Eva Hart: Survivor

Eva Miriam Hart

Second-class passenger

View Bio

We were booked on a ship called the Philadelphia, and this coal strike came and she didn't sail. And we were then offered a berth in the Titanic, to which absolutely delighted my father, thought it was wonderful. The whole world was talking about that ship.

The moment this arrangement had been made to go to Canada, my mother had this dreadful premonition. She never had one before and never had one after. But she said, "No. We can't do this. It's quite wrong. Something dreadful will happen." And, I tell you the sort of woman she was. She got both feet on the ground, and for her to behave like that was absolutely unbelievable to everyone. But she just had that premonition. And my father said, "Oh, nonsense."

Of course, time went by and the house was sold and we were ready to go, and we down to the ship. But she said to him, "Now, I don't want anymore unhappiness about this, but my mind is made up and I will not go to bed in this ship. I shall sleep in the daytime and I shall sit up at night." And I so will remember what he said to her. He said, "If you want to be so stupid, I can't stop you." She said, "I know, but I'm going to do it."

And she did. And she sat up Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night. And on Saturday night, she heard an odd sound and she awakened my father, made him go up on the deck. And he came back and he told her that it was ice floes that she could hear grinding against the side of the ship and not to be so silly.

And at breakfast the next morning, other people had said they had gone up on deck and they had heard this sort of noise and they agreed it was ice floes and my mother then said, "Well surely if there is ice in abundance in the sea, there could be icebergs." And this officer who was at our table said, "Oh no, nonsense," he says, "This iceberg is an enormous thing. We should see an iceberg. You have nothing to be afraid of." And that was on the Sunday morning.

And for the first time since we had gotten aboard the ship, she didn't get up from breakfast and go straight to bed, which is what she normally did, because it was Sunday and she thought she'd like to go to church, which she did. And then we had lunch together before she went to bed and I remember that meal so well because that was the last meal that the three of us ever had together, because in the evening, by dinnertime, I was in bed of course.

And so everybody was gambling on this Sunday night. They were "making books," I think the term is, and having sweepstakes as to what time she would get in, so many minutes past, so and so. My father would have nothing to do with it, and so he went to be quite early, for him anyway. And my mother sat down to sew and read.

And she said at ten minutes to 12, she felt a slight bump. She said it was just like a train pulling into a station. It just jerked. It was very slight, but she said she knew that it was this dreadful something and she wakened my father. He wakened me, and my father said "No" he wasn't going to go up on deck. That was the night before. But she literally pulled him out of bed and made him go up and she then went to dress me and I being sleepy and very naughty said I wasn't going to be dressed. Nothing to be dressed for and I'm going back to bed.

My father came back very quickly because he could get up to the Boat Deck in the lift very quickly from where our cabin was. And he came back and he picked me up and wrapped this blanket tightly around me as if I were a baby. And my mother said nothing to him and I used to say to her sometimes, years afterwards, "I can't understand why you didn't say to him, 'What was it?'" And she said, "I didn't have to say 'What was it.' I didn't know what it was, but I knew it was this dreadful something that I had to live with."

So he puts this very thick coat on her and put another one on himself, and without a word at all, we went out of the cabin and into the lift and up and onto the Boat Deck. Now, if we hadn't done that at that time, I very much doubt I'd be talking to you today, because as you know, there was accommodation for less than 800 people in the lifeboats and she was carrying 2,200. So it was a question of who was there in time to get into one of the all-too-few lifeboats. Well they weren't launched very quickly because at first, no one thought anything was going to happen.

But my father went away and spoke to an officer and he said, "They are going to launch the lifeboats, but you all will be back on board for breakfast." And so, they launched these boats and my father helped – he knew a lot about the sea. And he put me in the lifeboat and told me to be good and said to me, "Hold mommy's hand." And I thought he was coming after me, but he didn't. Then it dawned on me, of course, that he wasn't coming, that I wouldn't see him anymore.

And we rowed away from the ship as fast as we could because one has to do that because I believe the suction when a vessel goes down is absolutely enormous. And we rowed away and I didn't close my eyes at all. I saw that ship sink.

There wasn't any panic until the lifeboats left and then there was panic galore. We were down on the ocean. We could hear them running about on the decks and screaming. You could imagine people came out from their cabin, went onto the deck, no lifeboat tearing around the other side. That was when the panic was there. There wasn't any panic at the time I got into the lifeboat because there weren't enough people up there. And there were enough people there to just get into the lifeboat. But after that, when the others started coming up from their cabins and no boats, gosh, there was panic. We could hear it.

And I saw that ship break in half and the fore part went down, nose first, and the other, the stern of that ship stood up in the water for quite a long time, or what seemed to be a long time to me, and then keeled over. And we heard the dreadful sound of people drowning, which was unbelievable.

My mother used to say sometimes, "Do you remember the silence that followed it?" And that's quite right, you see, the whole world stood still that night. Once the lights had gone, the ship had gone, the sound had gone, oh it was dreadful. Dreadful.

And then because our lifeboat was so full, so over full, the officer called all the boats together and transshipped some of us, one in that boat, and two in that, and three in that, and I got separated from my mother, and that was the most terrifying thing to happen to a child.

And we were picked up, as you know, in the morning by this little ship, the Carpathia. And the rescue of people from lifeboats in mid-ocean is quite a terrifying thing. These little boats, shall we say, draw up alongside, for want of a better expression, to what looks like an enormous vessel (she was quite a small vessel, the Carpathia, but she looked big from there). And then how do you get onboard? You don't have a gangplank like you do when you're ashore.

And so, they opened a sort of (I don't know whether the word is right), a hatch in the side of the ship where the luggage used to be laid. And they threw down rope ladders for people like my mother, and other grownups had to climb up in mid-ocean, up a swaying rope ladder, which she said was the most terrifying thing. A sailor behind sort of holding on. And what could the children do? We couldn't climb up a rope ladder.

So they got these big luggage nets and the mesh is very wide apart. It's quite a big mesh. Children would have slipped through it, small children. Anyway our legs and feet would have gone through. So each child was put in a sack. And I remember being petrified when I was put in that sack and it was tied around, and the sack full of these children were put into these huge nets and, quite safely of course, hauled aboard. But that really was quite terrifying.

And having got on board, of course I couldn't find my mother. And I didn't find her for hours, but eventually I found her. And I'm quite sure one of the most pathetic things must have been the whole of the next day how these poor women, such as my mother, roamed about the ship looking to see if they can see the husband they left behind. But no one found anyone.

And we just went to New York in this little ship and then my mother's first words were when she landed, "How soon can I go home?"

Curator's Note: This transcript and video is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Ray Johnson in 1990. The full interview can be viewed online on the Criterion Channel or by purchasing the Criterion Collection's edition of A Night to Remember.