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Updated: June 1, 2025
At last they got into deep water, but just as this was accomplished the mainyard struck it on the side and overturned it in an instant. Not being constructed on the self-righting principle, the boat remained keel up, but the men, buoyed up by their life-jackets, succeeded in climbing on board the wreck.
This was the crew of a small lifeboat which stood ready to be launched. The boat was quickly run out of its house by command of its coxswain, and the crew hastily equipped themselves for their dangerous work. They put on life-jackets made of a number of pieces of cork sewed on canvas, in such a way as to cover their bodies from shoulder to waist without interfering with the play of the arms.
The members were James S. Best, Harry McDonald, John Hislop, William H. Edwards, Elmer Kane, L. H. Jewell, J. H. Jacobs, A. J. Gregory, and J. A. McCormick. Four of these, Hislop, McDonald, Kane, and Edwards had been with Mr. Stanton, to whom I am indebted for this information. The men had cork life-jackets.
The crew being secured against sinking by their life-jackets, succeeded in clambering into the ship many of them more or less bruised and cut. The coxswain, however, did not appear; he seemed to have been lost. "He's under the boat!" gasped Guy, who having been entangled in the wreck of the mast was the last to get on board. "Axes, men!" shouted the Captain of the "Trident."
Then she plunged about and produced life-jackets; then she rushed down the passage flinging open the doors of the other cabins; then she whirled back again and tried to tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with hands that shook so that the strings immediately came undone again; and all the time she was calling out "Quick quick quick " There was a great tramping of feet on deck and cries and shouting.
They pushed out again, to be overwhelmed by a powerful wave which filled the boat full. She drifted helpless through several breakers and one of these capsized her. It has always seemed strange to me that Powell on this crucial expedition did not provide himself and his men with cork life-jackets, a precaution that suggests itself immediately in such an undertaking.
There was also a large supply of life-buoys and life-jackets; the latter being made of cork, in such a form that the wearers might be able to work in them without inconvenience. But in preparing the ship for sea, fire had not been sufficiently considered. There was no fire-engine aboard. Buckets there were, and these were plied with vigour, but, as we have said, without success.
Those gun crews had been standing by those guns from the first day out. For the last three days they had been sleeping near them in their life-jackets and taking their meals standing beside them. They were not going to be left out of it. About a thousand yards away some one reported a floating torpedo. Whether it was a live or a spent one made no matter.
The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came the Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and struggled vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur coats, and had the fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very energetic steward who ran in and said fur coats in the water were death-traps, a steward so much bent on saving people that he began to pull off the other things the German ladies had on as well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their protests, that in the water Mother Nature was the best.
"Yes," replied the dark man, vehemently, "I know that well enough; and I know, too, that there's no lifeboat of any kind aboard, nor life-jackets, nor life-buoys, beyond what would suffice to float some half dozen men; and the owners knew this before sending their ship to sea, and, knowing it, they cared not a rap, because they had insured ship and cargo to the full value.
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