Mr.
ARTHUR JACKSON MITCHELL, Second Cabin Passenger
[No Picture Provided]
Arthur Jackson Mitchell was an American merchant with the Raleigh Cycle
Company who booked passage in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. On the Lusitania,
Thursday night, 6 May, he got together with others to plan a committee
on
how to show people to put on their lifebelts. Captain Turner relented
and
gave his approval on the provision that it be stressed that it was only
a
precaution and that there was no danger.
On Friday, he was resting in his E deck cabin when he heard a "thud
accompanied by the sound which I can best describe as of an iron safe
falling to iron from a height of thirty or forty feet[.] " He
said that as he came
into the passageway, it smelled of sulfur and powder. Mitchell
ended
up in front of lifeboat #15 and had to persuade Mrs. Sarah Fish to
enter
the boat. Mrs. Fish was undoubtedly worried about her sister
Elizabeth Rogers
who still had the youngest Fish with her. Mitchell threw Sarah's
middle daughter Marion Fish into the boat while the elder daughter,
Eileen, took a running jump and got in. After he assisted Ellen
Hogg into the boat, Mitchell was told to get in.
Mitchell remembered that lifeboat #15 had a terrible time trying to get
away from the ship. Wallace Phillips was also in the boat and said that
the lifeboat finally got away due to the fact that a collapsible slid
off the ship and nudged boat 15 forward. The Marconi aerial fell
onto boat #15,
but the wire snapped and the boat escaped. When the ship went down,
boat
#15 was whirled around the vortex a few times and managed to get free.
Several people hanging onto the sides such as Emily Anderson were
pulled into the boat, but eventually the boat became so crowded that
they could
only tell people to "hang on" while they looked for another boat to
offload
their burden.
The Lusitania was not Mitchell's first disaster at sea.
He was on the RMS Arcadian when it was wrecked.
Contributors:
Michael Poirier
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