An account from Titanic survivor Peter Dennis Daly

A first class passenger returning to his home in Lima, Peru

Cathedral and Plaza, Lima, Peru 1905. Internet Archive Book Images via Wikimedia Commons

Note: The article had a different spelling of Peter Dennis Daly's name.

“P.D. Daley, of Lima, Peru, Relates Thrilling Happenings Aboard Ill-fated Ship from Time It Struck Iceberg Until It Plunged To the Bottom of the Ocean”

The Times Tribune, Scranton, Pennsylvania 

By C. Fred Henne, Times Staff Correspondent

April 19, 1912

“Insufficient boats and a sense of security that the ship was unsinkable was the combination which resulted in the awful death list of the Titanic, according to P.D. Daley, of Lima, Peru, a passenger on the Titanic, stopping at the Victoria hotel, who related a thrilling narrative to The Times man half an hour after he landed from the Carpathia. 

“Daley is a merchant and a man of means. He was returning from a business trip, and was asleep in bed when the crash came. 

“The Titanic was going about twenty three knots an hour, Mr. Daley learned, and when she hit the berg chunks of ice about the size of billiard balls were scattered over the deck. Most thought hte boat unsinkable and remained until the last minute, Daley among them, according to his own story. Lookouts on the ship sighted the iceberg, he said the passengers learned, but too late to avoid the smash. 

Officer a Suicide

“The first officer, or Captain Smith, he was sure it was told him, fired a bullet into his heart in suicide. Other officers stood by with drawn pistols to enforce order. Discipline was good, however, Daley said, though there were among the men some cravens who fought for the lifeboats, which were too few to take care of the passengers, and at that not filled to capacity, indicating lack of order in some instances. In his boat, for illustration, were four passengers and ten or twelve members of the crew, most of them stokers. 

“There were men thrown bodily into the sea, at the command of officers who manned the boats, to make place for the women and little children. 

“This is Mr. Daley’s own story given to The Times: 

By P.D. Daley

“‘I was asleep in bed when suddenly there came a crash which awoke me. There wasn’t much noise. To me it sounded like a lot of billiard balls striking each other. I pulled on my top coat over my pajamas and put on my books. 

“‘I was a first cabin Deck E passenger, and on the way up to find out what was going on met a number of young fellows who didn’t appear disturbed. They carried in their hands places of ice of various sizes and told us we had hit an iceberg. 

“‘My bedroom steward, poor fellow, who was lost afterward, said there wasn’t any particular harm, because the ship was unsinkable. But in fifteen minutes we were ordered to put on the lifebelts. There were plenty of these and everybody put them on. 

“‘The officers were going around among the passengers and I saw Captain Smith issuing orders through a megaphone. There was considerable confusion towards the end, when we knew the ship was doomed. But for hours after the crash I suggested to the steward that we go down to my room to get my belongings, but he informed me that it was impossible that the bedroom was half filled with water by then. Nobody, however, thought for a moment that there was danger of sinking. 

“‘They said that the boat could not sink, no matter how seriously it was damaged, so everyone was reassured. Three quarters of an hour after the ship hit the berg–it was 11:15 or so, because I looked at my watch–the women and children were ordered in the boats. 

“‘The men stood off until they got the women off. ‘Ladies first,’ they said. ‘Ladies first,’ it was when anyone showed signs of violating this rule. Few tried it, because for one reason they thought it was impossible for the boat to sink. The compartments would surely hold, they figured. 

Men Thrown Into Sea

“‘They were all sent off with loads of passengers, though some of the male passengers had to be thrown into the sea to make room for the ladies. This was by the orders of the men in command. There didn’t appear to be so much excitement. A certain lot of course, were panic-stricken and ran from place to palace, not knowing which they to run. 

“‘While all this was going on a report spread through the ship that an officer had shot himself. I think they said it was the chief officer, or the captain, but we heard that the captain had been flung from his position and landed on his head, fracturing his skull and causing his death. 

“‘Standing along the rail, I could see the water coming up rapidly. It rose and the passengers became panic stricken. There were a hundred of them hugging the sides of the captain’s and the officers’ quarters not knowing what to do. The ship went down lower and realized that it was striking. Twenty times I thought to myself that I would never see land again. 

“‘I saw it was time to do something and jumped into the water. Hundreds did likewise. I couldn’t swim, but, with the aid of the life preserver, paddled around in the water, how long I do not know. A lifeboat–it was one of the collapsible kind–and like all of the other boats, it was not filled to its capacity–more should have been in the boats. There was another collapsible boat. They had difficulty in keeping it right side up, and we were capsized time and time again. One poor fellow had both feet frozen. 

“‘I was delirious, but I remember them saying, “that fellow’s dead, throw him overboard.”

“‘One woman had died. I was pinned under some wreckage in the boat and the body of the woman who died rested on my legs for a long time.’

“Daley is black and blue, and bruised and lacerated from his ankles to his thighs, swollen and sore. He was one of the last to leave the sinking ship and felt himself being drawn under near the boat by suction, when he grabbed something that stuck out of the water. He lost consciousness almost until he was dragged into the boat. 

“‘There were 710 saved,’ he said. ‘It was absurd that a boat the size of the Titanic should have had so few lifeboats. The Titanic sent rockets of distress in the air hours before the ship sank. 

“‘When we got our on the water away from where the Titanic went down, and we began to realize our position, we saw that the night was clear and calm. There were boats, far out, but they moved in a circle, rowed by the men and when the men became exhausted there were women who took to the oars. 

“‘I shall never forget the terribleness of it all, especially as the boat dipped into the ocean and went down to its grave. We heard moans and shrieks, frenzied and piercing, from those on board. There were women who remained on the decks. As the ship sank they refused to leave without their husbands. Some had to be forced into the boats against their wills. We floated around in the sea for six hours. When the Carpathia was sighted everything was dark about us. We had no lights. Before the Titanic sank we expected the Baltic and as the Carpathia’s lights lit up the waters we thought it was her. 

Boarding the Carpathia

“‘Boats put out from her and toward us. Most of us went up ladders, but there were those who from exhaustion and injury were slung aboard in a sling that hung over the side by ropes on board the Carpathia. They treated us kindly; they wrapped us in rugs, blankets and garments that people contributed. The smoking rooms were turned into sleeping apartments, passengers gave up their bunks for those who were hurt, and a hospital was improvised. Men slept in chairs and on tables so that the 710 could be made comfortable. Before we entered the bay, a fund for those in steerage and other parts of the ship who lost their all was raised. Mrs. Astor put her name to the subscription list for a substantial sub.’

“Asked how it came that the Titanic hit the iceberg, Daley said that he didn’t know, but that many passengers agreed that the ship’s lookouts had detected the ice ahead but too late to avoid striking it. He didn’t know what this belief was based on, but the information seemed pretty well fixed in his mind that it so happened. 

“‘We were probably going twenty knots or more when we hit,’ he said. He didn’t think the Titanic was trying to break a record, but did think it was trying to run on schedule time, expecting to land Wednesday. In the twenty-four hours ending at noon Sunday, he thought it was, the ship’s log showed the day’s run was 546 miles.”

A fun fact from the biography of Peter Dennis Daly is that he enjoyed playing chess by mail. Here is a picture of a Soviet postcard for correspondence chess from the USSR government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Further reading

Biography of Peter Dennis Daley https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/peter-dennis-daly.html

A video on Youtube about P.D. Daley with his descendents (it is in Spanish but you can choose auto translate for the closed captioning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57vw6ae95bU