In the early hours of April 15, 1912, the "unsinkable" Titanic slid into the icy waters of the North Atlantic, carrying 1,500 souls to a watery grave. This is familiar history. What is not as widely known is that the first inquiry into the sinking of the Titanic was held not in London, but in Washington, owing to the number of Americans -- including some very prominent Americans -- who lost their lives in the disaster.

One of the survivors who gave evidence at the Senate hearings on the sinking was a Mrs. D.H. Bishop. Her testimony, quoted below, may be found in the excellent anthology, In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century. To me, Mrs. Bishop's simple words are as gripping as any movie version of how the great ship went down.

"We did not begin to understand the situation till we were perhaps a mile or more away from the Titanic. Then we could see the rows of lights along the decks beging to slant gradually upward from the bow ... The sinking was so slow that you could not perceive the lights of the deck changing their position. The slant seemed to be greater about every quarter of an hour. That was the only difference.

"In a couple of hours, though, she began to go down more rapidly. Then the fearful sight began. The people in the ship were just beginning to realize how great their danger was. When the forward part of the ship dropped suddenly at a faster rate, so that the upward slope became marked, there was a sudden rush of passengers on all the decks towards the stern. It was like a wave ...

"The panic went on, it seemed, for an hour. Then suddenly the ship seemed to shoot up out of the water and stand there perpendicularly. It seemed to us that it stood upright in the water for four full minutes.

"Then it began to slide gently downwards. Its speed increased as it went down head first so that the stern shot down with a rush.

"The lights continued to burn till it sank. We could see the people packed densely in the stern till it was gone.

"As the ship sank, we could hear the screaming a mile away. Gradually it became fainter and fainter and died away. Some of the lifeboats that had room for more might have gone to their rescue, but that would have meant that those who were in the water would have swarmed aboard and sunk her."