STORY OF ETONIAN’S CAPTAIN
The Etonian is a freight-carrying steamship, owned by the Wilson-Furness-Leyland lines, and under charter to the Cunard Line. She sailed from Liverpool on May 6. Captain Wood’s story, as he told it without embellishment and in the most positive terms, was as follows:
“We had left Liverpool without unusual incident, and it was two o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, May 7, that we received the S. O. S. call from the Lusitania. Her wireless operator sent this message: ‘We are ten miles south of Kinsale. Come at once.’
“I was then about forty-two miles from the position he gave me. Two other steamships were ahead of me, going in the same direction. They were the Narragansett and the City of Exeter. The Narragansett was closer to the Lusitania, and she answered the S. O. S. call.
“At 5 P.M. I observed the City of Exeter across our bow and she signaled, ‘Have you heard anything of the disaster?’
“At that very moment I saw the periscope of a submarine between the Etonian and the City of Exeter. The submarine was about a quarter of a mile directly ahead of us. She immediately dived as soon as she saw us coming for her. I distinctly saw the splash in the water caused by her submerging.
Charging Through Barbed-Wire Entanglements.
The King’s Regiment of the British Army suffered heavily while trying to penetrate the enemy’s wire entanglement at Givenchy. Three lines of a perfect thicket of barbed-wire lay between them and the enemy. Only one brave officer even managed to penetrate the wire. (Il. L. News copr.)
A Land Mine Exploded Underneath a Section of the Enemy’s Trenches.
A method which has been known to blow forty men to pieces at once. By sapping and mining the gallery was dug almost to the enemy’s trenches underground and explosives placed, which were then fired by electric wire. The explosion hurled a piece of railroad iron weighing twenty-five pounds a distance of over a mile. (Il. L. News copr.)