Threatened to Shoot With His Pipe and That Saved His Life
This article was published in the Yiddish-language Forward on April 20, 1912.
Louis Pagnalia is a saloonkeeper from Philadelphia who was on the Titanic and who rescued himself with a remarkable idea. He himself described the incident:
“We were all on deck. The women and the children were already in the lifeboats. Then the ship officers shouted: ‘Every man for himself!’ Two lifeboats were left on deck and hundreds of people ran toward them. Into one of them jumped many sailors and the passengers were pushed back. I saw that my last chance to be saved was being lost, when I suddenly had a lucky idea.
“I had in my pocket a simple pipe. I grabbed it angrily, waved it around my head and pointed it at the sailors in the lifeboat.
“‘If you don’t let me in, I will shoot you all to death!’ I shouted. The sailors were frightened. They thought that my pipe was really a revolver, and made a space for me in the lifeboat. That space saved my life.”
A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren
We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.
With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.
— Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief
