Suppose you floated a real lifeboat in the water, and at the water line cut down the sides so that the bottom of the boat that was left floated flush with the water. Then deck over and make watertight this part of the boat that is left. This gives you a round bottomed, watertight raft, floating almost flush with the water.
Take a long piece of about 24-inch high (or wide) canvas that will reach all around the sides from one end back to the same end. Nail the lower edge of this canvas to the outside edge of the “raft.” To enable you to raise these “collapsible” canvas sides and to keep them in place, make a stout rail that will be curved to the shape of the floor of the “raft” and nail the top edge of the canvas on to it.
This now “collapsible boat,” with its folding canvas sides, is of course shallow, and about three or four of them can be nested on the deck of a steamer in the space occupied by a “real lifeboat.” There is a canvas cover laced down over the top of these boats, the same as on regular boats.
Before you can do anything with a collapsible lifeboat you must make it a “real boat” by lifting up its canvas sides and lashing them in place so they can’t collapse. Until this is done you have nothing but a “raft.” It is almost impossible to lift the rail into place if there are people hanging on to it, as that would mean lifting the people as well. Also, you can’t lift the sides, which automatically raise the cross seats, if there is anyone lying across the boat, and you can’t get on the “raft” without getting on the seats. We tried to persuade the people who were hanging on to the rail to take off their hands and hang on to the life ropes—but that was impossible. Never have I heard a more distressing cry of despair than when I tried to tell one of them that that was what we were doing. In their condition I don’t wonder they thought we were trying to push them off. So we had to take some aboard, those who were in the most panicky condition, and try to get up the sides with the “raft” half covered with people.
The seats of these boats are attached to an iron brace which is supposed to slide on a metal run in the middle of the boat. A wooden brace at either end is held in place by a pin when the sides are raised to their proper height, but, as the saying is, “There warn’t no pin” and the wooden brace in my end of the boat was broken and the metal run for the iron braces of the seats was so rusted and corroded that it wasn’t a “run;” so there we were, back to a raft again.
Not an oar in the boat, nor even a stick with which to reach wreckage so that we could block up the seats. We must get those seats braced up to give us the protection of the canvas sides, and they mustn’t fall down either, because then the “boat” became a “raft,” the people became a little more panicky, and the falling seats hurt and slightly injured the people sitting between them, for of course we had to seat those too exhausted to pull and haul on the floor between the seats. We had to have some oars too to make the boat navigable, so we fished round in the wreckage and were fortunate to get five oars (one broken, but that served me as a steering oar) and some blocks. Then with a long heave and a heave all together we raised the blasted seats as far as possible, but not to their proper height, and jammed the blocks under them. We were lucky to get blocks that act as supports to a real lifeboat, which, as you know, have notches cut on the long side. These blocks are like little steps, so that we were able to shove them under the seats to the limit.
About the fifth man aboard the boat was a chap named B——; he was a husky, no mistake. He weighed about 200 pounds and was all good material. This man G—— was another good one too; he deserved his name. By this time we must have had fifteen people in our now “non-collapsible boat.” Let us thank God for the “non.”
I went aft and took the steering oar and my two huskies, B—— and the sailor man, rowed the heavy sweeps, and G—— stayed for’ard to help the people in. We headed back into the wreckage and picked up those who seemed most urgently in need.
I won’t enter into the detail of the condition of the poor souls we got, but two instances of nerve stand out so clearly in my mind that I must tell them. Both pertain to women, and never have I seen greater courage and patience shown by anyone.
I heard a call near my end of the boat and told the boys to back water, and I reached over and pulled in a woman who I thought at first glance was a negress; I never believed a white woman could be so black. I learned afterwards that she and her husband had got into a lifeboat, and while he was busy helping to clear it she got panic-stricken by the tremendous overhanging funnels and jumped back on to the steamer without her husband knowing it. She was aboard when the final plunge came, and the suction took her part way down one of the funnels, but the thankful explosion blew her forth, out into clear water, in among the wreckage, where she could hang on. The clothes were almost blown off the poor woman, and there wasn’t a white spot on her except her teeth and the whites of her eyes. Marvellous to say she wasn’t hurt and proved a great help in cheering us all by her bright talk.