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Updated: July 15, 2025
"Some of 'em saved, anyhow. The coast-men are there, too, life-boats and all." So they were; and Ham was right about the vessel, though not a mast was left standing in her now. If there had been, indeed, she might have been kept off the breakers, as they afterwards learned.
He immediately entered one of the life-boats and pushing back the arms of those who wished to detain him, he exclaimed in an almost jubilant voice: "Let me go, let me go! We must assist those unhappy men!" But his frail bark was speedily filled with water; the waves swept over it with a wild roar, and covered the whole form of the emperor with foaming, hissing spray.
But at last his protegee managed to gasp out in a more or less coherent manner the main facts of the shipwreck and her rescue, whereupon Gordon's attitude abruptly altered. "My God!" he ejaculated. "You were not on the Nebraska?" "Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natalie. "The life-boats went off and left me all alone in the dark with the ship sinking! Mr. O'Neil saved me.
But it was a voyage of unpleasant war reminders, with life-savers carried every moment of the day, with every light out at night, with every window and door as if hermetically sealed so that the stuffy cabins deprived of sleep those accustomed to fresh air, with over sixty army men and civilians on watch at night, with life-drills each day, with lessons as to behavior in life-boats; and with a fleet of eighteen British destroyers meeting the convoy upon its approach to the Irish Coast after a thirteen days' voyage of constant anxiety.
"As the life-boats pulled away the officers ordered the bands to play, and their music did much to quell panic. It was a heart-breaking sight to us tossing in an eggshell three-fourths of a mile away, to see the great ship go down. First she listed to the starboard, on which side the collision had occurred, then she settled slowly but steadily, without hope of remaining afloat.
Narratives of survivors do not bear out the supposition that the final hours upon the vessel's decks were passed in darkness. They say the electric lighting plant held out until the last, and that even as they watched the ship sink, from their places in the floating life-boats, her lights were gleaming in long rows as she plunged under by the head.
It was an orgy of terror, of wild abandon, of hopeless striving on the edge of the pit a stupid madness at the best, as the ship's life-boats on the port side were on the spar deck; in their panic the men were endeavoring to lower a dingy. Yet Courtenay saw that discipline was regaining its influence. He thought to inspire confidence and stop useless savagery by a sharp command.
These frenzied wretches would destroy themselves and all others so, if he would save even a few of the lives entrusted to his care, at least one of the boats must be protected. The struggle was fiercest for the possession of the two life-boats. By a determined effort the jolly-boat might be secured.
A seaman standing near Jimmie explained this procedure; it appeared that the submarines were accustomed to lurk near rafts and life-boats, preying upon those vessels which came to their rescue.
The lights of this schooner, he thought, probably were those seen by the anxious survivors of the Titanic and which they were frantically trying to reach. Steward Crawford also related a thrilling story in regard to loading the life-boats with women first.
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