Mr. CHARLES TILDEN
HILL, Saloon Class Passenger
image
credit: Malcolm Barres-Baker/Harrow Observer, 14 May
1915.
Charles T. Hill, 38, was a native of Richmond, Virginia, United
States. He worked for the American Tobacco Company and had come
to work for them in Britain 15 years before. His address in
England was 12, Lyon Road, Harrow, Middlesex, and he lived there with
his wife and two children. Hill travelled regularly between
Britain and the US, though on the last voyage of the Lusitania, his presence in the
States was not for business but because of Mrs. Hill's health.
The whole family had come to the United States on the Lusitania in April. His cabin
on the Lusitania's last
crossing was B-110.
Hill knew about the stowaways on the ship, as
stated in his deposition: "On Tuesday night before the wreck,
Staff Captain Anderson told me that three suspicious characters had
slipped past the cordon of secret service men at New York and they had
afterward found them and confined them below[.]" As the Lusitania does not show any jail
cells on her deck plans, the stowaways were probably locked in an empty
cabin, storage closet, or at the office of the Master-at-Arms.
On the afternoon of Friday, 7 May 1915, Hill was hurrying to an
appointment with the ship's stenographer when he stopped to have a work
with Chief Steward Jones on the starboard promenade deck. Jones
was already at the railing and muttered to Hill, "Good God, Mr. Hill,
here comes a torpedo."
Hill saw the periscope of the U-20
and the wake of the oncoming torpedo. Both Hill and Jones were
hoping that the torpedo would pass in front of the ship and saw the
torpedo strike the starboard side with "a noise like that made by the
slamming of a door." The second "dull, heavy, muffled" explosion
then followed.
Hill then rushed below decks and spent several minutes trying to find
Mary Brown, Beatrice Witherbee, and her son Alfred Scott.
Reaching D-deck, he found water flooding through the portholes.
Not finding his friends, he then went back to his cabin to get his
dispatch case and overcoat. He then ran into his steward Percy
Penny who then assisted Hill into a lifejacket though Penny did not
have one on himself.
Going back up on deck, Hill saw that the lifeboats were not being
launched properly. He was about to get into one when a woman
inside told him that the boat was already too full. He then
climbed into lifeboat #14 with ship's barber Lott Gadd. The
boat was lowered too quickly and smacked into the water right-side
up. The lifeboat started leaking immediately, and it wasn't long
before the waterlogged boat capsized. As Hill saw Gadd swim away
from the boat, Hill remembered that he had yet to pay Gadd for that
week's shave.
Hill was one of the few people who stuck with lifeboat #14 until it was
picked up by the Indian Empire.
He cabled the American Tobacco Co. immediately on landing in Ireland,
and they informed his terrified wife that he was alive. After the
sinking he stayed at the Rob Roy Hotel in Queenstown and was told that
injuries to the skin of his legs prevented him immediately traveling
back to England.
Contributors:
Malcolm Barres-Baker
Mike Poirier
References:
Hoehling, A. A. Ships
that Changed History. Madison Books, 1994.
Preston, Diana. Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy.
Berkley Books, 2002.
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