Peter Dennis Daly
First Class passenger
He “did not actually witness the suicide, but did hear ‘several shots’ near the end… claimed to have been told that an officer had killed himself, and this was while he was still on board the Titanic.”
Triumph and Tragedy lists a “Daly, Peter Denis” from Lima, Peru, having embarked at Southampton and traveling First Class. (Triumph and Tragedy, p.340 (7.)) Encyclopedia Titanica provides further details, including his age at the time of the sinking being 52, that he “spoke 7 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Greek, and Latin,” that he had a South American wife by the name of Rosalba Ramos and that together they “had 18 children, of which only 8 survived, 4 boys and 4 girls”. (8.)
Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember relates a certain incident involving Peter Daly, during Titanic’s evacuation:
“ ‘Oh, save me! Save me!’ cried a woman to Peter Daly, Lima representative of the London firm Haes & Sons, as he watched the water roll onto the deck where he stood. ‘Good lady,’ he answered, ‘save yourself. Only God can save you now.’ But she begged him to help her make the jump, and on second thought he realised he couldn't shed the problem so easily. Quickly he took her by the arm and helped her overboard. As he jumped himself, a big wave came sweeping along the Boat Deck, washing him clear of the ship.” (Walter Lord, A Night to Remember, p.82 (20.))
“Daly claimed to have been told that an officer
had killed himself.”(8.)
Mr. Daly claims to have finally ended up on collapsible A and this, along with the above, suggests that he was in the general location of the alleged suicide. Some assert that this may not have been the case and that he may have left earlier, but the fact he was in the ocean for a time is reinforced by “his granddaughter, Rosalba Daly, [who] recalls how every winter he suffered from pain in his legs due to the hypothermia suffered in the icy waters of the North Sea. He took baths in hotsprings to alleviate his pain” (Encyclopedia Titanica (8.)).
Bill Wormstedt writes that “Daly appears to have been rescued in Collapsible A, based on his own accounts of having been in the water, and George Rheims having mentioned him by name as having been in Collapsible A.” He adds: “Daly did not actually witness the suicide, but did hear ‘several shots’ near the end. In an interview conducted after the disaster, Daly claimed to have been told that an officer had killed himself, and this was while he was still on board the Titanic.” (Bill Wormstedt, Shots in the Dark (12.))
The source of this interview has yet to be determined or its contents analysed. However it is seemingly not primary eyewitness evidence, but since he was in the location there is no reason to doubt his account. In fact his account of a shooting is partially corroborated by his family who wrote an account later which was published on Encyclopedia Titanica. It says in part:
"What follows is the story of PDD and his Titanic involvement as told to me by my father (Richard) and supplemented by my uncle Nicanor (who in the 20's settled in Buenos Aries, Argentina) joining other established Dalys there: Paul, (bachelor), Victoria (spinster), Edward (first son of Peter Bernard's second family, and Victor, second son of same) and of course my father...Pandemonium was all over the place. Shots were being fired. Soon it became evident to him that there would not be enough boats to save everybody, so he resigned himself to his fate." (8.)
Verdict:
