He gave me a slight shove, and I climbed unsteadily down the gangplank, clutching my satchel. We must have looked like a procession of ghosts.

At the customs checkpoint, an officer stopped me. “Name?”

“Delia Sweeney,” I said, “from Kilcross, County Donegal.” I waited nervously as he consulted the manifest, and then blurted out, “I sailed in second class, but I’ve lost my papers.”

He looked at me for a moment and then whispered, “It’s all right, love, go on ahead.”

He knew I was lying. He would have seen from the manifest that I was traveling third class. I thanked God that he had taken pity on me.

Thousands of people were waiting on the dock for the Carpathia to arrive. As I stepped down from the gangplank, I felt my legs go weak, and I had to stop and steady myself. I made the sign of the cross and thanked God that I was back on solid land. As I moved on into the midst of the crowd, a wall of noise enveloped me—wailing, screaming, shouting. Those who could squeezed in together in an enclosed waiting area, sheltering from the rain. From the level of noise, I could tell there were as many or more people waiting outside, all desperate for news of their loved ones. Many carried signs bearing the names of passengers in big letters.

As I pushed my way through the throng, I was surrounded by people calling out to me. Had I seen this one or that one? Some of their faces shone with anticipation, while others had the desperate look of someone still hoping for a miracle. Newspapermen demanded I tell them everything I remembered, while other bystanders shoved papers in my face for me to sign as a souvenir. I pushed forward, trying to ignore them.

Outside, the rain poured down, soaking the black streets and creating halos around the lamplights. I was wearing a pair of flimsy shoes a Carpathia passenger had given me, along with a thin coat. Within minutes I was soaked to the skin. I tried to look around, but my vision was blurred. Besides the noise, I was assaulted by smells. I was used to the odor of fish back in Donegal, but here it was overpowering. The stench mixed with the aromas of strange foods cooking in steel carts. One cart was filled with roasting nuts, another with what looked like small, pale sausages. A vendor called out to me, “Peanuts, miss. Hot roasted peanuts!” The other pointed to the sausages. “Hot dogs!” he called. “Get your hot dogs here.” Their accents were as foreign to me as were the smells that began to turn my stomach. By rights, I should have been hungry. I had managed only tea and broth on the Carpathia, but at the minute food was the farthest thing from my mind.