Fourteen-year-old Kathleen Kaye was returning from Toronto, where she had been visiting relatives. With a merry smile on her lips and with a steady patter of reassurance, she aided the stewards who were filling one of the life-boats.
Soon after the girl took her own place in the boat one of the sailors fainted under the strain of the efforts to get the boat clear of the maelstrom that marked where the liner went down. Miss Kaye took the abandoned oar and rowed until the boat was out of danger. None among the survivors bore fewer signs of their terrible experiences than Miss Kaye, who spent most of her time comforting and assisting her sisters in misfortune.
HEROISM OF CAPTAIN TURNER AND HIS CREW
Ernest Cowper, a Toronto newspaper man, praised the work of the Lusitania’s crew in their efforts to get the passengers into the boats. Mr. Cowper told of having observed the ship watches keeping a strict lookout for submarines as soon as the ship began to near the coast.
“The crew proceeded to get the passengers into boats in an orderly, prompt and efficient manner. Helen Smith, a child, begged me to save her. I placed her in a boat and saw her safely away. I got into one of the last boats to leave.
“Some of the boats could not be launched, as the vessel was sinking. There was a large number of women and children in the second cabin. Forty of the children were less than a year old.”
WOMAN RESCUED WITH DEAD BABY AT HER BREAST
R. J. Timmis, of Gainesville, Tex., a cotton buyer, who was saved after he had given his life-belt to a woman steerage passenger who carried a baby, told of the loss of his friend, R. T. Moodie, also of Gainesville. Moodie could not swim, but he took off his life-belt also and put it on a woman who had a six-months-old child in her arms. Timmis tried to help Moodie, and they both clung to some wreckage for a while, but presently Moodie could hold out no longer and sank. When Timmis was dragged into a boat which he helped to right—it had been overturned in the suction of the sinking vessel—one of the first persons he assisted into the boat was the steerage woman to whom he had given his belt. She still carried her baby at her breast, but it was dead from exposure.
HEROIC WIRELESS OPERATORS
Oliver P. Brainard told of the bravery of the wireless operators who stuck to their work of summoning help even after it was evident that only a few minutes could elapse before the vessel must go down. He said: