After spotting a thread about Mrs. Shuman, I couldn't keep myself from sharing the following tidbit.
First, I absolutely agree with Darren's explanation of how Eleanor "inspired" Rose.
A while back, I came across a letter that was written by Eleanor Johnson Shuman long after the disaster (the contents are based on what Eleanor's mother told Eleanor when she was growing up). I re-typed the letter and saved it to my computer. What follows is what I typed (copied from a Word document).
Mrs. Shuman's original letter (which I have a crude photocopy of) contained some small, superficial errors that I left when I re-typed the thing. If anyone wants to know if an error in the following is due to a mistake I made or one Mrs. Shuman made, e-mail me and I'll check.
I hope some of you guys will find this interesting:
“I was born in Saint Charles, Illinois on September 23, 1910. My parents were Oscar and Alice Johnson. My father was born in Sweden and my mother in Finland. I have one older brother Harold. One day my mother received a letter from Finland. Her father was very ill and he wanted to see her before he died. Mom packed up Harold and me and went to Finland. In 1911 it was not that easy to travel. She had to take a train to New York and a ship to Europe. Just imagine how difficult it would be for a 25 year old woman, who could barely speak any English, and two small children (Harold was 3 and I was only 9 months old).
“By the time we reached Finland my grandfather had died. We spent the next nine months visiting relatives in Finland and Sweden. I had my first birthday in Finland. While we were in Sweden we met two young women who wanted to come to America. When we arrived in Southampton, England, we found out that there was coal strike and our ship was not going to sail. We were told that we could book passage on the Titanic.
“On the night of April 14 we were in our cabin. Harold was asleep in his bunk. When the Titanic hit the iceberg, Harold was thrown to the floor. We did not know what was happening until a dining room steward came to our cabin and told us to put on our life jackets, the ship was sinking. We did not have time to take any of our belongings, mom didn’t even have time to put shoes on me. He lead us up to the boat deck. Mom got into the life boat first, then somebody handed me to my mother. I was crying. Harold was still on deck with Elin Braf, one of the two Swedish girls traveling with us, who was afraid to get into the life boat. They started lowering the life boat, then mom started screaming. A man grabbed Harold from Elin and dropped him into the lifeboat. That was the last time we saw Elin. In the short time that mom had known Elin they had become very good friends. Mom was very upset by Elin’s loss and she never forgot her.
“In the lifeboat it was very cold. There was water in the bottom of the boat and mom’s feet were wet. Somebody gave us a blanket to wrap around us. We were in lifeboat collapsible ‘D’ which was the last lifeboat launched at 2:05 am just before the Titanic sank at 2:20 am.
“We spent five hours in the life boat before we were rescued by the
Carpathia. I was hoisted onto the ship in a mail sack. On the
Carpathia somebody made me some booties out of a blanket.
“When we reached New York they thought we were immigrants and did not want to let us in. Mother, with her broken English, had a hard time convincing the immigration officials that we were United States citizens. After they finally let us in they took us to a hospital. Mother was suffering from pneumonia.
“While all this was happening, my father was at home in Saint Charles, and he did not know that we were on the Titanic. We were scheduled to sail on another ship. He found out that we were on the Titanic when he received a telegram saying that we were all safe. He rushed to New York to get us and bring us home.
“I have been asked many times if I got anything off the Titanic but the only thing that I got off with was a dirty diaper.”
