Titanic: A Survivor's Story by Archibald Gracie Page A

the rest of you think we ought to pray?” The man who made the suggestion asked what the religion of the others was. Each man called out his religion. One was a Catholic, one a Methodist, one a Presbyterian. It was decided the most appropriate prayer for all of us was the Lord’s Prayer. We spoke it over in chorus, with the man who first suggested that we pray as the leader.’
    Referring to this incident in his sermon on ‘The Lessons of the Great Disaster,’ the Revd Dr Newell Dwight Hillis, of Plymouth Church, says: ‘When Col. Gracie came up, after the sinking of the Titanic , he says that he made his way to a sunken raft. The submerged little raft was under water often, but every man, without regard to nationality, broke into instant prayer. There were many voices, but they all had one signification – their sole hope was in God. There were no millionaires, for millions fell away like leaves; there were no poor; men were neither wise nor ignorant; they were simply human souls on the sinking raft; the night was black and the waves yeasty with foam, and the grave where the Titanic lay was silent under them, and the stars were silent over them! But as they prayed, each man by that inner light saw an invisible Friend walking across the waves. Henceforth, these need no books on Apologetics to prove there is a God. This man who has written his story tells us that God heard the prayers of some by giving them death, and heard the prayers of others equally by keeping them in life; but God alone is great!’
    The lesson thus drawn from the incident described must be well appreciated by all my boat-mates who realized the utter helplessness of our position, and that the only hope we then had in life was in our God, and as the Revd Dr Hillis says: ‘In that moment the evanescent, transient, temporary things dissolved like smoke, and the big, permanent things stood out – God, Truth, Purity, Love, and Oh! how happy those who were good friends with God, their conscience and their record.’
    We all recognize the fact that our escape from a watery grave was due to the conditions of wind and weather. All night long we prayed that the calm might last. Towards morning the sea became rougher, and it was for the two-fold purpose of avoiding the ice-cold water, 1 and also to attract attention, that we all stood up in column, two abreast, facing the bow. The waves at this time broke over the keel, and we maintained a balance to prevent the escape of the small volume of air confined between sea and upset boat by shifting the weight of our bodies first to port and then to starboard. I believe that the life of everyone of us depended upon the preservation of this confined air-bubble, and our anxious thought was lest some of this air might escape and deeper down our overloaded boat would sink. Had the boat been completely turned over, compelling us to cling to the submerged gunwale, it could not have supported our weight, and we should have been frozen to death in the ice-cold water before rescue could reach us. My exertions had been so continuous and so strenuous before I got aboard this capsized boat that I had taken no notice of the icy temperature of the water. We all suffered severely from cold and exposure. The boat was so loaded down with the heavy weight it carried and it became partly submerged, and the water washed up to our waists as we lay in our reclining position. Several of our companions near the stern of the boat, unable to stand the exposure and strain, gave up the struggle and fell off.
    After we had left the danger zone in the vicinity of the wreck, conversation between us first developed, and I heard the men aft of me discussing the fate of the Captain. At least two of them, according to their statements made at the time, had seen him on this craft of ours shortly after it was floated from the ship. In the interviews already referred to, Harry Senior the fireman, referring to the same overturned boat, said: ‘The