Faces of the Titanic: Survivor Eugene Daly - wrote a detailed account having stayed on the ship to the end

29-year-old witnessed brutal shooting and dramatic panic on board before his escape

Saw two men shot

Two men tried to break through and he shot them both. I saw him shoot them. I saw them lying there after they were shot. One seemed to be dead. The other was trying to pull himself up at the side of the deck, but he could not. I tried to get to the boat also, but was afraid I would be shot and stayed back. Afterwards there was another shot and I saw the officer himself lying on the deck. They told me he shot himself, but I did not see him.

Then I rushed across the deck, and there was a sort of canvas craft there. I tried with six or seven men to get it out, but we could not. It was stuck under a wire stay which ran up to the mast. The water was then washing right across the deck. The ship lurched and the water washed the canvas craft off the deck into the ocean. I was up to my knees in water at the time. Everyone was rushing around, but there were no boats. Then I dived overboard.

When I struck the water I swam for the boat that had been washed over. When I got to her she was upside down. I helped myself up on her. About fifteen people got upon her the same way. At the time I jumped there were a lot of people jumping overboard.

As I stood on the craft I saw the ship go down. Her stern went up and she gradually sunk down forward. Her stern stuck up high. I thought she would fall over on us, and she seemed to be swinging around, but she did not. There was no suction at all that we felt. Our craft was not drawn in at all. - (Daily Sketch, 4 May 1912, reprint of New York Herald)

Eugene Daly was finally rescued on collapsible B, a life-raft lashed to the roof of the officers’ quarters on the port side until washed off by the onrushing sea. He had previously seen his cousin Maggie and his Athlone neighbour Bertha Mulvihill into lifeboat No. 15, all the way aft on the starboard side, which loaded from A Deck and from which he himself was bodily pulled having defied orders.

The boat where men were gunned down appears to have been collapsible A, all the way forward on the starboard side, since Daly says he then ‘rushed across the deck’ to collapsible B on the port side. In 1913 evidence he cited two shot dead, but no officer.

Dr Frank Blackmarr, a passenger on board the Carpathia, noted that Eugene Daly was unconscious when carried to his cabin, where he was revived with stimulants and hot drinks. Dr Blackmarr later took down Daly’s dictation of his experiences as they approached New York on 18 April 1912. This was his first account of what transpired: 

"I left Queenstown with two girls from my own home town who were placed in my charge to go to America. After the accident, we were all held down in steerage, which seemed to be a lifetime. All this time we knew that the water was coming up, and up rapidly.

"Finally some of the women and children were let up, but, as you know, we had quite a number of hot-headed Italians and other peoples who got crazy and made for the stairs. These men tried to rush the stairway, pushing and crowding and pulling the women down, some of them with weapons in their hands.

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Nster.com