Sarah Daniels returned to the Boat Deck, where several lifeboats were half filled with women and children whose eyes were fixed on husbands and fathers who stood nearby, silent, solemn, nodding encouragingly. A seaman grabbed her arm and steered her toward the lifeboats. She resisted, but he managed to drag her a few feet before she broke away, shouting, “I have to look after the Allisons!”
Gently, he told her, “I’ll make sure that the Allisons are safe.”
Sarah looked into his eyes. He seemed to mean it. She held out her hand. He helped her into Lifeboat No. 8.
Mr. and Mrs. Isidor Straus came up to the Boat Deck warmly dressed: she in a fur coat, he in a fur-lined overcoat in which he carried a silver flask and a silver bottle containing smelling salts. They had been married for thirty-one years, during which time Mr. Straus and his brother had bought Macy’s department store and turned it into a retail phenomenon. Isidor Straus was the third-richest man on board, his wealth surpassed only by that of John Jacob Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim.
Mr. Straus was sixty-seven; Ida, his wife, was sixty-one—considerable ages at a time when life expectancy was 48.4 years for men and 51.8 for women. Throughout their married life, they had been inseparable. Ida Straus was fiercely dedicated to her husband and their six children, so much so that in his will Mr. Straus had urged her to use her inheritance to “be a little selfish.”
They had come on deck with their maid, Ellen Bird, a sedate thirty-one-year-old Londoner recently hired when Ida Straus had been unable to find a French maid to bring back to the States.
As they walked up to Lifeboat No. 8, Mrs. Straus told Ellen to step in. “I will follow you,” she said.
When Ellen was safely seated, an officer took Mrs. Straus’s arm and helped her onto the gunwale. There, she paused; a moment later she stepped back onto the deck and went to her husband’s side. “We have been living together for many years,” she said. “Where you go, I go.”
Isidor Straus implored his wife to get into the boat. Another first-class passenger, Hugh Woolner, begged her to change her mind. They could not persuade her. “I will not leave him,” she said.
Woolner took Mr. Straus aside. “I’m sure nobody would object,” he told him, “to an old gentleman like you getting in.”
Isidor Straus shook his head. “I will not go before the other men,” he said.
Did Isidor and Ida Straus comprehend what was at stake? It seems they did, for a moment later Mrs. Straus walked back to Lifeboat No. 8, removed her fur coat, and handed it to her maid, Ellen. “Wear this,” she said. “It will be cold in the lifeboat, and I won’t be needing it anymore.”
One by one, they entered Lifeboat No. 8.
Ella White was lifted in, with extreme care, by two young sailors who took pains not to bump her sprained ankle and then tucked a thick woolen blanket around her. Caroline Bonnell was escorted by Washington Augustus Roebling II, the thirty-one-year-old grandson of the architect of the Brooklyn Bridge. Roebling was one of the men in first class who adhered to the custom of the day that required gentlemen to make themselves responsible for “unprotected ladies.”
After placing Caroline in the boat, he guided Natalie and her mother, Mollie Wick, to where Captain Smith was standing, ready to help them in. Mrs. Wick gazed at her husband. Roebling put an arm around her. “You will be back with us on the ship again soon,” he said.