Jack Thayer boarded Titanic at all of 17 years old, as a First-Class passenger with his parents John and Marian, and Marian's maid Margaret Fleming.

On April 14, at 11:40 p.m., Jack was winding his watch and preparing for bed when he felt the breeze coming from his open window stop altogether, and the engines ceased their turnings.

He wrote, "The sudden quiet was startling and disturbing. Like the subdued quiet in a sleeping car, at a stop, after a continuous run."

Throwing on a coat over his pajamas, Jack hollered to his parents he was "going out to see the fun" and went up to the boat deck, but noticed nothing out of the ordinary. He moved toward the bow and, as his vision became accustomed to the night, saw pieces of ice on the well deck.

Jack retrieved his parents. On the way, they all noted that Titanic was listing to port.

The Thayers returned immediately to their stateroom and dressed. Jack, in a fit of clarity, put on two vests and a coat to try to safeguard himself from the cold.

Jack, his parents, and Miss Fleming banded together on boat deck until the Women-And-Children-First decree, when they parted ways with Marian and her maid at the top of the Grand Staircase.

Jack and his father assumed Marian and Margaret were safely off the ship, until a steward informed them otherwise. They chased the ladies down, and while John, Marian, and Margaret wandered off looking for a lifeboat, Jack was left behind.

It's possible that Jack was caught up in conversation with Milton Long, an acquaintance he'd only made earlier that same evening over coffee.

Jack and Milton went searching for boats, but the boys were impeded by the melee and missed out. At one point, they paused in between a set of empty lifeboat davits and traced a star's movement as it rose in between the davits, to determine how quickly the ship was going down.

Two collapsible boats were available, but the boys felt uneasy, having seen how precariously the traditional, all-wood lifeboats had been launched.

So they elected to remain on board Titanic instead of seeking placement in any of the collapsible lifeboats.

As Jack and Milton went back and forth on how to proceed, a man came out through a nearby door and staggered by, pounding down an entire bottle of gin as he went. Jack recalled thinking, "If I get out of this, that's one man I'll never see again."

As the ship's angle grew more drastic, the boys heard "deadened explosions" within. Jack was haunted by the sound of it all.

Jack wanted to jump in and swim for it as he saw people doing down by the stern, but Milton was reticent as he was not a strong swimmer. Eventually, though, Milton relented.

Milton climbed over the railing, and with his legs dangling down, paused and called back, "You are coming, boy, aren't you?" Jack said he'd be right behind him, and Milton slid down the side of the ship.

Jack never saw him again.

Milton Long's corpse was recovered by the Mackay-Bennett, and listed as follows.

Jack jumped in feet first almost immediately after Milton disappeared in the water. He guessed in his account that Milton was sucked in by the deck, instead of pushed out by the backwash as he himself had been only moments later.

Jack surfaced a fair distance away from the ship, and was transfixed by the sight.

Jack Thayer's survival is particularly notable because he was one of the minority who insisted that Titanic had broken in half, and never faltered in his assertions.

When Jack managed against all odds to resurface, he struck his head on the overturned Collapsible B lifeboat.

Jack was pulled up onto the back of the upside-down "canvas craft," where there were, he guessed, four or five other men already on board.

Jack wrote that, after the sinking, 28 men ended up on the back of Collapsible B.

Every moment was spent desperately trying to keep the upside-down lifeboat from going completely underwater by maintaining a precarious balance on its back.

For hours, all the men on board held utterly still in the oddest and most painful of positions, to keep from slipping into the lethally cold water.

The men prayed.

They sang hymns.

And when daylight finally broke, the Carpathia followed slowly. The men moved to stand, shifting their weights to and fro to the counter the swells as the air pocket that kept the lifeboat afloat continued to diminish. Every moment, more water overtook it.

Finally, hearing the cries from Collapsible B, Lifeboats 4 and 12, which were lashed together, crept over to take the surviving men on board.

Jack's mother was on Lifeboat 4.

He did not notice her. She did not notice him.

When Jack reunited with his mother on Carpathia, she was reported to have embraced him and asked, "Where's daddy?"

Jack told her that he did not know.

John B. Thayer, Sr., did not survive, and his corpse was not recovered. For the remainder of his life, Jack was dogged by shame and remorse about his father. "I only wish I had kept on looking for my father. I should have realized that he would not have taken a boat, leaving me behind."

Jack was loaned pajamas and a bunk, and before crumpling into bed, he took a desperate shot of brandy, only then realizing it was his first encounter with hard liquor.

Once rested and in possession of his full faculties, Jack spoke with Carpathia passenger L.D. Skidmore, who, while listening to Jack's story, sketched his recollections of Titanic's break.

Jack kept a stiff upper lip and by all accounts, persevered to honor Titanic. When Colonel Archibald Gracie--a man whom Jack had shared space with on Collapsible B--passed away in December of 1912, Jack and his mother attended the funeral services.

And when Jack received a letter from the bereaved father of Milton Long, the friend that he had made while on board Titanic, Jack wrote the following reply.

Jack went on to graduate from UPenn and pursue a banking career, get married, and have six children: three daughters and three sons, although one boy did not survive infancy. Both of Jack's surviving sons, Edward and John, served in the Second World War.

Edward Thayer had signed on as a bomber pilot, and was lost in the conflict when his plane was shot down in the Pacific theater in 1943. His remains were never recovered.

And the following year, on April 14--the anniversary of Titanic's collision with the iceberg--Jack's mother died. Doubly and profoundly bereaved, Jack's depression deepened.

He went missing in September of 1945, when he was 50 years old. He hadn't been seen for days. When he was finally found, he was dead in his car, parked alongside a trolley loop in Philadelphia.

He had slit his wrists, as well as his own throat.

When Jack's belongings were posthumously sorted, a small booklet was discovered; produced in 1940, it was one of 500 copies made for family and friends.