looked as if the New York was going to run into the Titanic and my father turned around and he said, "That's a bad omen."

My father went up on deck to see what was going on and he says, "Oh, it's nothing much. They only struck an iceberg," he said.

I was standing on deck speaking to my father. I turned around and I said to him, "Look at the lights over there! There's another ship." Next minute, the lights were out.

My father turned around and said to me, took us there [to the lifeboat], he was smoking a cigar, and he says, "I'll see you in New York," he told my mother. We never saw him again.

They [the band] were playing all the time to make people feel happy, I suppose.

As she [the Titanic] got down to the boilers, there was a terrible explosion and screams of the people, it was terrible.

The sea was very mild, but very, very cold and all you could see when daylight was coming, just this big iceberg, that's all. You'd never believe that there was a boat there.

Curator's Note: This interview was compiled from clips from the 1998 documentary, Titanic: Secrets Revealed. The date of the original interview is unknown.