I don't know what the temperature was, but I understand that the water around an iceberg is cold. I don't know whether it's that the iceberg makes it cold, or that the icebergs drift along with the cold water. Whichever, the people in the water were doomed, whether or not they could swim. I would have tried, anyway, I can't imagine staying on a sinking boat. Seems like I've read that some people survived by floating on deck chairs, but now I have to look that up.
<edit>Yes, but only until they were able to get into life boats. Here is a passage about the passengers whose fate I found most poignant:
>>Steerage passenger Alma Paulson died with her four children, ages two to eight, whose names are listed on her headstone. In a twist of fate, it is now believed her two-year-old-son, Gosta, was the only child whose remains were found. That child, unidentified at the time of burial, is buried only feet away from Paulson under a headstone that reads, "Erected to the Memory of an Unknown Child Whose Remains Were Recovered after the Disaster to the Titanic."<<
So much for "women and children first." We should say, "upper-class women and children first, upper-class men second, and the devil take the hindmost."
canoe.ca |
