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Speaking About the Disaster

Black and white archival photograph of a man in a suit, and a woman in a dress, cardigan, hat, and necklace standing in front of Christmas tree covered in tinsel and ornaments.

Kitty Cantwell’s daughter, Joan Dawson, interviewed by Terra Barrett.

She said, “My darling, that was too sad”, she said, “to talk about.” I think that was the thing that made her so sad when she lost her friend, you know.

It was terrible honey, you could just imagine and everything so black. She said, “It was terrible, all you could see,” she said, “was just people just going over the rail. Terrible. And nothing there.”

And like she said, you know, she said, “The sea was so bad at the time,” she said, “people just tumbled over the rails.” She said, “The waves came,” she said, “and just took them, took part of the boat, the railing, took that with them too.” An awful lot of them were never found after.

But she said, “The next morning,” she said, “when it was daybreak, couple of days, the next morning or the day after,” and she said, “when I looked out,” she said, “there were a lot of music sheets and everything like that because that was an ocean liner.” And that, she said, was floating on the water. And she said, “money and everything.”