Mr. Albert Arthur Bestic, Junior Third Officer

Albert Bestic
Junior Third Officer
Saved
image: Michael Poirier/National Archives
Born Albert Arthur Bestic
26 August 1890
Dublin, Ireland, United Kingdom (present-day Ireland)
Died 20 December 1962 (age 72)
Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland
Age on Lusitania 24
Lifeboat – Overturned boat
– Collapsible
Rescued by Bluebell
Citizenship British (Irish)
Residence Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, United Kingdom
Other name(s) – “Bisset” (as called by Turner)
– “Bestwick” (as named in Mersey Inquiry)

Albert Bestic (1890 – 1962), 24, was Junior Third Officer on the Lusitania.  He was about to help Baggage Master John Crank bring luggage up on deck when the torpedo hit.  As the ship sank, Bestic attempted to lower the port side boats on Lusitania without much success until the ship went under.  He subsequently commanded a collapsible boat and pulled about a dozen people from the water before they were rescued by the Bluebell.  He remained friendly with Captain Turner, visiting Turner before the captain’s death in 1933.

Contents

  1. Intertwined destiny with Lusitania
  2. Duties on board
  3. Into the war zone
  4. Disaster
  5. In the water
  6. Conversations with Turner
  7. Later life

Intertwined destiny with Lusitania

Albert Bestic was born in Dublin on 26 August 1890, and there he grew up.  As a youth on holiday in Scotland, he had seen the Lusitania in the Clyde.  “If I could sail on a ship like that,” he had thought, “I’d go to sea.”  Bestic was apprenticed to sail at age 18 on sailing ships in the process of becoming a professional deck officer in the Mercantile Marine.  Four years later, while in the service of Denbigh Castle, he once again saw the large passenger liner sweep by.

The Cunard Line only employed officers with “square-rig” tickets as master, and as Bestic had not such under his belt, he did not apply.  When war broke out, however, Cunard changed its policy as many of its officers and crew left for the Royal Navy.  When he applied, he was pleasantly surprised to be told, “Join the Lusitania at nine a.m. tomorrow morning at the Landing Stage.”

Bestic would be replacing Junior Third Officer R.J. Allen, who would be transferred to another Cunard ship in New York. Bestic therefore joined the Lusitania just before she left Liverpool for the last time. His previous ship had been the Leyland, Frederick and Co Ltd. vessel Californian, which had played a part in the Titanic tragedy of April 1912. As junior third officer, on the Lusitania, Albert Bestic’s monthly rate of pay was £10-0s-0d.

The next day in Liverpool, Chief Officer Piper introduced Bestic to the officers.  The other officers had worked their way up from cargo ships and were “pukka Cunard men.”  Bestic, however, did not take long to adapt to the large passenger ship.  He was advised by Second Officer Hefford not to speak to passengers, “especially women.”  If passengers insisted on making conversation, Hefford advised that Bestic make up an excuse for reasons of duty to leave.

Duties on board

Bestic’s position was not a life as glamorous as the celebrities who were in his care, but he attended to his duties as making sure the baggage wasn’t pilfered and that the fire appliances were in order.  He had watches on the bridge, midnight ship inspections with Second Officer Hefford, completed meteorological forms, wrote up log books, and had daily attendance in the baggage room.  Bestic also found out that Captain Turner had a habit of making up his own names for his officers, as he called Bestic “Bisset” and Hefford “Heppert.”

On Monday, 3 May 1915, Second Officer Hefford and Albert Bestic discussed the new Admiralty directives on zigzagging  to evade submarines.   Bestic asked Hefford if zigzagging was similar to tacking on a windjammer, and Hefford admitted that hewasn’t quite clear on how the directives were to be followed.  Hefford also told Bestic that he heard of the orders from Captain Turner himself, and summarized the Admiralty memo for Bestic.  Bestic mused to Hefford that maybe the Admiralty concern for “passenger ships like ours” was the reason for the memo, to which Hefford answered, “All I know is that some captains have their own ideas about zigzagging.”

On Tuesday, 4 May, baggage master John Crank called for Bestic to help with bringing another trunk up from the baggage room, as the crew could not enter the baggage room without an officer present.  The baggage room was a vast belowdecks area accessible by elevator.  A number of first class passengers who had marked some of their luggage as “not wanted on voyage” had changed their minds and wanted to use them during the crossing.  Bestic had a habit of changing into his old uniform before going into the baggage room, a practice that would save his life.

At 9 in the evening on Wednesday, 5 May, Captain Turner challenged the officers to make a Turk’s Head, a decorative knot from the days of sail.  Turner had Bestic deliver the model knot to Chief Officer Piper, who was annoyed at Bestic’s interruption of his bridge game with some of the other officers, as Piper had just doubled four spades.  Piper told Bestic that he hadn’t heard of such a knot in twenty years, and suggested that Bestic tie the other Turk’s Head himself, as the young officer was relatively fresh out of sail.

Bestic returned to his room and took out his handbook on knots.  After much studying, he made the difficult knot and gave it to the bridge with the original knot, with the wardroom’s compliments. From his deposition at the inquiry following the disaster:

“At the time of sailing the ship was in good condition and well found.  She was unarmed having no weapons of offence or defence against an enemy.

Boat drill was carried out before the vessel left New York, the boats being swung out but not put into the water.

On Thursday 6th May at 5.30 to 6.30 a.m., the boats were all swung out.  On 7th May Deponent went off watch at noon and returned to relieve the Intermediate Third Officer for lunch.  Deponent left the bridge at about 2 p.m..  The Old Head of Kinsale was about 5 points on the port bow, distant about ten miles.  The vessel was going full speed by the telegraph and making about 18 knots…”

Into the war zone

On Thursday, 6 May, Lusitania entered the war zone.  As the ship was being prepared for the war zone, Bestic and Hefford discussed the submarines off Fastnet and Admiralty directives to pass harbors at full speed and steer a mid-channel course.  Bestic had checked to make sure Turner wasn’t around, as the captain disliked younger officers chatting on the bridge.  Bestic found the Admiralty directive odd, as ships always passed harbors at full speed if they weren’t calling there, and getting a fix from some headland would be necessary before heading into the Irish Channel.  Regardless, Hefford was sure that Turner would take all the necessary precautions.

Bestic asked Hefford how they would be able to spot a submarine, to which Hefford answered, “A periscope is the only clue.”  A periscope with foam around the base meant that the submarine was getting into position to fire, a periscope without foam meant that the submarine was already in position and could fire a torpedo at any second.  “If you spot anything suspicious, Bestic,” Hefford said, “you just yell out!”

On Friday, 7 May, Bestic sat down to breakfast with Lusitania‘s foghorn blaring above his head.  At 1:30 pm. Bestic and Hefford finished lunch and relieved First Officer Jones and Senior Third Officer Lewis from the bridge.  When Captain Turner spotted the Old Head of Kinsale, Turner ordered Bestic to take a fix and take Lusitania on a four-point bearing.  Bestic began calculating the four point bearing at 1:50, and Third Officer Lewis relieved Bestic at 2:00 pm.  As Bestic made his way back to his cabin, he passed radio telegraphist Robert Leith and asked him about the submarines.

“We heard one was spotted off Cape Clear at ten o’clock,” Leith answered.

Bestic noted that was behind them.

“Another was spotted a few miles south of the Coningbeg,” Leith continued, “that’s ahead of us.”

The Coningbeg Lightship was still 80 miles away, or four hours away.  Bestic knew that U-boats didn’t stay in one place for long, and figured that by the time Lusitania passed Coningbeg that the U-boat would have moved to the Bristol Channel.  Bestic returned to his cabin started writing in the ship’s log.  He hoped to sleep until eight bells afterwards, join the officers for afternoon tea, and start his next watch.  Bestic had barely started his entry — he had only finished writing the ship’s name and date — when John Crank knocked on the door.

“I’m sorry sir,” Crank began, “but on account of the weather being so fine, like, we’ve got orders to get some of the baggage on deck ready to go ashore in the morning.  The men are waiting for you, sir.”

Bestic was about to leave with Crank when he remembered that he was still wearing his new uniform and had not changed into the old uniform that he always wore to go below.  “You go on down and I’ll follow you in a few minutes,” Bestic told Crank.

Crank obliged and left.  Bestic would be grateful for these few extra minutes.

Disaster

According to most books that have been published about Lusitania, Bestic had finished changing and just left his cabin when he heard Leslie Morton shout from forward, “Torpedoes coming on the starboard side!”

Bestic looked to starboard and saw a white streak barrel towards Lusitania.  He grabbed onto the rails of the ladder, thinking to himself, “This is the approach of death.”  The torpedo impacted, sending up massive pillar of deck planks, coal dust, water, and a lifeboat, much of which clattered onto the deck if it did not fall into the sea to be left astern.  If he had not heard Morton’s call, Bestic realized that he would have been right in the path of the falling debris.  Bestic ran to the bridge, hardly believing what had happened.  As for the baggage handlers belowdecks, if they had not already been killed by the explosion, they would drown as the elevator to the baggage room stopped working. None of them survived.  Bestic had just reached the bridge when Captain Turner gave the surprising order, “Boat stations!”

From his own testimony at the Mersey inquiry, Bestic states that he was in the officers’ smoke room when he heard an explosion.  He ran to the bridge where he saw the track of the torpedo.  The torpedo seemed to have been “fired in line with the bridge, and it seemed to strike the ship between the third and fourth funnels, as far as I could see.”  Of course, the torpedo must have struck closer to the bridge, as the ship sank by the head and not the stern.  The torpedo had hit just beneath the bridge and almost immediately below the baggage room where he was about to join Mr. Crank. None of the baggage handlers survived, either killed by the explosion or trapped below decks until they drowned.

Then, Bestic heard Turner shout the order, “hard-a-starboard” and “lower the boats down level to the rail.”

From his testimony at the 1915 inquiry:

Deponent was in the Officers’ smoke room on the Bridge Deck.  He heard a violent explosion.  The vessel commenced to list to starboard and the lights went out on the instant.  Deponent ran out to the starboard side of the bridge and saw debris falling from a height above the funnels and the wake of a torpedo.  As far as he could make out the torpedo struck the vessel between the second and third funnels.

Deponent heard the captain on the bridge ordering the boats to be lowered to the rail.  Passengers were rushing up onto the boat deck.  There was no panic but some women were crying.  The crowd impeded the movements of those getting out the boats.

Deponent’s station was Boats 2 to 10, personal boat No. 10.  Deponent went to No. 10 first.  A sailor took the after fall and deponent the forward fall and commenced to lower.  The list being so great to starboard, the boat came in on top of the collapsible boats underneath.

As Bestic left the bridge for his boat stations, he noted that a strange silence had fallen over the ship, broken only by a whimpering child and a seagull’s cry.  A confused babble then arose from the quiet, “like a rising wind in a bewitched forest.”

Bestic hurried from the bridge to his five assigned boats, numbers 2 through 10 on the port side, where he was to supervise with the lowering.  No. 10 was his own.  The passengers on deck seemed confused.  None of them knew what to do, and Bestic had not received any orders to lower the boats.  A man panicked and jumped into a lifeboat, and Bestic ordered a seaman to “Get him out!”

The sailor threatened the frightened man with an ax, ordering, “Hop it!”

The man was “paralyzed with fear” for a moment before he vacated the seat.

The ship’s list to starboard, however, resulted in the port side lifeboats being swung inboard, and had to be pushed “uphill” to get them over the side of the ship.  Staff Captain Anderson came to inspect the launching attempt, and ordered all the women and children already inside the boats to get out.  Anderson then came up with an idea to right the ship.

“Go to the bridge and tell them they are to trim her with the port [ballast] tanks,” Anderson ordered.

Bestic quickly made his way to the bridge to relay the message to Second Officer Hefford, who then repeated the order.  The answer soon came back that it “was impossible.”  Any remaining crew members who could have trimmed the tanks were already on the boat deck.  Bestic returned to his boat stations, and with a large number of men helping him, they finally pushed lifeboat 10 over the side of Lusitania.

Under orders from staff captain Anderson Deponent went to the bridge and requested the 2nd Officer to trim the vessel with port tanks.  Shortly afterwards the vessel commenced to recover a little but not sufficient to allow of the port side boat being thrown clear of the rail.  The ship now was sinking by the head.  None of the boats 2 to 10 got away.  Some persons, presumably passengers let go gugs with the result that some of the boats swung inboard.

Deponent continued his efforts until the water reached abaft of the bridge.  He then stepped over the side, (a drop of 2 or 3 feet) into the water.

The books by Simpson, Hickey and Smith, and Preston all describe Bestic’s port side lifeboats swinging inboard and crushing people on deck, before breaking loose from their falls and careening down the deck, leaving a path of carnage in their wakes.  Such a scene is not described by Bestic in his accounts.

In the water

He was still at his post on the port side of the ship when he saw the last wave charge up the deck.  Without a lifebelt, he jumped over the side and tried to swim clear of the ship, but was still “dragged down with the ship.”  He tumbled in the water and noticed the water getting lighter as he was pushed upwards.  He swam upwards for what felt like minutes, and when he burst to the surface, he realized that he was inside an overturned lifeboat.  He made his way under the gunwale and felt a hand as Seaman Thomas Quinn pulled him by the collar to the top side of the boat.  When Bestic surfaced, he only saw wreckage and people struggling in the water where the great ship had been.  He could hardly bear the sound of hundreds of men, women, and children crying out in the water, “the despair, anguish and terror of hundreds of souls passing into eternity.”

Deponent was dragged down with the ship, came to the surface and eventually took refuge on a stove-in collapsible boat.  He picked another man up from the water got the side of the boat raised a little and took in several persons from the water on an upturned sinking boat.

Fearing that the capsized boat that he was on would soon be overwhelmed, he struck out on his own, swimming towards land miles away.  A current carried him off by himself but could still hear the cries of children in the water.  The cries soon stopped.  He lost his sense of time and place, imagining that he was a young boy seeing Lusitania sail by again.  Then Bestic found his own collapsible  and hauled half of himself over the gunwale into the boat, the other half of him still in the water.  He soon realized that this boat was taking in water.  Bestic struggled to keep afloat by plugging his collapsible boat with any flotsam that was around him.

Bestic soon sighted a young, dark-haired man swimming in the water and called out to him.  After the young man got himself on the boat, he quipped, “I suppose it’s no use asking you for a cigarette.”

“I’m sorry,” Bestic apologized, “Mine have gone rather soggy.”

The two men rowed and bailed water from their boat to keep warm, and came across the body of a young girl.  They then came across a woman in a lifejacket, seemingly in shock.  Her heavy, soaked garments required that both men pull her out of the water and into their boat.  She asked them, “Where is my baby?”

“I’m sorry,” Bestic answered, “we haven’t seen any babies.”

To their horror, the distraught woman threw herself overboard.  The young man grabbed the woman and lied, “Your baby is safe.  I saw it taken into another boat.”

The woman allowed herself to be helped into the boat again.  Bestic chided himself for not thinking of the lie.  The small, waterlogged boat picked up a dozen or more survivors before they could not take on any more.  Hours passed and Bestic feared that it would be dark before help came for them.  He found a watertight tin of biscuits and passed them out to everyone in his boat, “Chew these biscuits.  You’ll find that working your jaws keeps you warm.”  He had learned this from experience when he had sailed around Cape Horn.  The lifeboat was quiet as all on board busied themselves with chewing instead of making conversation.

Four hours after Lusitania sank, their collapsible was picked up by the Bluebell.  If help had come any later, the skies really would have been dark.

Conversations with Turner

In the messroom of the Bluebell,  Bestic saw Captain Turner alive, sitting by himself.  Bestic went up to him and said, “I’m very glad to see you alive, sir.”

“Why should you be?”  Turner asked.  “You’re not that fond of me.”

“Fondness doesn’t enter into it, sir.  I’m glad to see you alive because I respect you as my Captain and I admire you as a seaman.”

Turner didn’t respond.  How much comfort could Bestic bring when others were possibly asking why the captain had survived when so many others had not?  Not too long ago, a grieving mother had blamed the captain for the loss of her son.

Back in Liverpool, Albert Bestic was officially discharged from his service on the Lusitania and paid the balance of wages owed to him in respect of his service on board. This amounted to £8-6s-8d, (£8.33).

At the end of June 1915 he was called to give evidence at the official enquiry conducted into the sinking, chaired by Lord Mersey, and held at Caxton Hall in London. The questions he was asked, however, like most of those put to crew members, only elicited a response which was convenient to the finding which was required. His name was recorded as “Bestwick,” seemingly unable to escape people in authority from botching his name.  In his testimony, he did mention lifeboats that were difficult to launch because of the list, but he did not mention any swinging inboard and careening down the deck, maiming people in their paths.

Albert Bestic came to visit Captain Turner in the fall of 1932, upon learning that Turner was ill with stomach cancer and only had six months to live.  The captain’s housekeeper, Mabel Every, answered the door to the house in the Liverpool suburbs when Bestic called.  When she relayed the information to Turner, he said that he never heard of Bestic.  Bestic was hurt and about to leave when he suddenly remembered:  “Would you be kind enough to tell the Captain that my name is really Bisset.”  Mabel was suspicious, but she returned smiling after delivering the message, saying, “He said, ‘Why the hell didn’t he say so in the first place?’ ”

Turner and Bestic sat down and Turner recounted stories of his past.  Turner approved of Bestic receiving his square-rigged Master’s certificate after their days together on Lusitania.  Turner considered “steamship only” certificates to be the back door into the business. When Bestic told Turner of his intention to discover the wreck with a salvage company, his former commander gave him the chart which he had taken from the chart table just before he had been washed off the bridge. On this he had marked, fairly accurately as it later turned out, the position of the liner when she was first struck. He also asked the former Junior Third Officer if he could recover his sextant that he had left in his day cabin.

When Bestic got his chance, he asked, “The Lusitania, sir . . . did you think she was going to be torpedoed?”

“I was worried, Bisset.”  Turner answered.  “Naturally I was.  What Master wouldn’t be?  I thought we had an odds-on chance of escaping, you know.  I didn’t get a fair deal.  I mean to say, no escort to meet us, despite the signals about submarines.  Gave me false confidence.  If the Admiralty didn’t think it necessary to worry about a ship worth millions, not to mention hundreds of passengers, I reasoned they must think there’s not much danger.  No, I didn’t get a fair deal.  A good two years went by before they started issuing definite orders.  What courses ships should take.  The distance they should keep off headlands.  I was told I should have taken a mid-Channel course.  And my ship in the Atlantic?  They didn’t even explain to me about zigzagging.”

Later life

Having survived the war at sea, Albert Bestic continued to be haunted by the Lusitania story. In the 1930s, he was involved in several schemes to recover goods and artefacts from the wreck, although none of them ever amounted to anything.

Bestic served in World War II when his ship was torpedoed.  Once again, he survived.  He also took part in a BBC television documentary marking the forty-seventh anniversary of the disaster, and met up with past Lusitania survivors and viewed films taken at the wrecksite.  He wrote about his experience in an article published on 8 May 1962 in the Irish Independent, titled, “So I Shall See the Lusitania Again,” republished in its entirety in Senan Molony’s Lusitania:  An Irish Tragedy.

In the article, Bestic marveled how, through television, he would be able to see the Lusitania again. He recounts his visit with Mr. Lagos, the chief diver for the BBC TV program, and how Lagos described the diving gear they used and how the divers could walk on the decks of the ship as Bestic once had. However, Lagos describes the wreck as listing to port, which is not how Ballard saw the ship in his 1995 expedition, which revealed that the Lusitania wreck was lying on its starboard side, concealing the torpedo impact.

Bestic was reunited with lookout Leslie Morton, whom Bestic described as “slim no longer,” and quartermaster Hugh Johnston, who was at the wheel when the torpedo struck. Also there was Parry Jones of the Royal Welsh Singers, and a woman whom Bestic did not recognize because she had been only 3-months old at the time of the sinking.

Bestic gave a newspaper interview in which he claimed to be the last surviving officer of the Lusitania. This prompted a newspaper rebuttal from John Idwal Lewis, then working as assistant marine superintendent for Cunard-White Star in New York City. Lewis stated that he was not dead, and that the deck officers managed to launch 6 lifeboats and save over 700 people. Lewis also snidely commented that Bestic must have given up on the sea after the Lusitania sinking, “because I never heard of him afterward.”

Albert Bestic was, unlike many Lusitania survivors, quite happy to talk about his experiences in later life, slightly different versions of which appeared in different books from the 1950s to the 1970s. His deposition, however, given on oath a mere five days after the sinking, is likely to be the most accurate.

Bestic lived to be 72 years of age and died in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland on 20 December 1962.

Links of interest

Albert Bestic – Lest We Forget

Albert Bestic at the Merseyside Maritime Museum

Contributors:
Peter Kelly, Ireland
Paul Latimer
Ellie Moffat, UK
Senan Molony, Ireland
Michael Poirier, USA

References:
Cunard Records

Minutes of Evidence as presented at the Mersey Inquiry

Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths

Fifty Fathoms Deep. BBC Program.

Ballard, Robert D. and Spencer Dunmore.  Exploring the Lusitania.  Warner Books, 1995.

Hickey, Des and Gus Smith.  Seven Days to Disaster.  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981.

Hoehling, A. A. and Mary Hoehling.  The Last Voyage of the Lusitania.  Madison Books, 1956.

Molony, Senan.  Lusitania:  An Irish Tragedy.  Mercier Press, 2004.

Peeke, Mitch, Kevin Walsh-Johnson and John Gray. Lusitania and Beyond. Avid Publications, 2001.

Preston, Diana.  Lusitania:  An Epic Tragedy.  Berkley Books, 2002.

Simpson, Colin.  The Lusitania.  Little, Brown, and Company, 1972.

Merchant Fleet At War

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