Authors: Greg King
Bates, Amy Pearl saw, was wearing “a heavy overcoat” as he raced back and forth across the deck, hurling chairs into the water for people struggling below.
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A few years earlier, traveling in Central America, he’d faced a similar crisis when his boat threatened to sink. “One does a lot of quick thinking at such a time,” he wrote. Thoughts had raced through his head: “The main emotion you have is of utter disgust at the whole proceeding.”
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Now, as waves washed over
Lusitania
’s decks, Amy Pearl saw him caught in the swirling water; as he twisted and turned, his foot caught in a rope, and she watched as he was dragged beneath the surface.
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“We shall have to swim for it,” William Adams said to his father. He had tried to go below to their cabin for lifebelts but found water rushing around the staircase and pouring in through open portholes. On the ship’s starboard side, father and son helped load Lifeboat No. 17 and joined its occupants as it was lowered from
Lusitania
’s side. The boat was about twelve feet from the water when the seaman at the front let go of the rope; the boat’s bow fell, spilling most of the passengers into the sea. No effort could free the lifeboat of its falls as the
Lusitania
plunged lower and lower. With the Boat Deck now level with the sea, and fearing they would be pulled under when the ship sank, father and son jumped into the water. They swam for a short distance but were soon separated.
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Charles Lauriat had climbed into the stern of Lifeboat No. 7 and worked desperately to free it from its davits without success; it was still attached as water lapped at the deck. As the sea surged around the boat, the davits threatened to push it beneath the waves and crush it. Lauriat somehow managed to free the stern falls, but those at the bow still held it to the davits. Despite shouted instructions, he said, he could not make anyone “understand what to do or how to do it.” A lone steward stood at the bow, trying to slice through the thick falls with a pocketknife. Lauriat tried to clamber forward but found his progress impeded by people, oars, kegs of water, “and God knows what.” Glancing up, he saw a funnel “hanging over us,” much to “the terror of the people in the boat.” Knowing all was lost, Lauriat pleaded with the passengers to jump overboard, but “they were petrified” and could not or would not move. Finally, he dove over the side.
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Oliver Bernard found David Thomas and his secretary, Arnold Rhys-Evans, at Lifeboat No. 11 on the starboard side. Thomas had lost his daughter, Lady Mackworth, in the first few minutes after the impact, when she went to her cabin to fetch lifebelts, and he had no idea where she was. Bernard saw the “rather worried and puzzled expression on his face” as Thomas scanned the decks for her.
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By now, the list was severe and the water was nearly level with the deck. Thomas helped several “hysterical” passengers jump in before he followed but the boat was still attached to its davits.
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Bernard joined Thomas and his secretary in the boat, and watched as efforts to cut the falls seemed futile.
The ship’s heavy list to starboard was now so great that the funnels loomed almost overheard, threatening to “smash them like flies” if
Lusitania
rolled any further. At the last moment, the lifeboat cleared the ship just as she began her final plunge.
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But Bernard saw that one of the guy wires from the funnel, like “a huge, tight banjo string,” was descending on them. “We managed to push the boat from under it,” he said, as “water boiled up in great masses” all around them.
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Isaac Lehmann, injured when Lifeboat No. 18 smashed back over the deck, had just managed to crawl to the rails when there was “a terrific explosion” toward the front of the ship and he was thrown into the water. He was twice pulled under by the suction as the vessel sank, but finally managed to swim clear.
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William Meriheina hadn’t really believed
Lusitania
would sink, and remained aboard until the last few moments; near him on the aft docking bridge stood Charles Jeffery, the race car driver and the motorcar manufacturer, and together awaited the end. Finally,
Lusitania
gently eased itself beneath the surface and a torrent of water washed them into the sea.
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Charles Lauriat swam away as fast as he could; when he had reached what he deemed to be a safe distance, he turned to watch
Lusitania
go under. “I could still see the people on Deck B,” he recalled, “clinging to the rail that ran along the side.… It was impossible to stand on the deck unless one had hold of some stationary object. People were clinging to one another, so that it seemed as if they were standing three or four abreast by the rail.”
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James Brooks saw “a crowd still on her decks, and boats filled with helpless women and children glued to her side. I was sickened with horror at the sight.”
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Cellist Handel Hawkins also looked back at the liner after having jumped over the side. “Hundreds of horror-stricken passengers were huddled together on the slanting decks,” he said. “Women and children were crying for help that could not be given.” As
Lusitania
sank, he saw dozens of people jump or fall into the sea. “The sight of so many helpless people going to their doom was sickening, and I had to turn away before the boat went down altogether.”
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The weight of water flooding the bow pulled
Lusitania
deeper into the sea. Steam and cinders shot from the funnels as air pockets burst; boilers, machinery, and fittings tore loose and pummeled through the ship in a monstrous cacophony.
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William Meriheina heard explosions from within the hull, and saw portholes blown out of the ship’s sides.
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Staterooms were flooded, engulfing elegant wardrobes packed into steamer trunks for arrival the following morning; the sea swept through her First Class Reading and Writing Room, swirling around the brocaded walls and plush chairs; it surged through the Grand Entrance, cascading down the crimson-carpeted staircase; it flowed through her First Class Lounge, enveloping the mahogany walls in a grip of death; it filled the Dining Saloon, washing over the plaster dome adorned with the
Four Seasons
and floating linens, china, menus, and flowers from the luncheon just served; it exploded through bulkheads, destroying the First Class Smoking Room, and continued its destructive path to the Veranda Café. Etched windows imploded under the pressure.
As she settled,
Lusitania
slightly righted herself, and seemed to sink deck by deck at a shallow angle, her entire length submerging until only her masts and funnels remained above water.
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From her lifeboat, Alice Lines saw
Lusitania
go down. “There was this huge, lovely liner,” she later said, “and as I watched one funnel went, and then the other, and the other, until the ship was gone.”
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At the last minute, when all but her funnels had disappeared,
Lusitania
again rolled to starboard. Her funnels raked over, crashing down into the sea at an angle. James Brooks saw water “rush into the smoke stacks, sucking in everything in its path. I could hear people screaming as they were pulled in.”
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There was, he said, “a thunderous roar, as of the collapse of a great building on fire” as
Lusitania
slipped beneath a sea that “rapidly grew black with the figures of struggling men, women, and children.” Brooks “swam as hard as I could” as the funnels “loomed over my head. I expected them momentarily to fall and crush me,” but he managed to get clear, grabbing hold of the wires and pushing himself away as he sliced his hands open.
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Robert Holt turned and saw the ship listing over perilously close. “I dived under the water, and while there came into contact with one funnel,” he remembered. “I put my hand alongside it, and felt the rivets.”
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Charles Lauriat, swimming hard to escape the vortex, was pulled under when one of the ship’s aerials caught on the shoulders of his lifebelt. He had to furiously kick to reach the surface, grateful for his childhood days at camp when older boys had relentlessly dunked him beneath the water. “They proved mighty good training!” he now thought.
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Eighteen minutes after Schwieger’s torpedo hit her,
Lusitania
disappeared, “sucking down with it a mass of bodies and wreckage which gradually rose to the surface again in an indescribably hideous manner,” recalled Carl Foss.
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“She was just swallowed up,” said Oliver Bernard, “swallowed up in a gorgeous sea.”
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George Kessler turned to look back. “My God,” he cried out, “the
Lusitania
is gone!”
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The scene was surreal: gulls loudly circling a beautiful, clear blue sky, a “wonderfully smooth” ocean, and a sea filled with screaming, struggling, pleading survivors left when
Lusitania
plunged beneath the waves.
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The water, recalled James Brooks, “rapidly grew black with the figures of struggling men, women, and children.”
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A circle of wreckage marked the site of her final plunge: cushions, clothing, papers, deck chairs, and lifebelts floated aimlessly on green water slick with oil. The few lifeboats that had managed to safely get away bobbed restlessly against the horizon; a few others, washed loose from
Lusitania
in the last moments and turned upside down, rocked back and forth near collapsible boats that had floated off the ship. As soon as the ship disappeared, said Charles Lauriat, the air was filled with “a long, lingering moan” as people struggled in the water.
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Albert Bestic would never forget “all the despair, terror, and anguish of hundreds of souls passing into eternity” as he saw “waving hands and arms belonging to struggling men, women, and children endeavoring to keep afloat.”
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Within a few minutes, said numerous survivors, a submarine surfaced in the middle of this wreckage.
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Harold Boulton spotted a submarine rise out of the water, and several crew members peering over the scene.
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Michael Byrne, too, saw “a conning tower, followed by the hull” as it broke the surface. “The head and shoulders of a man appeared,” he recalled. “He looked about the water in the neighborhood, and then went back, and the submarine dropped out of sight.”
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Someone thought that he spotted Elbert Hubbard, holding fast to a steel drum bobbing in the water. Each time he tried to climb up, it slowly revolved and spilled him back into the sea. After several unsuccessful efforts, he apparently lost consciousness and sank beneath the surface.
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An electrician from
Lusitania
’s crew saw Alfred Vanderbilt floating near the whirl of wreckage. At the last minute, he had grabbed a lifebelt and flung it around his shoulders without tying it properly. “I am Vanderbilt!” he cried out as the man unsuccessfully attempted to adjust the lifebelt. “He did his best to keep afloat,” the electrician recalled, but they drifted apart and, when he looked back, Vanderbilt was gone.
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“The cries for mercy, the people drowning and coming up again,” recalled Josephine Brandell as she floated on a deck chair, were “too terrible.”
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Others bobbed lifelessly in this sea of misery. Oliver Bernard saw “hundreds of heads and arms of struggling victims on barrels, deck chairs, and all the flotsam and jetsam that had remained.” A woman floated by, “a frothy mucous on her lips,” her eyes “peering blindly.”
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“Entangled in wreckage,” Bernard said, “one by one” these survivors “seemed to fall off and give themselves up.”
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Another passenger was horrified to see a woman go into premature labor as corpses floated around her.
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