(dictated aboard the Carpathia to Dr. Frank Blackmarr, April ?, 1912)
        (courtesy of James Harper)

    "I left Queenstown with two girls from my own hometown who were placed in my charge to go to America.  After the accident, we were all held down in steerage which seemed to be a lifetime.  All this time, we knew that the water was coming up and up rapidly.  Finally some of the women and children were let up, but, as you know, we had quite a number of hot-headed Italians and other peoples who got crazy and made for the stairs.  These men tried to rush the stairway, pushing and crowding and pulling the women down.  Some of them with weapons in their hands.  I saw two dagos shot and some that took punishment from the officers.  After a bit, I got up on one of the decks and threw a big door over the side, I caught hold of some ropes that had been used setting free a lifeboat.  Up this I climbed to the next deck because the stairs were so crowded that I could not get through.  I finally got up to the top deck and made for the front.  The water was just covering the upper deck at the bridge and it was easy to slide because she had such a tip.
    My God, if I could only forget those women's cries.  I reached a collapsible boat that was fastened to the deck by two rings.  It could not be moved.
    During that brief time that I worked on cutting one of those ropes, the collapsible was crowded with people hanging upon the edges.  The Titanic gave a lurch downward and we were in the water up to our hips.  She rose again slightly, and I succeeded in cutting the second rope which held her stern.  Another lurch threw this boat myself off and away from the ship into the water.  I fell upon one of the oars and fell into a mass of people.  Everything I touched seemed to be women's hair.  Children crying, women screaming and their hair in their face.  My God, if I could only forget those hands and faces that I touched!
    As I looked over my shoulder, as I was still hanging to this oar, I could see the enormous funnels of the Titanic being submerged in the water.  These poor people that covered the water were sucked down in those funnels, each of which was twenty-five feet in diameter, like flies.  I managed to get away and succeeded in reaching the same boat I had tried to set free from the deck of the Titanic.   I climbed upon this, and with the other men balanced ourselves in water to our hips until we were rescued.  People who came up beside us and begged to get on this upturned boat.  As a matter of saving ourselves were obliged to push them off.  One man was alongside and asked if he could get upon it.  We told him that if he did, we would all go down.  His reply was "God Bless You.  Goodbye."
    I have been in the hospital for three days but I don't seem to be able to forget those men, women and children who gradually slid from our raft into the water."

                    Signed:    Eugene Daly
                                Collapsible B

James Harper had the following to say, regarding the above letter:

The "Steerage Story" was basically a 'dump' of terrible events and memories that had occurred only a few hours or days before. Daily did not apparently really organize his thoughts when this was dictated.  His later letters were more organized and coherent, and in fact did not mention some details mentioned in the "Steerage Story", notably how he got off the ship and the trauma of the women's' hair adrift around him in the water, and 'people being sucked down the funnels like flies".  It is quite possible his mind later erased these impressions from his rememberances.. "My God, if I could only forget.....". Also, Blackmarr himself might have edited it slightly as he recorded Daly's words. So I believe the sequences described were not in the same order as they were presented in the letter.

Although it is possible that this or a second shooting occurred in the staircase that Daly may have seen, this is obviously not likely - but possible, of course.  (Ala in the Cameron movie, but with possibly more serious effects) I suspect that this shooting actually happened on the Boat Deck as was reported by others and  by  himself in his later letter published in the London Daily Telegraph of 4 May 1912  He described therein "the officer shooting two men dead who tried to get into a boat."and mentioning hearing a third shot and seeing the officer lying on the deck. He also said that he didn't see the officer actually shoot
himself, but was told about what happened afterwards.  (TNLO, Ch10,pp101-102).

The Daly letter is part of a longer article by James Harper, "Dr. Frank Blackmarr's Remarkable Scrapbook", published in the Titanic Commutator, 3rd Quarter 1998.