making and even considered becoming a jeweler Eugene was still a schoolboy and had not decided on a career quite yet But now my boys were homesick They missed their lives in the United States They missed their family and friends I understood their homesickness and I hated to see them suffer I decided to sail back to the United States On April 10 1912 the three of us boarded the Titanic in Southampton England Money was tight and I had to purchase three tickets so we took third class accommodations Originally we purchased passage on the SS Philadelphia Due to a coal strike the Philadelphia did not sail and we were happy to be offered berths on the Titanic even if they were third class accommodations Third class is also called steerage class Passengers cabins are so low in the ship they are near the cables that move the steering rudders I felt like steerage leaving my home I felt very low But my 6
The RMS Olympic built alongside the Titanic had a similar design using watertight doors and hatches that was meant to make it unsinkable 7
boys were as happy as I had ever seen them and I felt I was doing the right thing Oh How wrong I was SOS The Titanic struck the iceberg at 11 40 p m on April 14 At 12 15 a m on April 15 Captain Smith ordered one of the ship’s officers to calculate the exact position of the ship Then he had the ship’s radio operator tap out the first distress signal in Morse code By the time the ship sank 70 messages were sent back and forth between the Titanic and other ships in the area Ships of several nationalities started to come to the aid of the Titanic But the ship that was the closest to the Titanic the SS Californian did not receive the distress messages Its radio operator was asleep 8
Only 24 percent of Third Class passengers survived the sinking Second Class passengers had a 42 percent survival rate and 61 percent of First Class passengers survived 9
