HOSPITALS SENT AMBULANCES AND NURSES—INVESTIGATION BY THE SENATE DECIDED UPON
At 8 o’clock automobiles and carriages containing relatives and friends of the survivors began arriving at the White Star pier. When the Carpathia was sighted coming up the river at 8:45 more than 500 automobiles and other vehicles were packed within the police lines.
Significant of the tragic side of the event was the frequent arrivals of ambulances and auto trucks from all the big department stores, filled with cots, invalid chairs and surgical appliances. Right of way was given the ambulances and they were permitted to park directly alongside the pier entrance.
From St. Vincent’s Hospital came twelve black-robed sisters to nurse the injured, and all the ambulances of the institution except one. The full surgical staff of the hospital also was in attendance. Ambulances and surgeons were on hand from St. Luke’s Hospital, Bellevue, Roosevelt and Flower hospitals, and a great number of physicians who had volunteered their services.
The Sisters of Charity found work to do before the arrival of the Carpathia. Women in the throng awaiting relatives became hysterical with dread and anxiety and the black-robed sisters went to them, put their arms about them and comforted them and administered restoratives.
Eva Booth, commander of the Salvation Army, and fifty assistants, who meet all incoming vessels to minister to immigrants, were allowed within the police lines, but they were turned back at the entrance of the Cunard pier and only Miss Booth and three of her party were admitted.
Curiosity seekers standing in front of the Cunard piers at 7 A.M. to await
the Carpathia returning with survivors from the Titanic.
Among those on the pier were six members of the New York Stock Exchange, with $20,000, which had been collected on the floor of the exchange. They had instructions to use the money among the steerage passengers in any way they saw fit.
The women of the relief committee to look after the steerage passengers arrived in autos and theater buses, in which the sufferers were to be taken to hospitals. Gimbel Brothers sent all their delivery wagons to the pier, laden with first aid appliances and cots, and placed them at the disposal of the women’s relief committee. In addition, the firm announced they would provide quarters for two hundred sufferers overnight in their store.
Relatives and friends of the survivors had reached the pier before half past eight o’clock, but for another half hour automobiles arrived containing physicians and nurses and loaded with first aid appliances. The surgeons and nurses were in working attire, the women in white gowns and caps, the surgeons in white duck trousers and jackets.
A party of four surgeons and ten nurses arrived in three automobile buses and as they hurried to the pier one of them said they had been sent by Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt.
In spite of the number of physicians that had reached the pier at 8:30, it was found there was a dearth of nurses and hurried calls were sent out to all the city institutions and private hospitals and nurses’ exchanges. In response to these calls nurses began arriving in taxicabs and autos, and before the Carpathia was warped into its pier there were more than two hundred nurses awaiting to go on board.
Ropes dotted with green lights were stretched for seventyfive yards in front of the piers to hold back the throngs. No one without a special permit was allowed beyond these ropes.
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company had a special train waiting at its station at Thirty-fourth Street and a number of taxicabs to convey survivors desiring to go to Philadelphia to their friends.
News that the Carpathia was outside of the harbor and rapidly approaching sent thousands of persons to vantage points along the city’s waterfront. At the Battery, the first point on Manhattan Island which the rescue ship would pass, a crowd estimated at ten thousand persons assembled. Other vantage points further uptown were crowded with spectators eager to catch the first glimpse of the approaching Carpathia.
Senator William Alden Smith of Michigan and Senator Newlands of Nevada arrived in New York at 9 P.M. April 18 to summon survivors of the Titanic and officials of the International Mercantile Marine to testify before the Senate subcommittee appointed to investigate the disaster of the sea.
When the senators arrived at the Pennsylvania station they were informed that the Carpathia was at its pier. The committee had intended boarding a revenue cutter and going down the bay to meet the Carpathia and boarding it. Upon learning this the senators secured cabs and announced they were going direct to the pier.
