The presence of so many babies on board the Lusitania was due to the influx from Canada of the English-born wives of Canadians at the battle front, who were coming to England to live with their own or their husband’s parents during the war.
No more pathetic loss has been recorded than that of F. G. Webster, a Toronto contractor, who was traveling second class with his wife, their six-year-old son Frederick and year-old twin sons William and Henry. They reached the deck with others who were in the dining saloon when the torpedo struck. Webster took his son by the hand and darted away to bring life-belts. When he returned his wife and babies were not to be seen, nor have they been since.
W. Harkless, an assistant purser, busied himself helping others until the Lusitania was about to founder. Then, seeing a life-boat striking the water that was not overcrowded, he made a rush for it. The only person he encountered was little Barbara Anderson, of Bridgeport, Conn., who was standing alone, clinging to the rail. Gathering her up in his arms he leaped over the rail and into the boat, doing this without injuring the child.
Francis J. Luker, a British subject, who had worked six years in the United States as a postal clerk, and was going home to enlist, saved two babies. He found the little passengers, bereft of their mother, in the shelter of a deck-house. The Lusitania was nearing her last plunge. A life-boat was swaying to the water below. Grabbing the babies he ran to the rail and made a flying leap into the craft, and those babies did not leave his arms until they were set safely ashore hours later.
One woman, a passenger on the Lusitania, lost all three of her children in the disaster, and gave the bodies of two of them to the sea herself. When the ship went down she held up the three children in the water, shrieking for help. When rescued two were dead. Their room was required and the mother was brave enough to realize it.
“Give them to me!” she shrieked. “Give them to me, my bonnie wee things. I will bury them. They are mine to bury as they were mine to keep.”
With her form shaking with sorrow she took hold of each little one from the rescuers and reverently placed it in the water again, and the people in the boat wept with her as she murmured a little sobbing prayer.
Just as the rescuers were landing her third and only remaining child died.
TORONTO GIRL OF FOURTEEN PROVES HEROINE
Even the young girls and women on the Lusitania proved themselves heroines during the last few moments and met their fate calmly or rose to emergencies which called for great bravery and presence of mind.