Dagmar Bryhl's Rockford Republic Account

I was in my berth when the Titanic hit the berg. I noticed the jar and soon I heard Ingvar knocking on the door of my cabin, "Get up, Dagmar," he said. "The ship has hit something." I put on a skirt and a coat as quickly as possible and hurried up to the deck. But the officers said, "Go back, there is no danger, you go to your cabins." I turned to my berth and went back to bed. I had not lay there very long before there was more knocking on my door and Ingvar was yelling, "Get up, Dagmar, we are in danger. I don't care what the ship's officers say. I tell you we are in danger of our lives. The boat is sinking."

Again I flung on my skirt and coat and ran up. Someone said we had hit an iceberg. The screaming and yelling was awful. They were putting women and children into boats and lowered them into the sea. Men and women were kissing each other farewell. Ingvar and Kurt led me to a boat and Ingvar lifted me into it. I seized his hands and wouldn't let go. "Come with me!" I screamed as loud as I could, still holding his hands tight. There was room in the boat. It was only half-filled, but an officer ran forward and clubbed back Ingvar.

This officer tore our hands apart and the lifeboat was let down. As it went down I looked up. There, leaning over the rail, stood Kurt and Ingvar side by side. Screamed to them again, but it was no use. They waved their hands and smiled. That was the last glimpse I had of them.

The men that rowed our boat pushed away from the Titanic. The air was very cold and we all shivered. They rowed us around and we saw the great ship sink. Then more dreadful screams. The water filled with crying people. Some of them climbed in our boat and so saved their lives.

We were out in the life boat from 11 o'clock Sunday night until 6 o'clock Monday morning when the Carpathia came. Seven hours without any clothing thick enough to protect me from the stinging cold benumbed my limbs. Oh, I can't ever tell the thoughts that came to me out there. The sea was so still and clear as a mirror, it seemed, and over us was a clear and cloudless sky.

Miss Bryhl, according to her uncle, has again and again declared between hysterical sobs, that if she had thought that her brother and her  sweetheart would be lost she would never have allowed them to put her in the life boat. She said that she would rather have died with them when the great ship settled into the deeps than to live with the memory of all that took place graven into her mind for all the subsequent days to come.

"Poor father," she has said several times to her uncle, "It is for him I weep! This blow falls heaviest on him over there in Sweden."