I climbed into the stern of the boat, which was floating flush with the rail of deck B, so far had the steamer settled, and helped clear the fall. We freed our end and swung the ropes clear, but we couldn’t make anyone for’ard understand what to do or how to do it.
I remember looking for’ard and seeing someone, I think it was a steward, bravely cutting away at the thick ropes with a pocket knife. How I wish he had had an axe! What would I have given for one real sailor man for’ard; we could have saved that boatload of people. I started to go for’ard, but it was impossible to climb through that boatload of people, mixed up as they were with oars, boat hooks, kegs of water, rope ladders, sails, and God knows what—everything that seemed to hinder progress to getting for’ard. The steamer was all the time rapidly settling, and to look at the tremendous smokestack hanging out over us only added to the terror of the people in the boat. I certainly did not blame them, for it was a harrowing sight, even to one as familiar with the ocean as I am. However, I should have gone for’ard and made the try, except that the stern end of the boat was raised by a small swell of the ocean and I was impressed by the nearness of the davit by getting a blow on the back which nearly knocked me overboard.
Then I admit that I saw the hopelessness of ever clearing the for’ard davit in time to get the boat away, so I stepped out and made a try for it by swimming. I spoke to several and urged them to come; but truly they were petrified, and only my training from boyhood up, in the water and under it, gave me the courage to jump. I swam about 100 feet away from the ship and then turned around to see if anyone was following to whom I could lend a hand, and found several who needed encouragement. Also I wanted to see when the final plunge of the steamer came, that I might be the more ready to fight against the vortex and tell the others. The Lusitania did not go down anything like head first: she had, rather, settled along her whole water line. This convinces me that practically all the ports must have been open, even those as far down as Deck E. The stern did not rise to anything like a perpendicular, nor did it rise so high that I could see a single one of the propellers or even the end of her rudder. Not one of her funnels fell.
The last I saw of the lifeboat out of which I jumped was that she was being pulled down, bow first, as the tackle had not been freed and the stern of the boat was rising high in the air. While the people were thrown out, they were not so violently thrown as those from some of the lifeboats that were dropped when half lowered into the water.
There was very little vortex; there was rather a shooting out from the ship instead of a sucking in, after she sank; this I am told was partly caused by the water rushing into her funnels and being blown out again by explosions made by the mixing of the cold water of the sea with the steam of the boilers. I saw an interesting statement in one of the papers, purporting to have come from Captain Turner, in which he stated that the small amount of suction was probably due to the fact that the bow of the boat was already resting on the bottom when the stern went down. This seems quite feasible, as she sank in about 60 fathoms (360 feet) of water and she was 755 feet long.
The sea was wonderfully smooth, and it seemed to me that if one could keep clear of the wreck and pick up a lifeboat, that it could be manned and that we could go back and get many survivors. I was able to work this out quite as I planned.
As I waited for the final plunge something caught me on the top of my head and slipped down to my shoulders, pressing me under the water; I couldn’t imagine what it was, but on turning to see I found that it was one of the aërials of the wireless that stretched from topmast to topmast.
The present style of life belt, or rather jacket, is not the old-fashioned kind filled with hard cork, but a larger and more bulky affair filled with fibre, and when you have it on you look and feel like a padded football player, especially around the shoulders. When I shook this wire off my head, it caught me around the shoulders on the soft pad, and I couldn’t shake it off. It took me down under the water and turned me upside down. I tell you I “kicked.” I came up none the worse for my ducking, for it simply reminded me of one of my various trips down to see “Susy the Mermaid” when I was a youngster at Camp Asquam and the older boys used to duck us youngsters anywhere from five to fifteen times a day, according to the unpardonable sins we were supposed to have committed; and these weren’t mere “duckings” either. They used to push us under, put their feet on our shoulders, and then give a good shove, so that we went down anywhere from six to sixteen feet under water. I hated the duckings at that time, but they proved mighty good training!
When I came up, after shaking the Marconi wire, the waves bearing the wreckage and people were upon me. After swimming around and helping those I could by pushing them pieces of wreckage to which to cling, I saw a short distance away a collapsible lifeboat floating right side up, swam to it, and climbed aboard. A seaman quickly followed, and a fine husky chap he proved to be. I heard my name called, and for the moment I didn’t realize whether it was a call from Heaven or Hell, but when I turned in the direction of the voice I found the man to be G——, one of the three men with whom I had played cards each evening. I pulled him up on the boat, and we three got out our jackknives and went at a kind of can-opening operation, which was really the removing of the canvas cover of the boat.
They call that invention a “boat,” but to start with, it is nothing but a “raft.” Let me try to draw you a word picture and see if you will understand it.