From the foregoing, the situation can be visualized. Two sudden and extraordinary explosions, the ship badly listed so that the port side was well up in the air, the passengers scattered about on the decks and in the staterooms, saloons and companionways, the ship under headway and, as it turned out, only 18 minutes afloat – such was the situation which confronted the officers, crew and passengers in the endeavor to save the lives of those on board.
The conduct of the passengers constitutes an enduring record of calm heroism with many individual instances of sacrifice and, in general, a marked consideration for women and children. There was no panic but, naturally, there was a considerable amount of excitement and rush and much confusion and, as the increasing list rendered ineffective the lowering of the boats on the port side, the passengers, as is readily understandable, crowded over on the starboard side.
The problem presented to the officers of the ship was one of exceeding difficulty, occasioned largely because of the serious list and the impossibility of stopping the ship or reducing her headway.
The precaution of extra lookout resulting in a prompt report to the Captain, via the bridge, of the sighting of the torpedo. Second Officer Heppert [sic, Hefford], who was on the bridge, immediately closed all watertight doors worked from the bridge and the testimony satisfactorily shows that all watertight doors worked by hand were promptly closed. Immediately after Captain Turner saw the wake of the torpedo, there was an explosion and then Turner went to the navigation bridge and took the obvious course, i.e., had the ship’s head turned to the land. He signaled the engine room for full speed astern, hoping, thereby, to take the way off the ship and then ordered the boats lowered down to the rail and directed that women and children should be first provided for in the boats. As the engine room failed to respond to the order to go full speed astern and, as the ship was continuing under way, Turner ordered that the boats should not be lowered until the vessel should lose her headway and he told Anderson, the Staff Captain, who was in charge of the port boats, to lower the boats when he thought the way was sufficiently off to allow that operation. Anderson’s fidelity to duty is sufficiently exemplified by the fact that he went down with the ship.
Jones, First Officer, and Lewis, Acting Third Officer, were in charge of the boats on the starboard side and personally superintended their handling and launching. Too much cannot be said both for their courage and skill but, difficult as was their task, they were not confronted with some of the problems which the port side presented. There, in addition to Anderson, were Bestic, Junior Third Officer, and another officer, presumably the second officer. These men were apparently doing the best they could and standing valiantly to their duty. Anderson’s fate has already been mentioned and Bestic, although surviving, stuck to his post until the ship went down under him. The situation can readily be pictured even by a novice.
With the ship listed to starboard, the port boats, of course, swung inboard. If enough man power were applied, the boats could be put over the rail but then a real danger would follow. Robertson, the ship’s carpenter, aptly described that danger in answer to a question as to whether it was possible to lower the open boats on the port side. He said:
No. To lower the port boats would just be like drawing a crate of unpacked china along a dock road. What I mean is that if you started to lower the boats you would be dragging them down the rough side of the ship on rivets which are what we call “snap headed rivets,” they stand up about an inch from the shell of the ship, so you would be dragging the whole side of the boat away if you tried to lower the boats with a 15 degree list.
That some boats were and others would have been seriously damaged is evidence by the fact that two port boats were lowered to the water and got away (though one afterward filled) and not one boat reached Queenstown.
Each boat has its own history (except possibly boats 2 and 4), although it is naturally difficult, in each case, to allocate all the testimony to a particular boat.
There is some testimony given in undoubted good faith, that painted or rusted davits stuck out of the weight of the testimony is to the contrary. There were some lamentable occurrences on the port side, which resulted in spilling passengers, some of whom thus thrown out or injured went to their death. These unfortunate accidents, however, were due either to lack of strength of the seaman who was lowering or possibly, at worst, to an occasional instance of incompetency – due to the personal equation so often illustrated where one man of many may not be equal to the emergency. But the problem was of the most vexatious character. In addition to the crowding of passengers in some instances, was this extremely hazardous feat of lowering boats swung inboard from a tilted height, heavily weighted by human beings, with the ship still under way. It cannot be said that it was negligent to attempt this because, obviously, all the passengers could not be accommodated in the starboard boats.
On the starboard side, the problem, in some respects, was not so difficult while, in others, troublesome conditions existed quite different from those occurring on the port side. Here the boats swung so far out as to add to the difficulty of passenger getting in them, a difficulty intensified by the fact that many more passengers went to the starboard side than to the port side and also, that the ship maintained her way. Six boats successfully got away. In the case of the remaining boats, some were successfully lowered but later met with some unavoidable accident and some were not successfully launched (such as Nos. 1, 5, and 17) for entirely explainable reasons which should not be charged to inefficiency on the part of the officers or crew.
The collapsible boats were on the deck under the open life-boats and were intended to be lifted and lowered by the same davits which lowered the open boats after the open boats had gotten clear of the ship. It was the duty of the officers to get the open boats away before giving attention to the collapsible boats and that was a question of time. These boats are designed and arranged to float free if the ship should sink before they can be hoisted over. They were cut loose and some people were saved on these boats.
It is to be expected that those passengers who lost members of their family or friends and who saw some of the unfortunate accidents, should feel strongly and entertain the impression that inefficiency or individual negligence was widespread among the crew. Such an impression, however, does an inadvertent injustice to a great majority of the crew, who acted with that matter-of-fact courage and fidelity to duty which are traditional with men of the sea. Such of these men, presumably fairly typical of all, as testified in this court, were impressive not only because of inherent bravery but because of intelligence and clear-headedness and they possessed that remarkable gift of simplicity so characteristic of truly fearless men who cannot quite understand why an ado is made of acts which seem to them merely as, of course, in the day’s work.
Mr. Grab, one of the claimants, and an experienced transatlantic traveler, concisely summed up the situation when he said:
They were doing the best they could – they were very brave and working as hard as they could without any fear; they didn’t care about themselves. It was very admirably done. While there was a great confusion, they did the best they could.
It will unduly prolong a necessarily extended opinion to sift they voluminous testimony relating to this subject of the boats and the conduct of the crew, and something is sought to be made of comments of Captain Turner, construed by some to be unfavorable but afterwards satisfactorily supplemented and explained, but it there were some instances of incompetency they were very few and the charge of negligence in this regard cannot be successfully maintained.
In arriving at this conclusion, I have not overlooked the argument earnestly pressed that the men were not sufficiently instructed and drilled; for I think the testimony establishes the contrary in the light of conditions in May, 1915.
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