When Nancy's grandmother "Robertha "Bertha" Watt" was 12 she and her mother "Bessie" were moving to Portland, Ore., to join her architect father and they were traveling from Aberdeen Scotland by ship. The date was April 10, 1912 and the ship they had booked passage on was the "Titanic". Obviously, Bertha and her mother survived the ordeal and they have been interviewed many times over the decades, but the best interview I have read was from the Province Newspaper, May 17, 1975, Vancouver B.C., Canada By Aileen Campbell. Here then is that interview.
"Down went the Titanic ... and the lights went out, row by row. Mrs. Bertha Marshall's personal story."
"Then about 2 a.m. we heard the boilers burst and then she seemed to break in two and slid into the water, leaving nothing to be seen . . . we were then left entirely alone and in the dark except for the stars ..."
A 12-year-old's account of the Titanic sinking.
". . , . Go down and get Bertha right away - I see a first class lifeboat going off," the man said quietly to the woman from Aberdeen, who had heard a "bump" and gone on deck to investigate.
Bertha Watt, aged 12, traveling with her mother, Bessie, was asleep in her second-class stateroom aboard the SS. Titanic when her mother gently roused her. "We've got to get up and go on deck. They're having trouble. We have to put our life jackets on."
Bertha Watt Marshall, widow of city dentist Dr. Leslie F. Marshall, is now a great-grandmother of 75. Sitting in her Kerrisdale apartment, she noted that a recent news story told of an Englishman who "owns" the wreck of the 46,328 ton liner and hopes to raise it from 1,760 fathoms of Atlantic Ocean.
"My husband and I talked with a famous salvage expert and lecturer on a cruise a few years ago who believed it would be impossible to raise the Titanic," she said. '"He said she is down in a crevice - there are mountains below the water as well as above. "I don't think it's possible, either. In our lifeboat we heard a great crack as if she broke in two as she went under."
Mrs. Marshall said in an interview she doesn't often think of that night on the Atlantic when she sat in a long-sleeved nightie under her fur lined tweed coat watching the "unsinkable" Titanic disappear. She has never told the story for publication before, and many of her friends don't realize she is one of 29 known survivors throughout the world who are still alive. "I never dwelt on it - perhaps because I had the mother I had. I consider myself darned lucky. I've had a very busy life raising a family and we were active in different organizations, the Yacht Club among them. I don't remember having fear of the water since.
"But I don't think when you have a date like that in your mind you ever completely forget it. It's sort of like losing somebody. You know the day they went. It's sort of imprinted on your mind." The anniversary of the sinking (April 15, 1912). ... a news item of the death of a survivor . . . stories throughout the year, about hopes to raise the ship - all can trigger a memory of those eight hours in a lifeboat. .... her mother reassuring her "oh, if this were a nice night on Loch Ness you'd just be out for a row" and telling her "don't worry honey, you weren't born to be drowned - you were born to be hanged..." .... a minister, fully dressed who had hidden under a seat in the lifeboat to emerge later with his "wee suit case and walking stick"; he "moaned" about his years of sermons being lost as the ship went under. ... the woman who wept for her husband and son; and the one who cried out, "all my jewels. .." .... old Paddy, the deckhand at the tiller, who talked about the stars; and told her when she thought she saw land, "no lass, that's an ice field. . ." . ... the standing, though the lifeboat carried only about 40, instead of 75. .." not room enough to sit because some had their feet up on the next bench ."
Bertha Watt Marshall said she and her mother were going to Portland, Ore., to join her architect father. "We were booked on the New York, a Cunard liner. They were on strike. Our passage was cancelled. We were staying with an aunt in London, waiting to sail, when my uncle came home and said, Oh Bess, you're in luck. I've got passage on a new ship for you. "We took the early train from London to Southampton. We were amidships, second class." A day or so out, passengers were given booklets with names of those in the same class. "My mother must have just stuffed it in the pocket of her tweed coat. When we were picked up by Carpathia, the officers borrowed it to radio the names of the second-class passengers to New York." "It's probably the only copy left," said Mrs. Marshall, who keeps it in a safety deposit box. "My mother was reading in her bunk. She heard a bump and went up on deck. She asked an officer what's the matter. He replied: Nothing, madam, go back to bed. She asked if it was usual to stop engines in the middle of the ocean."
Mrs. Marshall had made friends with an English girl, Marjorie Collyer. "Mr. Collyer came by and said to my mother: 'Go down and get Bertha right away.' I saw a first-class lifeboat going off. "We stood around on deck quite awhile. "I never really saw a panic. Just little groups. Maybe we got off early enough. But, depending on where you were, everybody saw different things. She was a big ship. Even in the lifeboat you see differently (than from another vantage point). My mother saw part of the iceberg when she first went on deck. I never saw it." Mrs. Marshall did recall one of four second-class lifeboats hanging over the side, full of men. The crew wouldn't lower the boat. "Some of the steerage passengers had come and rushed into it. The master of arms was standing at a little gate telling them they couldn't come up this way. A lot of them were foreigners who couldn't speak English. "We got into the third boat on our deck. Two had already gone. There were four on either side of the ship, at first-class level and again at second. "We heard them calling 'women and children this way.' "Probably 40 odd were in our boat. Two young men from our table had helped us in the boat. Mom said, 'come along'. There was room. But someone in uniform said, 'women and children.'
They lowered us. We thought they would stop at the other decks, but they didn't. We went right down to the water. The boats were stamped 'with 75 capacity.' There wasn't a boat let down full." Mr. Collyer, the father of her friend, went down on the Titanic. "It was probably 1 o'clock before we got in the lifeboat." (The Titanic struck the iceberg at11:45 p.m. Sunday, April 14, and went down less than three hours later at 2:20 a.m. Monday, April 15). "They put on everyone who happened to be there and lowered it," Mrs. Marshall said "There was nothing on the lifeboat but a keg of biscuits; no water, no liquor, no light. Nothing but the biscuits. I don't know if the first-class boats had all the things they needed. But if anyone was sick or collapsed in our boat, there was nothing to revive them with. It showed the disorganization. "We didn't find the rudder until we were out quite aways.
"I had a nightie tucked into a pair of panties, and house slippers. Luckily I had a fur lined coat. They lined them 'with squirrel bellies in those days. There was a fur collar. "They asked if anyone could row, and my mother said she could. That's how she spent the time - rowing or standing. "Some sat with their feet on the next bench. Paddy the helmsman was a dear old man. But he had no authority. He was just a deckhand. You get out there on the water, who's going to complain? There were no fights or anything like that." It was a lifeboat of strangers, she added. "A minister appeared out from under a seat. He must have gotten in before the lifeboat ever left the deck. He sat with his chin on his walking stick, moaning about the years of lost sermons as the ship went down. "One woman all but turned and flew at him - 'If you can give me back my husband and son, I'll pay for your sermons'."
Mrs. Marshall paused and. added thoughtfully, - "there were a lot of funny things." The lights started going out row by row. She went down at the nose first and kept on going." (In the account Mrs. Marshall wrote as a student for the Jefferson High School magazine later in Portland she recalled: "We heard many pistol shots and could see the people running hopelessly up and down the decks. We did not hear the band play.") "Some were crying in the lifeboat," she said in the interview. "One or two were hysterical. There was nothing anyone could do. You just kept going. We didn't row much, just enough to get far enough away from suction (of the Titanic when she went down). Then we puttered. "We had just to drift around until dawn, occasionally flicking a gentleman's cigar lighter to let the other boats see where we were. The fellow at the tiller was an old Irishman. He was wonderful . . . telling me about the stars. "It was calm. I don't remember slopping around in the boat and I've done a lot of boating since." She said about 4 a.m. they saw the lights of Carpathia. which picked up the Titanic survivors "but feared we could be crushed by an iceberg before it reached us, as there were many." "We didn't get on Carpathia until about 9 a.m. There was a rope ladder with a belt. My mother said 'go on, you can climb that.' I went up without the belt. The captain roared down: 'Don't let anyone come up without a belt on.
I still correspond with one of the stewards of the Carpathia. He's the last member of the ship's crew alive…lives outside Aberdeen. "We watched the other boats come in and one raft landed with seven people, three of whom survived the night. They were all practically frozen when brought aboard. She said one of the three, a woman, who had advised her two sons (young men) to jump from the Titanic, was sure they would turn up because they were "strong swimmers." They were never picked up and the mother succumbed as the ship docked in New York. Mrs. Marshall remembered two little French boys "who the father had stolen from his wife in France." "They were delightful children. I played with them. I spoke quite good French in those days. We saw the father buttoning their chinchilla coats on the deck (of Titanic). They wore beaver hats. The father got them in separate lifeboats." The father went down with the ship. The two boys went aboard Carpathia separately - one to be placed in first class, the other in steerage, Mrs. Marshall said.
Carpathia, with only two classes, was headed for a Mediterranean cruise. She said she was able to reunite the brothers on the ship. It was weeks before the mother in France knew the children were safe. "When we got aboard the Carpathia we were all handed a blue blanket and hot toddy for the adults. You hung onto the blanket, no matter where you went. "Next day mother asked for an extra one. She had left her purse but found a pound note in her pocket. She bought thread and pins. She made Marjorie and I a skirt. She put pleats in to help hide the word Cunard. I can see those skirts yet, with the separate tops, short sleeves and round neck. I wore it over my nightie. I had that skirt until the moths got it."
The scene at the pier in New York on the Thursday, she said, was "bedlam," with boys yelling up to the captain: "How many aboard." "My uncle, a contractor in New York, got a cab and away we went. "I give my mother a great deal of credit. She took me to Boston by boat right after, to visit an aunt and uncle. I never knew you could go by train. I'm sure she did it so I would see that all boats didn't sink. She told me I would go to sleep at night on the boat and wake up the next morning in Boston."
Mrs. Marshall said her father, once he knew his family was safe, urged them to visit with relatives in the East as planned before making the journey to Portland. "Monday morning when it came out in the papers (about Titanic's sinking), my Dad was going to the office," she said. "He had just received the telegraph that we had changed passage to the Titanic, that morning. I don't know why it was so delayed. When he got off the street car and read "Titanic sunk,' he wondered for a second where he had heard the name. He had good friends on the Oregonian (newspaper) staff and practically slept there until he knew we were safe." She said her mother's attitude in the lifeboat was "poor Daddy, he'll be so worried."
In the brief account Mrs. Marshall wrote for her school paper shortly after the event, she recalled that "as Titanic drew away from the wharf at Southampton. April 10, she broke the cable of the Philadelphia and almost had a collision with her." "An old girl who told fortunes at afternoon tea, said 'oh, that was an ill omen,' but nobody believed her," laughed Mrs. Marshall. The event did leave a mark for some years, however. "There were two stairways right near our cabin. Mother caught the steward just going to knock on my door, as she came down from the deck. For years I had nightmares of going up the opposite stairs to those my mother came down, and looking around madly on the deck. I would wake up crying, 'Momma . . .'."
An organization calling itself the Titanic Enthusiasts of America is dedicated to preserving the history and memory of the Titanic. Hundreds of active, associate and contributing members around the world, most born long after the Titanic went down, publish an official journal The Commutator. "Horrible name, isn't it enthusiasts," commented Mrs. Bertha Marshall, who attended the tenth anniversary of the group in Connecticut in 1973. There are only 29 actual survivors known to the group, she said. "But there could be more," said Mrs. Marshall. "On Carpathia, I saw a whole table full of babies. They could have grown up never knowing they were on the Titanic." She still has a copy of the New York Times of Tuesday, April 16, 1912, with the headline: "Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg ... 866 Rescued by Carpathia; probably 1250 perish . . . Ismay Safe . . . Biggest Liner Plunges to the Bottom at 2:20 a.m. . . . Rescuers There Too Late Except to Pick Up the Few Hundreds Who Took to the Lifeboats . . . Cunarder Carpathia Rushing to New York With the Survivors . . . Sea Search for Others „ . ."
* According to a news account of the day, the White Star Line, owner of the46,328-ton ship, telegraphed from New York to Liverpool: "Night perfectly clear, straight, no wind, sea calm. Had encountered no ice previously . . . 11:45 p.m. April 14, ship sighted low lying berg directly ahead. First officer star boarded helm, reversed full speed. Struck berg. "Closed all compartments. Struck berg bluff starboard bow, slight jar but grinding sound, evidently opening several compartments. Ship sank bow first 2:20 a.m. All boats away except one collapsible."
*Mrs. Marshall said the collapsibles had been folded before their paint was dry, making it difficult, if not impossible to open them properly. She noted that J. Bruce Ismay, head o£ the White Star Line, 'never poked his nose out" on board Carpathia. According to news accounts of the day, he asked to be allowed to return to England immediately rather than appear before an investigating committee at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. "I took the last lifeboat which pulled out from the Titanic," he was quoted as saying. Asked if any women and children were left aboard, he told the inquiry: "I'm sure I cannot say." At another point he was quoted as saying his conscience was clear.
The British luxury liner Titanic, struck an iceberg at 11:45 p.m. April 14, 1912, and sank less than three hours later with an estimated loss of 1,513 lives. The ship was on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York and the enormity of the tragedy still stirs the imagination today. A Vancouver woman, Mrs. Bertha Marshall, born in Scotland in 1899, was a child of 12 among the 700-odd survivors picked up by the liner Carpathia. Now a great-grand-mother of 75, she sat in her Kerrisdale apartment recently, reminiscing on those hours in the lifeboat, 63 years ago. Experts considered Titanic unsinkable but an iceberg ripped a 300-foot gash, rupturing five watertight compartments. The ship had only 1,178 lifeboat spaces for the 2,224 passengers. A year later an international convention ruled that ships must carry lifeboat space for all on board.
Died: 4 March 1993 - Vancouver, B.C., Canada
The Associated Press "Survivor of Titanic dies at 93" Vancouver, British Columbia
Bertha Marshall, a survivor of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic died at age 93. Her memories of the shipwreck were those of a sleepy 12-year-old who was awakened by her mother and told to say her prayers because the ship was in trouble.
"By the time we saw the iceburg the ship had partly gone past it, but it looked like a mountain," she told a reporter in 1985. "It was higher than the ship and had a sharp peak like a mountain."
Marshall died Thursday in a long term care home. She and her mother were aboard the ocean liner on their way to Oregon from Aberdeen, Scotland, to join her father when the ship, on its maiden voyage from England to New York , sank after hitting the iceberg. More than 1500 people died. There were 700 survivors.
A published report a year ago said 10 of them, including Marshall, were still alive. In the 1985 interview, Marshall said her most poignant memory of the sinking was that none of the lifeboats from the stricken liner were fully loaded. Marshall met her husband, Dr. Leslie Marshall, in Portland Ore., and moved to British Columbia in 1923.
She is survived by sons Dr. James of Portland, Dr. Robert of Mission, British Columbia and Dr. Donald of Vancouver, 16 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren.
