Mr. CHARLES WARREN BOWRING,
Saloon Class Passenger
[No Picture Provided]
Charles Warren Bowring, 44, was an Englishman representing a branch
of his family firm, Bowring Shipowners and Agents in New York. His cabin
on the Lusitania was B-50, for which he paid $180.00. On the
day of the disaster, he was tossing the medicine ball between him, Purser
James McCubbin, and Elbert Hubbard. As Elbert and Alice Hubbard tossed
a tennis ball around, Charles took the elevator down to lunch.
Bowring was sitting down at lunch on D Deck at the purser's starboard table
when he heard a "concentrated thud[.]" The second explosion "broke
the ports and I saw the column of water[.] " He found the doctor telling
everyone to keep calm as he ascended the stairs. Charles went to his
B Deck cabin, got lifebelts and went to A Deck on the portside. He gave
them away and helped Irene Paynter properly adjust hers. He went back down
and got two more and found a third in the hallway.
As he prepared to jump from the starboard side, Bowring kicked off his
shoes and tucked his glasses into his jacket. Looking back, he saw
a crowded lifeboat, presumably #3, being dragged under by the mother ship.
As he was swimming, he was caught by one of the funnels as it brushed by
him, but he escaped. He made it to a flatbottom boat with one of the officers.
The boat was half-filled with water and the two men used their hands
to bail themselves out. For the next two hours the men dived in and
out of the water, pulling about twenty, a number of them women, to safety.
An even larger number of people that they had tried to save, however,
"were already dead."
Those on the boat were rescued by the Bluebell. Onboard, Bowring
saw Margaret Mackworth, unconscious,
drift by in a wicker chair before she was picked up by the sailors.
Disembarking at Queenstown, Bowring took out his glasses and saw that they
were all covered with newsprint pulp. Examining the paper more closely,
he saw that on the paper was the German warning that had appeared in newspapers
the morning the Lusitania sailed.
Below is a description from The New York Times, Sunday,
May 9, 1915, page 5, column 2:
“One of those that was saved when the Lusitania went down was
Charles W. Bowring of Bowring and Co, owners of the Red Cross line,
17 Battery Place, whose steamers ply between New York and St. Johns, Newfoundland.
His safety was made known in this cable received by his wife in her home,
160 East Seventy-Fourth Street,, at 11 A.M.,: ‘Queenstown, May 8. Torpedoed
without warning, port [sic] side. Jumped overboard, starboard side.
In water four hours. No ill effects. Queens Hotel.’ Mr. Bowring is President
of the St. George’s Society in New York and is also in charge of the Prince
of Wales Relief Fund in America. He went abroad on business.”
Contributors:
Paul Latimer
Michael Poirier
Judith Tavares
References:
Hickey, Des and Gus Smith. Seven Days to Disaster.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1981.
Preston, Diana. Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy.
Berkeley Books, 2002.
The New York Times, Sunday, May 9, 1915, page 5, column
2
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