From America Magazine:
“When the Titanic went to the bottom, Father Thomas B. Byles stood on the deck with Catholics, Protestants, and Jews kneeling around him,” Agnes McCoy, another Irish immigrant, told the New York Telegram after the sinking, according to the website FatherByles.com. “Father Byles was saying the Rosary and praying for the repose of the souls of those about to perish. To many he administered the last rites of the Church.”
“When the crash came, we were thrown from our berths,” Ellen Mary Mockler, an Irish immigrant in third class, said after the sinking. “We saw before us, coming down the passageway, with his hand uplifted, Father Byles…. ‘Be calm, my good people,’ he said, and then he went about the steerage giving absolution and blessings.”
“Father Byles could have been saved, but he would not leave,” Mockler said. “After I got in the boat, which was the last one to leave, and we were slowly going further away from the ship, I could hear distinctly the voice of the priest and the responses to his prayers.”
