Authors: Greg King
The foamy green water swirling around
Lusitania
was now awash with slicks of engine oil bubbling up from deep within her hull; debris, deck chairs, and pieces of wrecked lifeboats bobbed in the surf—a potentially lethal obstacle course for those jumping from her decks. Theodate Pope, her maid, Emily Robinson, and Edwin Friend, armed with lifebelts, waited along the railing. Friend, Theodate saw, “was standing very straight,” watching the last few minutes of
Lusitania
’s life.
As the ship sank lower and lower, she looked over the railing. “We could now see the gray hull, and knew it was time to jump,” she recalled. She asked Friend to go first. He stepped over the barrier, eased his way down a rope to the deck below, and leapt into the water. Once she saw him safely surface, Theodate stepped to the edge. “Come, Robinson,” she said, and she, too, slipped over the side.
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Harold Boulton looked forward and saw water spilling over the bow. “This ship is going to sink,” he told the Lassetters. “The only thing to do is to jump.” Just before the end came, Boulton advised Elisabeth to remove her skirt, to avoid getting entangled in any wreckage or impeding her ability to swim. She did so; holding hands, and trying to push the “nightmare of being sucked in” to the back of his mind, Boulton led the trio as they jumped into the sea.
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Further along the deck, Marguerite Allan saw Sir Hugh Lane. He was “pale, but quite calm,” and seemed to be searching for someone. She saw that he did not have a lifebelt on. When she approached, he smiled and said quietly, “This is a sad end for us all.”
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Frederick Orr-Lewis wanted to get Lady Allan and her daughters into a lifeboat on the port side; as he was leading them toward the edge of the deck, he saw first one, and then another, lifeboat filled with passengers sway and fall into the sea below, spilling their occupants. All this time, the water was rising. “I had Gwen’s hand,” Orr-Lewis remembered, “and Lady Allan had Anna.” They all jumped into the sea.
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Robert Holt, “seeing rescue would be difficult by means of lifeboats,” decided to “clamber down the side of the ship and jump into the sea.” He “swam away as hard as possible,” perhaps able to navigate better than others as he had given his lifebelt away and his arms were not constrained.
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Thomas Home, too, slid down into the water, only to find himself caught “in a seething mass drawn down by suction” as the ship sank.
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Carl Foss finally managed to find a lifebelt and, with the end approaching, jumped over the starboard railing near the stern. “I had hardly hit the water,” he remembered, “when a lifeboat crashed down beside me, narrowly missing my head.” The occupants, flung into the water, were caught in the wash along the hull, and carried back. Foss saw a man drift into one of the bronze propellers; both of his legs, Foss recalled, were “almost severed.” Foss tossed him a rope. “The poor fellow was bleeding terribly, and could not have lasted much longer.”
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In the last few minutes of her life,
Lusitania
’s passengers made desperate efforts to fill and lower her remaining lifeboats. Josephine Burnside apparently found her daughter, Iris, amidst the confusion. Finally, at the last minute, Josephine, knowing that she could not swim, boarded a lifeboat; she was still holding on to Iris’s hand as
Lusitania
sank before it could safely be launched, and a wave sent its passengers into the sea.
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Mary and Laura Ryerson climbed into Lifeboat No. 14 just outside the Smoking Room; Allen Loney saw that a place remained. “He ordered me to get in,” his daughter, Virginia, remembered. “I protested, but finally obeyed.”
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Lott Gadd,
Lusitania
’s barber, helped lower the boat: no one seemed to know how to work the falls, and so Gadd jumped in and, with another man, began to let the lines out. When the boat reached the water, Gadd let go of the lines on his side but his comrade did not, and the falls jammed. When the lines were fixed and the boat finally touched the sea, it began to spin around and fill with water. Gadd shouted that the passengers should start bailing with their caps and hats; in the panic, he recalled, “I either slipped or was pushed, and was in the water.” He found a buoy nearby and swam away from the ship.
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Lusitania
began to go under: suction from the vessel capsized Lifeboat No. 14, spilling its occupants into the sea. “With other passengers in the boat,” Virginia recalled, “I was drawn ever so far down in the water.” She finally rose to a surface crowded with panicked passengers.
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“I am a good swimmer,” Laura Ryerson said, “and although there was a crowd struggling together, I got clear.”
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The end, Bestic recalled, “came with dramatic swiftness. A peculiar lurching movement made me look round.” An “all-swallowing wave” swept up the Boat Deck and crashed over the superstructure, “enveloping passengers, boats, and everything that lay in its path. A heart-rending wail rent the air.” For a few seconds, he eyed the scene. “I knew that should the wave reach me, it would be my end. Fully clothed and without waiting to even grab a lifejacket, I hurled myself over the side.”
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Leslie Morton and his brother, John, jumped from the ship and swam away, through the “turmoil of bodies, women and children, deck chairs, lifebelts, lifeboats and every describable thing.”
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By now, the list to starboard had reached 25 degrees. On the nearly deserted bridge, Captain Turner knew it was hopeless. “Save yourself!” he told Quartermaster Hugh Johnston.
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Morton, looking back, “saw Captain Turner quite clearly, standing outside the wheelhouse on the starboard side,” as the ship began to slip beneath the water.
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James Brooks had spotted a number of women standing along the railing near a lifeboat, too afraid to enter. “I’ll help you!” he had shouted, and assisted them in jumping from the starboard deck across the yawning void and into the boat. A seaman had appeared, waving a gun in the air and threatening him if he joined those already in the boat.
“Who the hell is trying to?” Brooks angrily shouted back.
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Finally, though, Brooks joined them and, working with two sailors, tried to loosen the boat lest it be sucked down with
Lusitania
. They could find no tools or hammers to knock the pegs out and release the snubbing chains. Water rushed up to the boat and threatened to crush it beneath the davits. “There was no time to cast loose,” Brooks recalled. “It became a mad race, every man for his life. We all leaped.”
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By now Howard Fisher had returned to Lady Mackworth and Dorothy Conner with lifebelts. He’d been “rushing here and there in the dark,” from cabin to cabin “for a chance lifebelt left behind by its owner,” as he could not reach his own room: rising water made it impossible. Having finally got hold of two lifebelts, he struggled up the sloping staircase only to be accosted by “some devil who tried to snatch one of my belts. He did not get it.”
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He told Margaret Mackworth and Dorothy that water was rapidly flooding the ship.
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Knowing that the end was near, Fisher suggested that the trio jump into the sea “rather than await the terrific rush and impact of water that would follow as the ship plunged headlong to the depths.”
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Margaret Mackworth unhooked her skirt so that she could easily remove it in the water.
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She paused as she stood at the edge: the water, she thought, was so far down. Finally, she told herself “how ridiculous I was to have a physical fear of the jump when we stood in such grave danger.” The ship threatened to take her with it when it sank beneath the waves. She looked again over the edge. “We were not, as I had thought, sixty feet above the sea; we were already under the sea.” She had waited too long: a great wave circled the deck, swirling around her feet, her legs, and then abruptly subsuming her in its dark, boiling wake as
Lusitania
plunged beneath the surface.
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Robert Timmis didn’t have time to jump: he glanced down the liner’s deck as water rushed toward him, like “the rapids below Niagara Falls.”
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“How about it, old man?” his friend Ralph Moodie asked. Timmis merely shook his head.
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The rising wall of water “struck me, and I went down, to be washed back and caught under a piece of superstructure.”
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Michael Byrne, standing on deck, “felt a chill, clammy feeling around my ankles.” He looked down and saw that water was flooding over the deck, “so in the name of God I dived off and swam as fast as I could away from the ship, with the terrible thought of being pulled down by the suction.”
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Still holding the hand of her husband, Henry, Annie Adams saw “a wave engulf the bow of the boat, and before I could turn my head toward my husband I found myself swept off the boat into the water.”
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Belle Naish and her husband, Theodore, “could feel the boat going down under us, like a slowly moving elevator.” As the bow plunged further beneath the waves, people lost their footing; Belle saw a woman slide down the deck and land hard against a wall. Within seconds, “a bundle of chains slid against her, pinning her fast.” She cried out for help but Belle could do nothing but shout, “it would not be much longer.”
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As water swirled over the deck, Belle let go of her husband’s hand, “as I didn’t want to drag him down.”
Lusitania
lurched suddenly; Belle felt an explosion shudder through the liner, which she took for another torpedo. A lifeboat, swinging wildly from its davits, struck her in the head; without warning, she was “shot up into the air. As I rose, I looked for my husband, and saw his head about a yard from mine, but lower, although he was taller than I. The next thing I knew, I was twenty or thirty feet below the surface of the sea.”
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Charles Frohman was standing on deck with Rita Jolivet and her brother-in-law, calmly smoking a cigar. Warren Pearl spotted him handing out lifebelts to other passengers.
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“Don’t bother about me,” he said. “What I don’t like about this is the water is so cold.”
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Although Rita helped Frohman put on a lifebelt, he soon gave it away. With the chaotic scenes on deck, no one was willing to enter a lifeboat. As
Lusitania
’s bow finally plunged beneath the waves, Frohman smiled and said calmly, “Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life,” referring to a line in Barrie’s
Peter Pan,
“To die would be an awfully big adventure.”
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Just as he finished speaking, there was “a tremendous roar” and “a great wave swept along the deck.”
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It was so strong, Rita remembered, that “my buttoned boots were swept off my feet” as she disappeared into the sea.
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George Kessler saw “a great wave of water” sweep along the deck. He later remembered falling, apparently into a descending lifeboat on the port side. As they tried to draw away, Kessler looked up.
Lusitania
seemed to right herself, then again lurched over to starboard; some wreckage caught on Kessler’s boat and overturned it.
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George Slingsby, separated from Frederick Orr-Lewis and his group, was swept off the deck into the sea without warning.
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Warren and Amy Pearl had no idea that their two youngest children had left the ship, and had spent the last ten minutes roaming the decks, desperately searching for Stuart and Audrey and their nurse. They found Greta Lorenson with their daughter Amy near a lifeboat, but daughter Susan was missing. Pearl asked Lindon Bates to look after his wife as he went below to their stateroom.
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Finally it was obvious that the end was near as the ship “made a forward plunge to starboard.” As the sea came rushing over the decks, Pearl grabbed several planks for his wife, children, and remaining nurse, but the surge swept them off the ship.
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