STORY OF DISASTER

Taranaki Daily News, 16 January 1935, Page 10

STORY OF DISASTER

END OF THE LUSITANIA. ABLE SEAMAN’S RECOLLECTION. Behind an office desk in a narrow street in tire City of London sits a youngish man who possesses a story that he seldom tells—it is too terrible, writes E. Sydney Smith in a London newspaper. He was only 18 when it happened, 19 years ago. Until I heard the story a few days ago, the man, who told it —manager of his xum —had never discussed it, except with one or two of his closest friends. John Edwards is the name he prefers to tell it under. Here it is: Young John and his brother Frank had served five years’ apprenticeship in sail. They were only boys, but in experience they were true sailors. . One day in the early spring of 1915 they signed, on as able seamen in a 31,500-ton liner bound for Liverpool from New York with a total of 2160 passengers and crew. Then came May 7. . . . John Edwards, with about half the crew, spent from midday until 2 p.m. in the baggage room in the depths of the liner. At 2 o’clock, with another seaman, he began his watch as the eyes of the ship, right for’ard. Ten minutes later he saw something that was to mean the death, that afternoon, of more than a thousand men and women. To starboard rose the tell-tale bubbles from the compression chamber of a submarine’s torpedo tubes. TWO FATAL LINES. Between the bubbles and the ship, like two great chalk lines, drawn, at. a speed of 40 knots by some great invisible hand across the slate-calm surface of the sea, rushed the wakes of two torpedoes. Fifty seconds later the’ torpedoes struck amidships, between numbers three and four funnels. , The liner shuddered to the dull, rumbling explosions. Every man in . the baggage room, where Edwards had been 15 minutes before, was trapped or killed. . . half tfce strength of the seamen on’the liner. John made his-way to his boat station on the starboard side. He passed a Cockney steward at the head of a companionway guiding men, women and children to their boats. Death was near. But the steward was. shouting cheerful encouragement. “Nah, then, this way fer the boats. . . . luverly day for a sail. . . give the lidy a chance, there, matey. . . any more fer the Skylark. . .?” Half an hour later that man was dead! The ship had a list of 20 degrees to starboard. Every boat on the port side was useless. Boats on the starboard side hung out six to eight feet. Men and women found that but a little way to leap from death. John, with a seaman, helped 70 men, women and children into his boat. The boat was lowered, and then turned turtle. He made his way to his brother’s boat station and helped him fill a life-boat, which was already on a level with the sea. Before they could push away from the fast-sinking liner a davit caught the side of the lifeboat, and for 60 seconds tipped it gently over. With screams of terror men and women were flung under the side of the liner. John and his brother dived. . . . • Seventeen and a half minutes after she was hit the liner gave her final death roll on to her side. THE CAPTAIN. As the wireless aerial cut the water a few feet from John Edwards he glimpsed the captain, unmoved and silent, on the bridge. A few yards away he saw a collapsible boat, still folded. He clambered on to it, unfolded it, and for half an hour dived in and out of the sea with another seaman, putting 70 half-drowned men and women into the boat. He put them aboard a fishing smack and went back to rescue 30 more, He was awarded a medal by the King for saving 100 lives in that collapsible boat. Since he had dived John had seen nothing of his brother, who had iiever been able to swim a stroke in his life. “The next day at Queenstown,” he says, “I went to the mortuary to look for him. I found him there— looking for me.” With that the city man’s story ends. He does not like to think of it. You see—that is the untold story of the sinking of the Lusitania as one able seaman saw it.