I shall follow with keen interest the Official Inquiry to be held by Lord Mersey, for I want to see if these points are brought out:—
1. What were the instructions from the Admiralty for the navigation of the ship and were they carefully followed out?
2. Why were we not running top speed?
3. Why were the portholes on decks D open? Never mind the “why,” but I should like to have the fact established as to whether they were or were not open.
4. Why did Captain Turner and Captain Anderson give orders to the crew to “Stop lowering the boats” on the port side and for the passengers “to get out of the boats”? That is the exact phraseology they used. It seemed to me that boats on the port side should have been lowered at once as the more the steamer listed the less possible it would be to clear them.
There are three suggestions I shall hope to see put before the Board that are based on the experiences of the catastrophe. They are:—
1. The thing that impressed me most as the people rushed back and forth on the steamer was that more than half of those who had on life jackets had them on incorrectly. I should like to see recommended to the Board that a law (international, if possible) be passed, that when a person buys a steamship ticket for a transatlantic crossing, no matter for what class, he or she shall be obliged to put on a sample life jacket, which shall always be kept in the main offices of the steamship company and in the offices of all their agents, and that the prospective passenger shall be obliged to put it on, fasten it to him, and walk around the office four or five times until he gets familiar with the touch of it and knows how to put it on correctly. It is all very well to hang up neat little signs in the staterooms telling passengers how to put them on and showing where the jackets are, but from what I saw on the Lusitania I don’t believe one person in fifty follows these suggestions.
Of course I can hear the steamship companies remonstrate and say that this suggestion is inconvenient, impracticable, etc., etc.; but as long as people cross the ocean there will be such disasters as the Titanic and the Empress of Ireland, but we hope never again such a tragedy as the Lusitania.
If it is convenient for the prospective passenger to put on the life jacket, his ticket should be so stamped with some large distinctive mark as to show that he has complied with the law. Those who have not tried on the life jacket should not have the ticket stamped; but immediately after leaving port, when the tickets are collected, they should be examined, and all those passengers who have not complied with the law shall be looked out by an officer and then instructed as to where the life jackets are in the staterooms and how to put them on. Certainly in this way people would become familiar with the sight and touch of a life jacket, and in a disaster, the passenger would be spared that additional shock that comes to the stoutest heart when one puts it on for the first time—plus the existing necessity.
2. I should like to see recommended that large chests of life belts be kept on the upper decks, for in a catastrophe like that of last Friday it was impossible for some people to go below to get life belts. They had neither the time nor the courage. We could have helped a lot and saved more if we had had more life belts at hand that we could have tied on to the passengers.