By GREGORY KATZ
Associated Press Writer
LONDON – She heard a terrible rumbling noise, then anguished cries for help as her rowboat pulled away from the sinking ocean liner Titanic that dreadful night in 1912.
Now Laura Francatelli’s first person account of the disaster, in the form of a signed affidavit that was given to a British board of inquiry, is set to be auctioned.
It is a gripping firsthand account of how she and her two prominent employers – Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon and his socialite wife, Lady Lucy Duff-Gordon – managed to survive, fleeing in a rowboat with a capacity for 40 people even though they only had 12 people on board.