Saved From The Titanic - Gibson's Voyage On The Titanic

Gibson's Voyage On The Titanic

The 22-year-old Gibson was a passenger aboard Titanic's maiden voyage, joining the ship at Cherbourg in France on the evening of April 10. She had been on vacation in Europe with her mother when her employers, the Éclair Film Company, recalled her to New York to participate in a new production. On the evening of the sinking, she was playing bridge (this would have been bridge whist, a predecessor to today's game) in a first-class saloon before retiring to the cabin that she shared with her mother. The game was later credited with saving the lives of the players who had stayed up late to finish it, despite it being (as one American writer put it) "a violation of the strict Sabbath rules of English vessels." The collision with the iceberg at 11:40 pm sounded to Gibson like a "long, drawn, sickening scrunch". After going to investigate, she fetched her mother when she saw Titanic's deck beginning to list as water flooded into the ship's boiler rooms.

Two of the bridge players, Frederic Seward and William Sloper, accompanied Gibson and her mother to the lifeboats. The group boarded lifeboat no. 7, the first to be launched. Around 27 other people were on board the boat when it was lowered at 12:40 am, just over an hour after the collision. The lifeboat's plug could not be found, causing water to gush in until, as Gibson later put it, "this was remedied by volunteer contributions from the lingerie of the women and the garments of men." Around 1,500 people were still aboard Titanic when she sank, throwing them into freezing water where they soon died of hypothermia. As they struggled in the water, Gibson heard what she described as a "terrible cry that rang out from people who were thrown into the sea and others who were afraid for their loved ones." The sinking deeply affected her; according to Sloper, she became "quite hysterical and kept repeating over and over so that people near us could hear her, "I'll never ride in my little grey car again."" The occupants of the lifeboat were finally rescued at 6:15 am by the RMS Carpathia and taken to New York.