Oscar F. Grab, of New York, said: “I was able to get hold of a life-preserver and I remained on the starboard side until the water was almost at my feet. Then I slid into the sea so easily that I did not even wet my hair. I was soon picked up by a boat in which were twenty women and some children.
“We had to keep the women lying in the bottom so as to get room to pull at the oars. The ship went down, as seen by me from the water, in this fashion:
“She had settled down well forward. She then listed to starboard, and rose to a perpendicular until the stern with the propellers was sticking straight out of the water.
“An explosion then occurred as the water reached the boilers; one of the funnels was blown clean out, and in half a minute there was nothing visible of the Lusitania but a lot of wreckage mingled with a number of dead bodies.”
PATERSON, N. J., GIRLS AMONG RESCUED
The Misses Agnes and Evelyn Wilde, sisters, of Paterson, N. J., were at lunch when the torpedo struck the vessel. They rushed on deck. Miss Agnes Wilde said:
“We clung to each other, determined not to be separated, even if we went to the bottom. We were thrown into a boat, together with thirty-six others, and after several hours were picked up by a fishing boat, which towed us for several hours, intending to take us to Kinsale. Before we arrived, however, a Government boat came along and took us to Queenstown.
“We were drenched to the skin, cold and penniless. We went into a shop, where they fitted us out from head to foot without charge. We are only beginning to realize what we have passed through.”
Mrs. Martha Anna Wyatt, sixty years old, of New Bedford, Mass., said: “I went down with the ship and spent four hours in a collapsible boat before being picked up. I was going to England to live.
“While the ship was sinking I found it impossible to get into any of the life-boats. There seemed no help about. I simply stood still, clinging to the rail, and went down. I seemed to go to the bottom. When I came to the surface again I was pulled into the collapsible boat which brought me to safety.”