PIKE CO, Mo — Two Pike County women were crucial to telling the story of the Titanic disaster, and both described the horrific cries of doomed passengers.

May Birkhead of Louisiana and Elisabeth Robert of Clarksville provided captivating insights of the tragedy on April 15, 1912.

Robert was 43 years old and living in St. Louis at the time. She was returning to America on Titanic with three others, and vividly remembered the ship hitting an iceberg.

“I was lying in my cabin awake when the crash came,” Robert said. “I arose and called to my daughter and niece to dress, and we all went up on deck, but even then they were beginning to load the lifeboats. We got seats in one, thanks to the men who stood back to make room for us.”

Birkhead was a successful 29-year-old Louisiana businesswoman who was on her way to Europe with an aunt aboard Carpathia, which would pick up the Robert party and most other survivors.

Birkhead’s account is still haunting, as when she described why some survivors were singing as they paddled away in lifeboats.

“This was in part to keep their ears and minds closed to the awful cries for help which came from Titanic when it became clear that the ship was going down,” she wrote.

Fate had helped Birkhead land the job. Earlier that year, she’d met a reporter from the New York Herald, who was interviewing people who knew politician and presidential candidate Champ Clark of Bowling Green.

Birkhead told the scribe she would be on Carpathia. After the iceberg tore a gash in the vessel, the reporter wired Birkhead and convinced her to interview survivors.

Circumstance also played a role in Robert being aboard Titanic. The trip was a way to alleviate sorrow from the death four months earlier of her second husband, Edward. She was accompanied by a daughter, Georgette; a niece, Elisabeth Walton Allen; and the family maid, Emilie Kreuchen. Robert recalled the torturous shrieks.

“It sounded as if hundreds of throats were calling for help,” she said.

Titanic had 20 lifeboats – which could accommodate a little over half of the 2,224 aboard – but many were not filled. Women and children were loaded first. The one holding the Robert party was among the last put to sea.

“These poor souls say after leaving Titanic in the lifeboats that the cries for help of those left to go down were the most harrowing.” Birkhead reported. “They will never forget them if they live for a thousand years, and some can’t sleep at night for hearing those awful cries.”

“The shrieks of the steerage passengers (left behind) were awful and heart-rending,” Robert confirmed.

The boat the four were in was the first picked up by Carpathia, which made it safely back to New York on April 18 with 705 survivors. It isn’t clear if Robert and Birkhead crossed paths.

Robert moved to Clarksville in the 1920s to manage the family’s estate, Oakland. She would spend the rest of her life there, dying at 87 on Jan. 15, 1956.

After her exclusive Titanic stories for the Herald, Birkhead continued in journalism. She never married or had children, and died in New York at 59 on Oct. 28, 1941. Her grave can be found in Louisiana’s Riverview Cemetery.

Allen reinforced accounts of the panic that happened when Titanic finally slipped beneath the waves.

“Then, the screams began, and seemed to last eternally.”

 

CUTLINE FOR PHOTO:

Stephanie Dobelmann records a remembrance of Titanic survivor and Clarksville resident Elisabeth Robert at KJFM Radio. Another script featuring Louisiana’s May Birkhead, who chronicled the stories of many survivors, was recorded by Kaylee Davis. Titanic sank on April 15, 1912.

HEADSHOTS OF May Birkhead and Elisabeth Robert