r
American Newspaper Man Describes
in 4 parts Sinking of Laconia by Sub m i
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V-—-—
An American newspaperman,
Floyd P. Gibbons, was the first cor
respondent to experience the crash ot
war as the result of the submarine
blockade. He was a passenger aboard
the Cunard liner Laconia when it was
torpedoed, resulting in the death of
several Americans, and his story ol
the rush for the boats is intense and
thrilling. It will be printed in four
parts.
PART TWO
Suspension
Then we stopped with another jerk
and remained suspended in midair
while the men at the bow and the
stern swore and tussled with the low
ering ropes. The stern of the boat
was down, the bow up. leaving us at
an angle of about 45 degrees. We
clung to the seats to save ourselves
from falling out.
“Who’s got a knife, a knife,
bawled a sweating seaman in the bow.
“Great God. give him a knife,”
bawled a half-dressed, jibbering negro
stoker, who wrung his hands in the
stern.
A hatchet was thrust into my hand
and I forwarded it to the bow. 1 here
was a flash ot sparks as it crashed
down on the holding pulley. One
strand of the rope parted, and down
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plunged the bow, too quick for the
stern men. We came to a jerky stop,
with the stern in the air and the bow
down, but the stern managed to low
er away until the dangerous angle
was eliminated.
Then both tried to lower together.
The list of the ship’s side became
greater, but, instead of our boat slid
ing down it like a toboggan, the tatT
rail caught and was held. As the
lowing continued the yther side drop
I ped down, and we found ourselves
clinging on at a new angle and look
ing straight down on the water.
Hand and a Voice
A hand slipped into mine and a
voice sounded huskily close to my ear.
It was the little old German-Jew
traveling man who was disliked in the
smoker-room because he used to
speak too certainly of things he was
uncertain of and whose slightly Teu
tonic dialect made him as popular as
smallpox with the British passengers.
“My boy, I can’t see nutting,” he
said. “My glasses slipped and I am
falling. Hold me, please.”
1 managed to reach out and join
hands with another man on the other
side of the old man, and together we
held him in. He hung heavily over
our arms, grostesquely grasping all
he had saved from his stateroom—a
gold-headed cane and an extra hat.
Many feet and hands pushed the
boat from the side of the ship, and we
, sagged down again, this time smack
ing squarely on the pillowy top of a
rising swell. It felt more solid than
midair, at least, but we were far
from being off. The pulleys twice
stuck in their fastenings, bow* and
stern, and the one axe passed forward
and back, and with it my flashlight,
as the entangling ropes that held us
to the sinking Laconia were cut away.
Some shout from that confusion of
, sound caused me to look up, and I
really did so with the fear that one
of the near-by boats was being lower
! ed upon us.
A man was jumping, as l presumed,
with the intention of landing in the
boat, and I prepared to avoid the im
t pact, but he pa&sed beyond us and
plunged into the water three feet
: from the edge of the boat. He bobbed
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to the surface immediately.
“It’s Duggan,” shouted a man next;
to me. i
i
I flashed the light on the ruddy!
smiling face and water-plastered hair;
of the little Canadian, our fellow sa-j
loon passenger. We pulled him over
the side.
He spluttered out a mouthful of
water, and the first words he said
were:
“I wonder if there is anything to
that lighting three cigarettes off the
same match? I was up above try-:
ing to loosen the rope to this boat. I
loosened it and then got tangled up in
it. The boat went down, but I was
jerked up. 1 jumped for it.”
His first reference concerned our
deliberate tempting of fates early in
the day, when he, Kirby and I lighted
three cigarettes from the same match,
and Duggan told us that he had done
the same thing many a time.
As we pulled away from the side
of the ship its ranking and receding
terrace of lights stretched upward.
The ship was slowly turning over.
| We were opposite that part occupied
by the engine-rooms. There was a
tangle of oars, spars and rigging and
i considerable confusion before four of
the big sweepers could be manned on
either side of the bout.
The jibbering, bullet-headed negro
i was pulling directly behind me, and
! I turned to quiet him, as his frantic
reaches with his oar were hitting me
in the back. In the dull light from
the upper decks I looked into his
slanting face, eyes all wnites and lips
moving convulsively. Besides being
frightened, the man was freezing in
: the thin cotton shirt that composed
his entire upper covering. He would
j work feverishly to get warm.
“Get Away!” !
' “Go away from her; get away from
her,” he said. “Get away from her,”
he kept repeating. “When the water
hits her hot boilers she’ll blow up, and,
there’s just tons and tons of shrapnel
; in the hold.”
His excitement spread to other
I members of the crew in the boat.
The ship's baker, designated by his
pantry' headgear, became a competing!
alarmist, and a white fireman, whose
blasphemy was nothing short of pro
found, added to the confusion by curs
| ing everyone.
It was the giveway of nerve ten
sion. It was bedlam and nightmare
seeking to establish some authority
I in our boat.
i
I made my way to stem, and there
1 found an old, white-haired sea cap-1
tain, a second-cabin passenger, with
whom I had talked before. He was
bound from Nova Scotia with codfish.
His sailing schooner, The Secret, had |
broken in two, but he and his crew
had been taken off by a tramp and!
taken back to New York. He had
sailed from there on the Ryndam,
which, after almost cro.Hvsing the At
lantic, had turned back. The Laconia
was his third attempt to get home.
His name is Captain Dear.
“The rudder's gone, but I can steer
with an oar,” he said. “I will take
charge, but my voice is gone. You’ll
have to shout the orders.
Profanity
There was only one way to get the
attention of the crew, and that w’as by
an overi)ow’ering blast of profanity. I
did my best, and was rewarded by sil
ence, while I made the announcement
that, in the absence of the ship’s of
ficer assigned to the boat, Captain
Dear would take charge. There was
no d*sser*t, and under the captain’s
orders, the boat’s head was held to the
wind to prevent us from being
swamped by the increasing swells.
Rest
We rested on our oars, with all eyes
turned on the still-lighted Laconia.
The torpedo had struck at 10:30 p.
m., and it was thirty minutes after
ward that another dull thud, which
was accompanied by a noticeable drop
in the hulk told its story of the second
torpedo that the submarine had dis
patched through the engine-room and
the boat’s vitals from a distance of
200 yards.
We watched silently during the
next minute, as the tiers of lights
dimmed slowly from white to yellow,
then to red, and nothing was left but
the murky^mourning of the night,
which hung over all like a pall.
A mean, cheese-colored crescent of
a moon revealed one Horn above a rag
bundle of clouds low in the distance.
A rim of blackness settled around our
little world, relieved only by general
%
leering stars in the zenith, and where
the Laconia’s lights had shone there
remained only the dim outlines of a
blacker hulk standing out above the
water like a jagged headline,
silhouetted against the overcast sky.
Sank Rapidly
The ship sank rapdily at the stern
until at last its nose stood straight
in the air. Then it slid silently down
and out of sight like a piece of dis
apearing scenery in a panorama
spectacle.
Boat No. 3 stood closest o the ship
and rocked about in a perilous sea of
clashing spars and wreckage. As our
boat’s crew steadied its ho wl into the
wind, a black hulk glistening wet and
standing eight feet above the surface
of the water, approached slowly and
came to a stop opposite the boat and
I
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not six feet from the side of it.
“What ship was dot?"
The correct words in throaty Eng
lish with a German accent came from
* i
the dark hulk, according to Chief
Steward Ballyn's statement to me
later.
“The Laconia," Ballyn answered.
“Vot?"
“The Laconia, Cunard line," re
sponded the steward.
“Vot did she weigh?" was the next
question from the submarine.
“Eighteen thousand tons."
“Any passengers?"
“Seventy-three," replied Ballyn.
“Men, women and children; some of
them in this boat. She had over 200
in the crew."
“Did she carry cargo?"
“Yes."
“Veil, you'll be all right. The pa
trol will pick you up soon," and, with
out further sound save for the al
most silent fixing of the conning
tower lid, the submarine moved off.
(To be continued tomorrow.)
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