Name
Lifeboat from Titanic
Lifeboat to Carpathia
Confidence Level
Svensson, Mr Johan Cervin ? ? 1.00

 


Mr Svensson wrote a letter in later years (reprinted in Not My Time to Die, by Lilly Setterdahl, pp. 187-89), and though he does mention his time on Titanic, he gives no details on how he escaped the ship. His mention of seeing Ismay at the boats leads one to believe he was on the starboard side.

The Davenport (Iowa) Weekly Democrat and Leader of May 2, 1912 relates:
     "One of the officers on the lost Titanic deliberately placed the muzzle of a revolver into his mouth and blew his brains out is the assertion of Cervin Sensson. ....  He adds there was considerable shooting on deck and that even after his lifeboat left the big vessel he heard numerous other shots."

An account in The Daily Freeman-Tribune
(Kingston NY) for April 25, 1912  says:
    "At first there was great crowding and fighting for the places in the boats. ....
He was in life boat No. 7 with twenty-nine other passengers, all women save two. Although there was room for at least twenty other people In the boat, according to the boy's story, no effort was made to rescue those still living In the water save two men whom they took aboard to help man the boat."
Some of this does sound similar to what we believe about #7.  We think around 28 people in it as lowered, and we know that 6 people were moved from #5 to #7 to help row.  But the statement about crowding and fighting does not sound like #7 at all.  Is
he describing the aft port side of the boat deck? It does sound reminiscent of what happened around boats #14 and #12.

The Alcester Union (Alcester, SD) of May 3, 1912 has him being pushed back from four boats before getting into the fifth, which had fifty people, mostly women and children.

We do not know for sure that an officer shot himself that night, but most accounts relating to an officer suicide or late shootings are in the last minutes during the loading of Collapsibles C and A on the starboard side.

Forward?  Aft?  Port?  Starboard?   His accounts are all over the place, and we could not determine which, if any, were correct, so we had to list him as unknown lifeboat.