“The boats on the port side of the liner could not be launched because, owing to the list of the ship, they swung inwards on the davits instead of out over the sea. The only boats that could be launched were those on the starboard side.
“I think a good many people were injured by the sliding of the port life-boat when it was released, for it slid along the deck to the starboard side and crushed many people against the railings.
“I think they did marvelously well considering the short time they had to work in. They could not get a foothold on the sloping deck, and there was very little confusion under the circumstances.”
CHAPTER VI
Heroes of the Empress Disaster
DR. GRANT THE CHIEF HERO—SIR SETON-KARR GAVE UP LIFE FOR STRANGER—LAURENCE IRVING DIED TRYING TO SAVE HIS WIFE—H. R. O’HARA DIED FOR FAMILY—CAPTAIN KENDALL SAVED BELL-BOY—HOW CHIEF OFFICER STEEDE DIED—HERO SAVED WEE GIRL—GAVE UP HIS LIFE-BELT
IN the luxurious Hotel Chateau Frontenac, in the seamen’s mission, in the hospitals and on ships, where the survivors of the Empress of Ireland disaster were cared for and nursed, they spoke of their dangers. There were stories of self-sacrifice where men died that women might live, of battles in the water, of life-boats falling on struggling men and women in the water.
Every such disaster as that which befell the Empress of Ireland seems to bring out at least one man who stands out above all others for coolness, resource, and courage. These are men who control mobs and who bring order out of chaos.
DR. GRANT THE CHIEF HERO
The survivors united in laying such honor on the shoulders of Dr. James F. Grant, a 1913 graduate of McGill, the ship’s doctor, who calmed the terror-stricken, kept hope alive in the breasts of those who felt themselves bereaved of loved ones; who quieted the ravings of those whom the shock had, for a time, made insensible to those human attributes which make heroes; who went about among the rescued and gave them treatment, not only for their physical injuries, but for the awful mental shocks which had been endured.