Jew World Order

“We could see groups of the almost 1,500 people still aboard, clinging in
clusters or bunches like swarming bees; only to fall in masses, pairs or
singly, as the great after-part of the ship, 250 feet of it, rose into the
sky, till it reached a 65 or 70-degree angle,” he recalled.

In 1940, those recollections still vivid, he put them into print in
privately-printed edition of just 500 copies for family and friends, which
sat largely forgotten on relatives’ bookshelves for the next seven decades.

Now, however, his compelling story is to be published by Thornwillow
Press, specialists in hand-made letterpress printed books, after one
of the originals was found by Lorin Stein, editor of the literary magazine Paris
Review and a distant relative of the Thayers. The copy was inscribed to
his great-grandfather.

With appropriate historical resonance, the launch party for A Survivor’s
Tale will be hosted by the St Regis Hotel, a prestigious New York
institution built by John Jacob Astor, who died on the Titanic.

“This is not just one of the most powerful first-hand descriptions of the
sinking, but Jack Thayer also reflects back, after nearly three decades, on
what was for him the end of the world that was, a turning-point when the
modern world began,” said Luke Pontifell, founder of Thornwillow.

Jack’s account is brought dramatically to life by series of six illustrations,
based on his graphic description of the stricken vessel’s final hours and
sketched just a few hours after the sinking. LD Skidmore, an artist who was
aboard the SS Carpathia when it came to the rescue of the Titanic’s
survivors, made drawings as Jack relayed the events of the night before.
According to Thayer family lore, Jack may have drawn the outlines first.

That the 17-year-old boy even lived to tell the tale defied the odds. For
while 710 people, mainly female passengers, of the 2,224 aboard survived,
almost all of them had escaped in lifeboats launched before the ship went
down. Only about 40 who were thrown or jumped into the sea were rescued –
and Jack was among them.

“About one in every 36 who went down with the ship was saved, and I
happened to be one,” he noted.

Mr Thayer and his wife Marian boarded with the Titanic with their son and a
maid at Southampton on April 10. The ticket for two staterooms and servant
quarters cost £110 17s 8d.

The vessel sped across the Atlantic at more than 20 knots on its maiden
voyage, intent on a record time for the journey, despite reports of ice. “The
weather was fair and clear, the ship palatial, the food delicious,” he
observed of life in first class.

After dinner on April 14, he walked the decks, recalling a scene so placid it
was beguiling. “It was a brilliant, starry night,” he wrote. “There
was no moon and I have never seen the stars shine brighter; they appeared to
stand right out of the sky, sparkling like cut diamonds.

“I have spent much time on the ocean, yet I have never seen the sea
smoother than it was that night; it was like a mill-pond, and just as
innocent looking, as the great ship quietly rippled through it.”

He had said goodnight to his parents at about 11.45pm when he felt the ship
sway slightly, veering to port “as though she had been gently pushed”,
before the engines suddenly stopped.

He and his father went upstairs to explore. The passengers remained calm, even
when to their disbelief, one of the “unsinkable” ship’s designers
– with whom the Thayers had spent several evenings – told them he believed
it would not survive an hour.

They went back to fetch Mrs Thayer and her maid, then all returned to deck,
wearing life preservers of thick cork vests.

The ship’s band, also in life preservers, played on as the vessel’s officers
remained at their posts. They fired distress rockets that illuminated the
night sky, but they were ignored by at least one nearby vessel, the SS
California, which passed close enough at 12.30am for its lights to be seen
by many on the Titanic.

Shortly after 12.45am, stewards passed the word “All women to the port
side” as lifeboats were lowered into the water, with people scrambling
for spaces. The Thayers were separated in the throng – and while Jack’s
mother eventually made it to safety, he never saw his father again, .

By 2.15am, the sinking liner was tilting sharply out of the water. “We
were a mass of hopeless, dazed humanity, attempting, as the Almighty and
Nature made us, to keep our final breath until the last possible moment,”
he noted of the mood.

The vessel then reared up and, amid a rumbling roar and muffled explosions, he
decided to jump. “I was pushed out and then sucked down. The cold was
terrific. The shock of the water took the breath out of my lungs.

“Down and down, I went, spinning in all directions. Swimming as hard as I
could in the direction which I thought to be away from the ship, I finally
came up with my lungs bursting, but not having taken any water.”

Falling debris dragged him under water again and when he fought back to the
surface, he came up against an overturned lifeboat. Too exhausted to haul
himself, the men already clinging to it pulled him up.

To his shock, the other lifeboats, some of which had plenty of space, never
returned to try and rescue those – very possibly including his father –
calling for help in the water because of fears they too would be swamped.

“The most heartrending part of the whole tragedy was the failure, right
after the Titanic sank, of those boats which were only partially loaded, to
pick up the poor souls in the water. There they were, only four or five
hundred yards away, listening to the cries, and still they did not come
back. If they had turned back several hundred more would have been saved.”

The Carpathia, a Cunard liner, had received wireless messages and was by now
heading towards them. Thayer was on the last lifeboat to be rescued at about
7.30am, and at the top of the ladder, he saw his mother. Her joy was rapidly
tempered. “Where’s daddy?” she asked him “I don’t know,
mother,” he replied.

The journey of the next three days was one of crushing sorrow. “The trip
back to New York was one big heartache and misery,” he wrote. It seemed
as if there were none but widows left, each one mourning the loss of her
husband. It was a most pitiful sight.”

Mr Thayer later married the heiress to another railway fortune and pursued his
own career in business. But in 1944, his beloved son, a US air force pilot,
was killed over the Pacific and his mother also died.

Just a year later, in a tragic postscript to his tale of survival loss, Jack
Thayer committed suicide, aged 50 – the same age his father when he went
down with the RMS Titanic.