It was 11:45 p.m. Sunday, April 14, 1912 and the ship the three Hudson women were on had just had its hull breached and was beginning to sink, but at this point the women had no idea what had just occurred.
When Kornelia, 63, entered the corridor and found it full of ice crystals that had come through the portholes, she correctly surmised that they must have collided with an iceberg. Gretchen went and found a steward and was told there was nothing to worry about.
“They told us at once that there was no danger, and as we had not a moment’s suspicion that such a magnificent ship could ever sink, we foolishly all went back to bed without a fear,” Kornelia later wrote to a friend. But a little more than 15 minutes later the women heard a commotion in the corridor and again asked what was going on and were told that as a precautionary measure they should put on life preservers.
The women only had about five minutes to get dressed. Gretchen threw on a pair of stockings and some slippers, along with a shirtwaist, skirt and a fur coat, but no underclothing. Her aunts only had time to thrown their furs over their nightdresses. Kornelia later complained that she didn’t even have time to grab a hat, but did gather a few hair pins before they left their rooms and rushed up the stairs to the Titanic’s deck.
What greeted them there was very different than the scene when they boarded the Titanic at Southampton only four days earlier after a nearly five-month-long European tour.
On the morning of April 10, the port was a hive of activity as the White Star Line made final preparations for the Titanic’s maiden voyage: cranes loaded luggage. The ship’s employees, from officers to waiters, who hadn’t been on the overnight shift made their way aboard and prepared for departure.
The ladies from Hudson were among the 325 first class passengers who made their way onto the ship via a separate gangway and were able to get their first close-up look at the ship. They were met by polished brass and hand-carved woodwork wherever they looked.
“The vision of the great liner as she moved away from Southampton quay forms an imperishable memory. She looked so colossal and so queenly,” wrote one reporter who was dockside. Aboard ship, Lawrence Beesley, a science teacher from a London college who survived the sinking and later wrote a book about it, recalled watching the crowd as they kept pace with the ship while it moved along the waterfront.
There was a near-collision with the steamer New York as the Titanic was leaving port, a fateful portent many later felt. The suction created by the larger ship snapped the New York’s rigging, sending it dangerously close to the Titanic, but several tugs were able to prevent the disaster. On the early morning of April 15, there was nothing to prevent the disaster unfolding before the eyes of Kornelia, Anna and Gretchen as they stood on the ship’s deck, chaos swirling around them.
For four days, as the Titanic made its way across the English Channel to Cherbourg, France then to Queenstown, Ireland and finally to the open North Atlantic, the women had enjoyed nice weather, smooth seas and the finest luxuries available, but now as they waited for the fourth and final lifeboat, they would soon experience deprivation, pain and fear that would haunt them to their ends.
When the women arrived topside no one seemed to be panicked, according to Kornelia, but there was a lack of discipline as the ship’s officers hurried to get women and children on to the boats. Jack Williams, one of the Titanic’s crewmembers who survived, alleged it was a much more chaotic scene, with six men being shot while trying to rush aboard the lifeboats. Gretchen also later recalled that the ship’s captain, Edward J. Smith, shot himself in the mouth while on deck, after initially being stopped from committing suicide by his officers while in the library. It appears Gretchen didn’t witness the captain’s end, but rather heard about it from others after the fact.
“Sinking by the head, and women are being rushed into the lifeboats,” was the final message sent by wireless before it sputtered out, according to an account in the Columbia Republican.
The three Hudson, N.Y. women waited for the fourth lifeboat since there was no room in the others for them to all fit and they refused to be separated. The boat was lowered the 75 feet to the water. Above them stood a line of men waving goodbye to their wives and family, surely knowing they would soon be dead.
“Oh, it would have broken your heart to have seen them standing there so bravely and waving farewell to their wives and daughters. It would have made you so proud of your countrymen,” Kornelia later wrote to relatives in Hudson. “There was Mr. Thayer, president of the Pennsylvania railroad. Mr. John Jacob Astor, having to wave farewell to his beautiful wife, Major Butt and hundreds of others, who probably knew there was no hope for them. We have never seen them since.”
Three men had been allowed into their boat in the belief that they would do the rowing, but when the small craft hit the dark, icy water only one of the men, a sailor, turned out to be an able rower. Gretchen and three other women took to the oars.
Kornelia was disgusted with the two stowaways on board who shirked their manly duty. She was also angry with the White Star Line, which she felt committed “a perfect crime” by not providing a large percentage of the ship’s passengers with a means of escape, since there were only 22 boats on the ship when “sixty (boats) could not have taken in more than two-thirds” of those on board.
Gretchen, her fingers already numb, pulled at the oar, helping to get the little craft as far from the dying behemoth as possible before it went under and dragged them down with her. A vessel that large would create an incredible amount of suction that could easily capsize or drag their lifeboat into the depths.
Kornelia stared out at the water and saw horror whereever she looked. She witnessed two other lifeboats collapse, scattering women into the water. Another boat was partially submerged, the passengers shivering in the ice-cold water that was above their knees.
She heard shouts of protest from women in one boat after a sailor lit a cigarette and carelessly tossed the match among them.
“Ah, we're all going to the devil, anyway,” the sailor growled, “and we might as well be cremated now as then.”
And through it all there was the constant sobbing of those who knew their husbands, sons, fathers were not likely to survive the sinking.
At about 2 a.m., they heard the Titanic’s death knell, a deafening explosion, caused, the women believed, by the ship’s boilers blowing up, followed by the shrieking of those left behind. They saw people jumping from the ship just before her lights winked out. The Titanic broke in two and both halves were soon gone from sight.
The night was cold. Massive icebergs floated nearby. The only light now came from the firmament above. Miles of black water surrounded them.
Dawn broke and the ocean, which had been calm through the night, began to swell and pitch. Large waves tossed the little boat and the women feared it would be capsized. They had been in the boat for nearly eight hours and the sailor, Gretchen and the other women who helped row were completely exhausted. All began to give up hope. Suddenly on the horizon they saw a ship slowly coming toward them. It was the Carpathia, the Cunard Line steamer that had picked up the Titanic’s distress call.
The Carpathia had hurried to the coordinates given by the Titanic’s wireless operator just before the ship went down, but found no sign of the Titanic or her passengers. The captain ordered the ship’s engines shut off and the Carpathia floated quietly.
Kornelia recounted seeing the rescue ship pick up survivors from the water, 17 in all.
Two of them died “almost immediately” and a third “went mad,” according to Kornelia. A little dead baby floated past their boat as they waited for their turn to board.
The boat containing the Hudson women was the last to be rescued. Five hours after Carpathia’s arrival the little boat came alongside the steamer. Ropes were thrown down and tied around the women’s waists to keep them from falling into the water as they climbed the wet rope ladder, a task made more difficult by their frozen feet and hands.
Aboard ship they were provided with hot coffee, tea and soup. They were covered in warm blankets and taken to a first aid station in one of the ship’s dining rooms.
“The kindness of the Carpathia, captain, officers and passengers to all the survivors was wonderful and was appreciated by all,” recalled Kornelia. Passengers offered the three women their rooms, but they declined, feeling that there were others in more desperate straits. They slept in the ship’s library with about two dozen other survivors. While they were all glad to be alive, a pall of sadness filled the ship as small children cried out for parents who had died and adults wept for their lost loved ones.
The three women also despaired about having lost all their personal belongings. They had nothing but what they threw on in the last few minutes before leaving the sinking ship. Kornelia wrote about the joy she received when a woman gave her a handkerchief and another some hairpins. A man traveling back from Italy provided her with a toothbrush. Kornelia, who wasn’t able to retrieve her glasses, had a hard time getting around as well as writing. Gretchen was lucky enough to run into a school friend who gave her clothes and a hat. After two days of sleeping on the floor of the library they were given a stateroom. The next evening, April 18, they arrived in New York.
“The steamer Carpathia, laden with sorrow for a world, crept to her pier on the North River at 8:45 (p.m.) and discharged to the hysterical embraces of hundreds of half-crazed friends and relatives 710 survivors of the $10,000,000 Titanic,” the Columbia Republican of April 19 reported.
Kornelia, Anna and Gretchen went to stay with a third Andrews sister, Roberta Flack, and her husband Arthur, in East Orange, N.J. It wasn’t long before the press came calling. The women were quoted by far flung newspapers, from the New York Times to the Mexico, Missouri Message, and provided one of the more comprehensive accounts of the disaster.
Following their Titanic experience the women returned to Hudson and life resumed. Kornelia sued the White Star Line for the loss of her possessions. She died of pneumonia at her home in Hudson, on Dec. 4, 1913, less than two years after the Titanic’s sinking. She was 65. Kornelia would be remembered for her charitable works in Columbia County. She was on the board of the Hudson City Hospital and a member of many other local organizations, including the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Anna left Hudson and resettled in East Orange near her sister Roberta. She also kept a home in Hillsdale where she died in 1947. Both she and her sister Kornelia are buried in Hudson.
Their niece Gretchen married Dr. Raymond S. Leopold in 1913, moved to Philadelphia, Pa., where her husband became the executive vice president of Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital. They had three children.
Gretchen later ran an antiques store and traveled extensively, often by ship. She died in her sleep aboard the S.S. Constitution in the Mediterranean on Aug. 12, 1965.
Gretchen apparently didn’t often speak about her experience on the Titanic, according to a 1998 interview with one of her grandchildren, but it must have haunted all three women.
Kornelia, for one, said as much.
“All my life I will hear those shrieks,” she said of the sound of the dying as the Titanic sank into the cold, black water taking 1,514 passengers and crew with her.
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