So, in preparation for what the captain tactfully called an “accident,” we rehearsed abandoning ship.
It was like the fire-drills in our public schools. It seemed a most sensible precaution, and one that in times of peace, as well as of war, might with advantage be enforced on all passenger-ships.
In his proclamation Commandant Mace of the Chicago borrowed an idea from the New York Fire Department. It was the warning Commissioner Adamson prints on theatre programmes, and which casts a gloom over patrons of the drama by instructing them to look for the nearest fire-escape.
Each passenger on the Chicago was assigned to a life-boat. He was advised to find out how from any part of the ship at which he might be caught he could soonest reach it.
Women and children were to assemble on the boat deck by the boat to which they were assigned. After they had been lowered to the water, the men—who, meanwhile, were to be segregated on the deck below them—would descend by rope ladders.
Entrance to a boat was by ticket only. The tickets were six inches square and bore a number. If you lost your ticket you lost your life. Each of the more imaginative passengers insured his life by fastening the ticket to his clothes with a safety-pin.
Two days from land there was a full-dress rehearsal, and for the first time we met those with whom we were expected to put to sea in an open boat.
Apparently those in each boat were selected by lot. As one young doctor in the ambulance service put it: “The society in my boat is not at all congenial.”