Daniel boarded the RMS
Titanic in Southampton as a first-class passenger for what would be his fifth transatlantic crossing on the morning of April 10, 1912, to return to Philadelphia from a business trip to London. He paid £30 10s (approximately USD$3,855 in 2020) for his ticket and was assigned one of the first-class staterooms at the forward end of ''Titanic's'' A-Deck. The number of the cabin Daniel occupied during the voyage is not known although he said he had an inside cabin. Titanic survivor
Edith Rosenbaum who occupied stateroom A-11 was acquainted with Daniel, having met him previously in
Cannes. She said that Daniel's stateroom was "around the corner" from hers. He brought along his champion
French bulldog, named Gamin de Pycombe, which he had recently purchased for £150 (the equivalent of about $18,960 in 2020). Later that evening when the ship stopped in
Cherbourg, Daniel sent a brief three-word telegram to his mother in Richmond to let her know he was "on board
Titanic." His dog died in the sinking. Some men were allowed into lifeboats filled with women and children, ostensibly to man the oars. Daniel himself never said which lifeboat he was rescued in, if he even knew. It may be that he was in more than one lifeboat between the time the ship sank and the arrival of the , which could account for the confusion. It is possible that Daniel jumped from the sinking ship and found refuge on one of the collapsible lifeboats and was later transferred into another lifeboat such as lifeboat 4, which rescued five survivors directly from the sea after the sinking. When lifeboat 4 was lowered from
Titanic, it had approximately 30 people aboard; by the end of the night, however, it had perhaps around 60 people aboard, most of whom were transferred into it from other boats.
The Sinking of the Titanic quotes
Charles Lightoller, who survived by clinging to overturned collapsible lifeboat B, as saying that after the sinking Daniel was rescued from the water by "a passing lifeboat" which would have been Lifeboat No. 14. According to Daniel's family lore, he was rescued by the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" (activist and philanthropist
Margaret Tobin Brown of Denver) in Lifeboat 6, but there is no record of him being in that boat. A news article published in 1915 stated that Daniel was picked up by the lifeboat containing the woman who is now his wife. Mrs. Smith, whom he later married, is known to have been rescued in lifeboat 6. While aboard the rescue ship,
RMS Carpathia, Daniel met a fellow
Titanic survivor,
Eloise Hughes Smith, daughter of U.S. Representative
James A. Hughes, whose husband, Lucian P. Smith, had died during the disaster. Daniel and Mrs. Smith were wed in a quiet ceremony in New York City in August 1914, but Daniel soon left for London on business and became stranded in England for two months when
World War I broke out in Europe. Upon his return, they settled in a stately home in Philadelphia's fashionable
Rosemont neighborhood, and Daniel became
stepfather to her son Lucian Jr., who was born eight months after the sinking. After
American entry into World War I, Daniel received an officer's commission in the
U.S. Army and was sent to France. He rose to the rank of
Major. After the sinking Daniel submitted a claim to White Star for an estimated $4,583.25 in personal effects that he lost aboard the Titanic including 15
Meerschaum pipes that he’d purchased as gifts for friends and one champion French bulldog named Gamin de Pycombe. In contrast to his willingness to speak to reporters immediately after the sinking in 1912, in later years Daniel refused to talk about the
Titanic disaster. This could have been due to the traumatic nature of the event, or the stigma that many surviving male passengers felt as survivors of a tragedy that had claimed the lives of so many women and children. It is also possible that the fantastic account of his survival that he gave reporters as a young man was a
tall tale and that Daniel, by then a prominent Virginia politician, did not want to answer questions. In a 1993 article by Daniel's granddaughter, she said that "he never talked about the Titanic disaster because, after all, he was a man, 28 years old, a very athletic and healthy man who survived, and the whole thing about women and children first was a stigma. So he never talked about it." ==Bank executive, gentleman farmer and subsequent marriages==