We were eating our dinner, having an animated conversation, when we heard an awful crash and realized what had happened. The lights were extinguished, water was coming up the floor, chairs were overturned, dishes were breaking, we got up and tried to walk to the steps which we finally found.
—ALMA M. BLOOM1
“Well, I didn’t think they’d do it,” said Mary Louise Kelly, a high school mathematics teacher in Saranac Lake, New York, to her sister Lucretia Estelle, when she heard the loud explosion. A torpedo from the U-30 entered the Athenia on the port side, exploding just behind the engine room, destroying the galley, many cabins on D Deck, and the trunk of No. 5 hatch. The ship was violently shaken, the lights went out, she listed sharply to port and then recovered partially and began to settle by the stern. The Athenia quickly slowed to a stop—she was adrift, dead in the water, “like some dead giant,” as one passenger thought.2
In Athenia’s wheelhouse Third Officer Colin Porteous, the officer of the watch, immediately pulled the lever that closed the watertight doors throughout the ship, thereby attempting to create a series of watertight compartments throughout the length of the ship. Porteous then sent the emergency stop signal on the ship’s engine room telegraph and, through the bridge speaking tube to the radio room, gave an order to Chief Radio Officer David Don to send out an SOS signal. Finally, he gave the sustained blast on the ship’s steam whistle which was the recognized emergency signal. Porteous later told a passenger that he could not understand why he had not seen the torpedo track in the water, because he had been looking in the direction from which it must have come. Captain James Cook, Chief Officer Barnet Copland, and several other ship’s officers were at dinner when the torpedo struck. First Officer J. J. Emery attempted to calm the diners and helped them make their way to their cabins to find their life preservers. Chief Officer Copland made his way out to the boat deck and gave orders to get the lifeboats swung out over the side of the ship. Once on deck the chief officer saw a cloud of black smoke astern of the port beam and the outline of a submarine about a half mile away and moving parallel to the ship. He could not make out the number because of the smoke. Quartermaster Angus Graham also saw the submarine when he came on deck. It seemed about one hundred yards off the ship and from the strong smell he thought it might have fired a gas shell. Captain Cook left his dinner, quickly climbed up to the bridge, and immediately checked that the watertight doors had been closed. He spoke next to the radio officer and told him to send out the SOS both in the clear and in the naval code and to signal the ship’s position. He then sent for the chief engineer to get a report on the damage to the ship and to start the emergency dynamo working so that lights could be restored on the ship. By this time the Athenia had taken on a 6- or 7-degree list to port and was settling at the stern. Captain Cook pointed out to Third Officer Porteous a cloud of black smoke some seven hundred or eight hundred yards off the port quarter. Finally, he ordered the remaining crew on the bridge to assist in the launching of lifeboats.3
Chief Engineer J. Carnegie got his lifejacket and a flashlight and went below to make his inspection. He proceeded down the staircase through the engineer’s alleyway on the port side of the ship to the engine room. When he reached C Deck he found that the deck had been buckled and torn apart by the force of the explosion. Shining his flashlight into the dark he could see that pipes from the area of D Deck, more or less at the waterline, had been blown a considerable distance upward and that a substantial amount of water had entered the ship and already risen to within two feet of C Deck. By this time the third-class staterooms on D Deck at the stern of the ship would have been underwater also. Chief Engineer Carnegie managed to open the door to the engine room in the hope of finding some of his men, but the engine room was completely flooded and no men or bodies were in sight. The bulkhead between the engine room and the fire room was destroyed, the fuel oil tanks ruptured, and the stairways from the third-class and tourist dining rooms to the upper decks were shattered. The blow to the ship and to many of the crew in the engine room had been mortal. The explosion in the engine room and its flooding had destroyed the power plant in the ship. Although emergency lighting was started, there was no power to get pumps working to counteract the flooding. The watertight doors had been closed, but the explosion had so opened the seams in the ship that the integrity of the watertight compartments had been breached. The flooding could be slowed down, but it could not be stopped. Thus time had been purchased, which was of critical importance in getting all of the lifeboats launched and the passengers on board, but the ship could not be saved. The chief engineer returned to the bridge with a grim report and the news that he found more damage at the shaft of No. 5 hold with a number of dead and injured people near by.4
In addition to the engine room and the third-class staterooms on D Deck, the ship’s galleys were also destroyed by the torpedo explosion. George Williams, a cook from Glasgow, said that the galley floor where he was working seemed to split right open. Some were killed outright by the concussion. Furthermore, the cooking ranges overturned, sending hot food, and especially hot soup and boiling cooking oil, flying in all directions. Cooks and stewards in the galley were scalded by the boiling soup or thrown against the cooking ranges and were horribly burned. Thomas McGregor, a twenty-two-year-old cook from Motherwell, Scotland, was badly scalded by steam when the explosion took place in the galley. Bedroom steward Claude Barrie, who had been a soldier in the Great War, thought he smelled cordite, as a mate cried out, “The swine has hit us.” George Hail, a twenty-eight-year-old first-class steward from Bridgeton, Scotland, who had survived the sinking of a ship some years before, was working in a pantry. He was struck on the head by debris and knocked to the floor. Hail got to his feet and made his way on deck, not sure whether the people lying on the deck were dead or alive. The galleys also flooded quickly, making the recovery of the injured and unconscious difficult. “Frankly, I didn’t think I’d see Bridgeton again,” he said later.5
The explosion destroyed the electrical generators, so the whole ship was plunged into darkness until the emergency lights could be turned on, and the flooding of the engine room caused the ship to take a sharp list to the port side. When the torpedo struck a substantial number of the ship’s passengers and many of the crew were at their evening meal. Boatswain W. Harvey was eating dinner in the forward mess room when he heard the explosion and felt the ship give a “shiver.” He had been torpedoed three times in the First World War and recognized immediately what had happened. The result in the three passenger dining rooms on C Deck was noise and confusion as dishes and glassware crashed to the floor and chairs overturned, sending people sprawling on the floor. Pax Walker-Fryette felt the ship heel over and all the china, cutlery, and people slid to one side of the room. When she got up she felt something wet along her leg and realized that she had been cut in the knee. Douglas Stewart and his wife were sprawled amid all of the broken crockery and debris, “waiting for the end,” as he put it, until the ship gradually righted itself. Until flashlights were found, only lit matches provided any light to find the way out onto the deck. Judith Evelyn called out “Andrew” to her fiancé Andrew Allan, and they found each other in the darkness of the cabin-class dining room. With the aid of matches and cigarette lighters they climbed up the stairway to A Deck and their lifeboat station. Evelyn noted the lack of confusion among her fellow passengers and sensed in herself a feeling of energy to meet the crisis.6 Arthur T. Mikelsen was sitting at dinner with his cabin mates when he felt the ship “quivering” and then an explosion that sounded “the same as would a giant fire cracker being put in a huge tin container.” Mrs. Sara Bloom Grossman of New York thought the explosion sounded like “a blown up paper bag being burst,” while she and her daughter Olive were finishing their meal in the third-class dining room. They climbed up to the boat deck to lifeboat No. 10. In what he said was his best “Boy Scout voice,” Montgomery Evans called out confidently that everyone should take their time and “everything would be all right.” Evans selected a souvenir spoon from a table, got to his stateroom where he put on his coat, and picked up some chocolate and cigarettes, although he later complained that he forgot the book manuscript that he had been working on for the past year.7 Dorothy Dixon, a schoolteacher from Pasadena, California, was in the cabin-class dining room when the explosion shook the ship. She said she was “thrown to the floor and rolled across the room to the port side,” losing her purse with her money, passport, and rail ticket home. Eventually she was able to get back to her room and find her lifejacket and make her way to No. 10 lifeboat. Judith Evelyn found her way to her cabin and got her lifejacket, but when she joined Andrew Allan and his father at their lifeboat station she realized that it was going to be cold in the boats. Over Allan’s protests, she went back to her cabin again, put on her fur coat, and picked up several more, including one for Allan himself. She gave away the remaining coats to others on the promenade deck who were in need.8
Joseph B. L. MacDonald, a marine superintendent from Bronxville, New York, was eating dinner with his wife, Elnetta, in the cabin-class dining room at the table with the captain, the chief engineer, and others when the torpedo hit. When they got up on deck, MacDonald and his wife saw the conning tower of a submarine about one third of a mile off the port beam. They also saw clouds of black and white smoke and concluded the black smoke came from the submarine’s diesel engines and the white smoke from its guns. After waiting a moment, MacDonald concluded that the submarine was not going to fire at the Athenia again and that it would be safe to escort his wife to their lifeboat station No. 6. He then went below to their cabin on B Deck to find lifejackets, looking at the destruction at the No. 5 cargo hold and the dead bodies amid the wreckage. Mrs. Elizabeth Lewis, a housewife from Los Angeles, California, her daughter Margaret, and her son Donald were finishing their meal in the cabin-class dining room when the torpedo hit. In the dark and the confusion Mrs. Lewis lost her daughter but clung to her son. They made their way to her stateroom where their neighbor, MacDonald, who had been looking for his lifejackets, carried nine-year-old Donald up to the lifeboat No. 6, while she went to get their lifejackets and find Margaret. She could not find her daughter and when she got back on deck she saw her son already in a lifeboat. In the end, all three of them got into different lifeboats.9
The torpedo hit closest to the third-class dining room, the furthest aft of the dining rooms on C Deck. Alma M. Bloom, a teacher from Cincinnati, Indiana, was eating dinner with her friends when the explosion overturned chairs and sent the dishes and tableware crashing. She remembered water coming across the floor and the stewards helping people out of the room and toward their cabins to get lifejackets. Patricia Hale remembered the explosion as the “slamming of a thousand ton door.” “Something seemed to run, ripping, tearing, right under our chairs,” she said, then darkness engulfed them, dishes crashed to the floor, and water surged up to their knees. Miss E. M. A. McCarthy had just left the third-class dining room and was almost on deck when the torpedo struck. She was thrown back into the companionway and onto the floor. Everything was dark and there was thick smoke and dust, but through it all she saw “a flash like lightning and heard a detonation she presumed was gunfire.” The emergency signal went off and Miss McCarthy went directly to her lifeboat station.10 Mrs. Mary Ann McGoorty was with her small daughter Margaret in the third-class dining room when “I heard a loud report and everything went dark.” She was hit in the leg by some falling debris and was separated from her daughter. In the darkness she called out to her daughter and heard her voice, but she was pushed out of the dining room and up the stairs to the deck without ever seeing her daughter “Peggie” again. Barbara Rodman, a secretary from Garden City, New York, who was in the third-class dining room, thought the “smell of cordite and sulphur was almost overpowering” and they were likely to be asphyxiated. Parts of the ceiling collapsed next to her and splinters were flying. “I do not believe that any of us expected to see daylight,” she remembered. Bernice Jansen was thrown on the floor together with the dishes and food. She remembered the “terrible smell of ammonia” and the confusion in the darkness.11
Mrs. Mary Levine, a housewife from Brooklyn, New York, was in the tourist-class dining room when the torpedo exploded. Through the darkness and commotion she got back to her stateroom with Helen Hannay, who had a cabin nearby and had been sitting with her at dinner, in order to find Mrs. Levine’s sleeping baby. The baby was wrapped up in a blanket just as the stewardess, Miss Johnstone, appeared. Together they all went off to find their lifeboat station. Mrs. Levine persuaded Miss Johnstone to stay with her to help with the baby. Helen Hannay, one of the college girls from Houston, Texas, and her friend Martha Bonnett, a student from Chariton, Iowa, went back to their cabins to get coats and lifejackets and then returned to the boat deck to get in lifeboat No. 11. Their chaperone, Gladys Strain, said that all the girls got their lifejackets. When the torpedo hit the Athenia Mrs. Wilson Levering Smith grasped the arm of her twenty-four-year-old son Wilson Jr., who was with her in the dining room on C Deck. She could hear the water rushing in below her and smell the smoke and fumes. Aided by a ship’s officer with a flashlight, they made their way hand-in-hand to her room on B Deck, where they got lifejackets and coats. They saw several bodies near the rear hatch and the broken mast of the ship. W. Ralph Singleton, who was just finishing his meal at the second sitting, was covered in dust and small particles of debris by the explosion. Rather than attempt to make his way through the darkened corridors, Singleton went up to the promenade deck and well forward to get to his room in the forward part of the ship where he found his lifejacket and made his way to lifeboat No. 1.12 Literally within minutes, all three of the dining rooms on C Deck were emptied as people made their way to their staterooms to get lifejackets or directly to their lifeboat stations.
Many passengers on the Athenia were also in their cabins. Some had been seasick much of the day, others were dressing for dinner, and still others were asleep. Don Gifford, a young college student from Schenectady, New York, was asleep in his bunk on C Deck when the explosion threw him out of bed. Gifford made his way out into the passageway, which was littered with timbers and wreckage and filled with fumes. The stairway had been demolished, many cabins on the port side were destroyed, and a number of passengers killed. “I reached the deck by scrambling out of the hole where the stairway had been and went to my lifeboat post,” he recalled. Mrs. Margaret Ford, a widow from East Dearborn, Michigan, had been very seasick and was in bed in her third-class cabin in the forward part of the ship when the torpedo hit. The ship was plunged into darkness and she heard things falling and women screaming. She rushed out into the passageway and helped women and children make their way up to the lifeboats. She was dressed only in her nightclothes, so she went back to her cabin to get a coat and then went to lifeboat No. 2. Also seasick and in bed was sixty-two-year-old Helen Edna Campbell of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The concussion from the explosion sent the ceiling of her cabin on A Deck crashing down and plunged the room into darkness. “Steady, don’t faint,” she told herself, but when she attempted to flee she found herself fumbling with the wardrobe door. After making her way into the companionway she returned to search for her lifebelt. This she could not find, but being dressed only in her silk underwear and slippers, she was fortunate to reach her wool dressing gown. Baby John Easton from Hamilton, Ontario, was being given a bath by his mother Lily when the torpedo struck. Water and smoke were filling the corridor when she went out of her cabin and a Scottish sailor told her to hand baby John to him and climb up the shattered stairway as best she could. When she got on deck she was given a lifejacket and her freshly bathed one-year-old baby returned to her, clad only in the sailor’s coat.13
Barbara Cass-Beggs had been seasick and had gone to bed with little Rosemary when she heard the noise of the explosion and saw the light go out. She got out of bed, slipped on her coat, and started to dress Rosemary when David rushed into the cabin and told her, “Put on your life belts, leave everything and come up on deck.” She gathered up Rosemary, clad only in her pajama tops, and headed up the two flights of stairs, forgetting her purse in the bunk.14 Kate Ellen Hinds, a housewife from Houston, Texas, was in her cabin changing for dinner. Darkness enveloped the room, splinters flew everywhere, and strong fumes filled the air. Water began streaming across the floor. She called out to her son who was in the next cabin. His cabin door had been blown off, but the debris filled the companionway and the stairs had been destroyed. Her son scrambled along the remnants of the stair railings and pulled her out of the water onto B Deck, from which they made their way to the lifeboats. Ruby Mitchell and Margaret Calder were both seasick and in bed in their cabin when the torpedo struck and the lights went out. Margaret screamed and started for the door, but Ruby searched under the bunk for the lifejackets. Mrs. Calder’s sister, Christina Horgan, came down to the cabin to get the two girls. “We have to go upstairs immediately,” she said. “There’s something’s gone wrong.” So with the four lifejackets they made their way up the stairs to the deck. They could not see well because of the dark and there was a strange smell of gas, but Ruby felt there was something wrong about the stairs. “I’m stepping on people,” she said. Chrissy Horgan told her not to think about it and to hurry on.15
Professor John H. Lawrence of the radiation laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, had also gone to change for dinner in his stateroom on D Deck. The explosion left the room in darkness and filled with smoke and fumes. “Water was rushing in, and everything was in a shambles,” Lawrence said; he went out into the corridor and attempted to save himself. “I proceeded to the stairway,” he recounted, “which had been completely demolished but [I] grabbed the upper ledge and made my exit on to ‘C’ deck,” which brought him to safety.16 Young Ken and Nick Bjeko, Polish refugees, were thrown from their bunks when the torpedo hit. Water began filling the cabin when their older brother rushed in and led them to safety. George Calder had eaten dinner and returned to his cabin to look after his wife, who was in bed seasick. When the torpedo exploded in the ship the upper berth and the wardrobe in their cabin collapsed and the mirrors and glass objects shattered. Mrs. Calder jumped out of bed, gave her husband her flashlight, and put on her coat. They could hear women screaming and smell strong fumes. They put on their lifejackets and made their way out into the companionway and tourist lounge, which was “an absolute shambles.” When they got near the aft hatchway they saw three men and a young girl dead. Once on deck they began looking for their young son, who they eventually found sitting in a lifeboat wearing his lifejacket. Mary Louise Kelly and her sister Lucretia Estelle, a mathematics teacher at Hunter College High School in New York, had just eaten dinner and were in their cabin when the explosion took place. They immediately put on warm clothing and lifejackets and with the aid of flashlights made their way up to the lifeboat station, where they gave their bathrobes to women in nightclothes.17
Father Joseph O’Connor had been seasick and stayed in his cabin rather than go to dinner. He heard the roar of the explosion and water immediately began streaming across the floor. Although his cabin door was jammed shut, he was able to break out the panels and get into the companionway and eventually up the shattered stairway. When he got on deck, Father O’Connor found quite a bit of confusion, but people remained orderly nevertheless. He gave general absolution to everyone on the ship and heard confession from a number of people. Young Rev. Gerald Hutchinson had just left the second sitting for dinner and was walking along a corridor when the explosion shook the ship. The ship lurched sideways and he nearly lost his balance. He remembered gun smoke and dust filling the air. A friend who had been peeling an orange was surprised to have it popped out of his hands and into the air by the concussion. When he finally made his way on deck he found a certain amount of chaos as people searched for family members and attempted to find their lifeboat stations. Hutchinson and three of his companions looked to see what they could do to be helpful. David Blair, of Vancouver, attempted to get down to his wife in her cabin, but the companionway was wrecked and flooded with water. “It was impossible to do anything,” he said. “Everything was blown away.” In despair, he concluded she was dead and went back up on deck to save himself. However, once on deck, “I found her there unable to remember anything of what had happened except that some man in the alleyway had dragged her through the water to safety just after the blast.”18
Not all of those who were in their staterooms were so fortunate. Fifteen-year-old Jane Hannah, who had been visiting in Scotland with her mother, Helen, was actually on deck with a seasick friend when the Athenia was struck. However, Jane’s mother was seasick in their cabin on D Deck, below the third-class dining room, and young Jane ran to find her. She started down the stairway to D Deck but she said, “I couldn’t go any further because it was already flooded with water and oil.” Amid the offensive smell of what she described as “gas,” the crew were working to rescue passengers and they told her to leave and go to her lifeboat. Mrs. Hannah was among those missing. When the ship was hit James Goodson was coming up from D Deck to the tourist-class dining room. He heard the explosion, felt the ship shudder, and realized that this was a calamity. When the emergency lights came on he returned to the companionway he had just left and witnessed what he called “Dante’s Inferno.” The wooden stairway was smashed and D Deck below was flooded. People were clinging to bits of wreckage trying to stay afloat. “I started by reaching for the outstretched arms and pulling the weeping, shaking, frightened women to safety; but I soon saw that the most urgent danger was to those who were floundering in the water, or clinging to the wreckage lower down. Many were screaming that they couldn’t swim and were close to drowning.” Young Goodson got into the water and worked to rescue the children first, who he said put their small arms around his neck and hung on as he swam and worked his way back to the broken stairs and handed them up to waiting crewmembers—stewards and stewardesses—who passed them up to the boat deck. “Bloody guid, mon!” said one Scottish crewman who could not swim, “Keep ’em coming.” Goodson got all of those who were alive and then helped other members of the crew look for passengers in flooded staterooms. As they struggled through the water in the disorientating companionway of the listing ship, Goodson found no more living passengers. Indeed, he found the dead body of the young boy who shortly before had sung the old sentimental songs so beautifully.19
Father O’Connor could hear cries for help coming from a stairwell. With the aid of a flashlight, he and several others made their way down a shattered stairway to find what he called, “the most tragic and pitiful sight of all.” There pinned beneath the collapsed stairwell was a woman holding a baby. The infant was quickly passed up to the deck, but the woman was clearly dying. One of her legs had been cut off and she had lost a lot of blood and was crushed by the wreckage. Father O’Connor gave her the last rites and she died as the seawater rose around her. She had to be left were she was as the ship settled. Mrs. Rachel Lamont and her ten-year-old son, Alexander, were in their cabin preparing for bed when the torpedo hit. The concussion of the explosion sent the heavy oscillating fan off a cabinet, crashing onto Mrs. Lamont’s head and stunning her. Alexander called to his mother, but only when she was splashed with the water pouring into the cabin did she respond. She cried out, “Alex, are you there?” and in the darkness he stumbled over her and pulled her up. They were able to squeeze their way out of their cabin and amid the broken timbers, clouds of dust, and floating luggage, make their way to the stairwell. They climbed past the dying woman and several dead bodies and up the shattered staircase. The woman’s severed leg was floating on a piece of luggage. “I will never forget that sight,” Lamont said years later.20
Those people who were on deck probably had a better idea of what had happened when the Athenia was struck, although that clearly did not make things less difficult for them. Fourteen-year-old Montrealer Donald A. Wilcox and his mother had been visiting family in England. While waiting to go to dinner they had walked around the ship for some fresh air. His mother walked up on the promenade deck while Donald went out to the very forepeak of the Athenia at the front of the ship. This is the classic position in which to feel the wind and the forward surge of any seagoing vessel. He was watching the knifelike stem of the ship slice through the water, throwing up a dramatic bow wave, when the explosion of the torpedo made the bow of the ship jump a foot or so out of the water and Donald almost lost his balance. He and his mother each made their way to their staterooms, put on their lifejackets, and went to their lifeboat. James Boyle, a bus driver from Detroit, Michigan, his wife, Mary Ann, and their ten-year-old daughter, Jeaninne, were sitting on the hatch cover in the third-class promenade deck, also in the bow of the ship. The explosion heeled the ship over but they kept their balance. They also saw the huge cloud of black smoke around the stern of the ship and across the water. They immediately went to find their lifejackets and their lifeboat station. Seventeen-year-old Harry Bridge, a student from Abilene, Texas, was traveling with his mother and sister. He was sitting on C Deck forward when he saw the explosion, which caused a huge “fountain of water and oil [to] leap up from the side of the ship, which immediately heeled over at an acute angle.” He was thrown to the deck, and when he got up he saw what he called a “smoke screen” a quarter of a mile away.21 Harry’s mother, Edith, was reading announcements in front of the purser’s office when the explosion plunged the ship into darkness. She held on to the man standing next to her as the ship rocked and they were covered in a gritty dust that she thought was cordite. Her hat and pocketbook were lost and her wristwatch and glasses broken, but she made her way out on to the deck, where she too saw the smoke on the water from the submarine. She met her daughter Constance in a companionway, who brought the lifejackets from their stateroom, and then found Harry and they all made their way to their lifeboat station. Dr. Lulu Sweigard, an instructor in the Department of Physical Education at New York University, was walking on deck when the torpedo hit. She was knocked off her feet by the concussion. “I tried to rise but the boat had listed sharply over to the port side,” she recalled. Edith Lustig, a Jewish refugee from Germany, was on deck and thrown overboard by the explosion and never seen again.22
Thomas Quine, a chiropractor from Fullerton, California, was on A Deck looking in the direction of the submarine he concluded, although he did not see it. He did see hatch covers blown in the air and several people killed when the torpedo hit. When he heard a second explosion he looked toward the sea and saw a cloud of smoke; “like smoke from a gun, and faintly visible the bow and stern of a submarine,” he said. Quine then went off to find his wife, Annie. The explosion of the No. 5 hatch covers was also witnessed at close hand by Dr. Watson Bidwell, an instructor at the University of Denver. He was sitting in the tourist lounge on A Deck, just a few feet away when the hatch cover was blown up. When he went outside he saw dead bodies at his feet; he also saw two “geysers” of water between one hundred and two hundred yards away from the ship and was certain they were being fired at from the submarine. Passing more dead bodies, Bidwell went in search of his wife, Anne, shouting her name in the dark corridor. “Here I am Doc,” she called out and she remembered him telling her, “we are still being shelled.” Mrs. Mathilda Johnson from Duluth, Minnesota, sitting in the lounge on A Deck thought the explosion was like “an earthquake in the ocean.”23 Also in the tourist lounge on A Deck were John and Isabella Coullie of Chicago, Illinois. John jumped to his feet when he heard the explosion and his wife fell into his arms as the ship heeled over. When they went out on deck they saw several dead people and a number of women, some in nightclothes, covered in soot with blood streaming down their faces. There was the powerful smell of gunpowder, and Coullie told his wife, “I think we are being shelled; let’s get out of here.” They went to the port side of the ship and from there, Coullie said, “I saw a submarine clear above the water about a quarter of a mile off as near as I could judge.” They got their lifejackets from their stateroom and eventually found a lifeboat. “Two bodies were shot across in front of me, blackened,” reported Thomas McCubbin, a Montclair, New Jersey, sales representative who had been standing on a section of the upper deck that was collapsed by the blast. He saw black smoke and cinders come out of the air funnels on deck, and then went off to find his lifejacket in his stateroom. One of the ship’s bellboys, seventeen-year-old Felix Caulfield from Garngad, Scotland, picked up a young girl from the deck and started to carry her to a lifeboat, when he realized that she was dead—her neck broken. Joseph M. Insch, a machinist from Yonkers, New York, and his wife, Elsie, were reading newspapers in the tourist smoking room on the promenade deck when the torpedo struck. Joseph took his wife by the arm and they made their way onto the deck looking for their thirteen-year-old daughter, also named Elsie, who had been playing deck tennis. When the second explosion occurred they saw one man killed in a deckchair and another on a stairway. There also appeared to be an explosion above them, what many thought to be on the mast. When their daughter found them, they attempted to get their lifejackets. However, they gave up their search for lifejackets when a steward with a flashlight showed them a hole in the companionway where the barbershop had been and returned to their lifeboat station. Russell Park and his father had gone to the ship’s library after dinner, and Russell had just checked out a book on trains when he was jolted out of his chair by the explosion. He and his father made their way in the dark to their lifeboat station. His father then went to get his mother who, being seasick, had remained in her cabin. Russell never saw his father again.24
Mrs. Jessie Morrison was traveling back to Detroit, Michigan, with her eleven-year-old son John. They were standing on the third-class deck near the No. 5 hatch when the explosion occurred. Although they kept their footing then, they were thrown under a bench by the second explosion. They then went straight to their cabin to get their lifejackets, but not before they saw sticking straight out of the sea what looked like a long stick and what they concluded must have been a submarine periscope.25 Mrs. Mary Ellen Tinney, a housewife from Yonkers, New York, was returning home with her two sons, Harry aged eleven and William aged seven. Mrs. Tinney and William were seated on the tourist deck when the explosion killed instantly a man and a woman sitting near them. She was thrown against the ship’s rail, but grabbed William’s hand and started across to the other side of the ship when the second explosion erupted and seemed to send the mast crashing down nearby. She too saw something sticking straight out of the water, something that could have been part of a mast, she said, and from which there came a “dull red glow, which was followed by a thick black smoke which spread like a large cloud low over the water.” She and William found Harry and they went to their lifeboat station.26 The most professional description of the effect of the explosion at hatch No. 5 came from a marine engineer who was standing nearby. “The explosion of gasses came right up the trunk of the hatch,” noted Charles Van Newkirk, a marine engineer from Allegheny, Pennsylvania, who had been paid off in Britain and was returning to the United States to join a new ship. “The effect of the explosion was like a heavy door slamming,” he said. “The hatch went up in the air and the people who were reclining on the hatch went up in the air also and then went down the hatch.” People were panic stricken at first but went immediately to their lifeboat stations. Ida Mowry from Providence, Rhode Island, had just come up from dinner and was sitting with her two daughters in deckchairs on the tourist promenade deck when the torpedo exploded. It seemed to her that the ship would sink immediately and she saw near the No. 5 hatch the bodies of several members of the crew and passengers. She was sure that the second explosion was a shell fired from the submarine and her daughters saw smoke from a ship in the distance. They could not get to their cabin, so they went straight to their lifeboat. Mrs. Georgina Hayworth, of Hamilton, Ontario, and her two daughters, Margaret aged ten and Jacqueline aged six, had come up on deck to watch the sunset over the port side of the ship. The concussion of the exploding torpedo shook the slats out of their deckchairs and pieces of metal flew all around them. One piece of shrapnel struck young Margaret Hayworth in the forehead, causing a serious gash. Eleven-year-old Hay “Scotty” Gillespie from Russell, Manitoba, had been seasick and was on deck wrapped in a blanket when a man standing nearby, wearing a deerstalker cap, called out that he saw a puff of smoke on the sea surface. Gillespie turned and saw the smoke himself, just as the torpedo hit the ship. He was joined shortly by his mother and younger brother who came up from the dining room. They were turned back from attempting to get their lifejackets from their cabin and went straight to their lifeboat station.27
“There’s a submarine,” a cabin boy cried to Mrs. Mary B. Dick, a housewife from Boston. She had just come from dinner and was out on deck at the stern of the ship. She saw a periscope in the water herself and had started running when the torpedo hit and, as she put it, “everything went dark.” Norman Hanna of Bangor, Northern Ireland, on his way to make a new life in Canada, had been seasick for much of the day but came up on deck for some fresh air about seven o’clock. He was eating an apple and reclining on the aft hatch cover when a woman screamed, “Look!” When he turned to the port side of the ship he saw a submarine and a white streak in the water leading to the ship. He was thrown to the deck by the explosion and feared that the ship would overturn. A bright flash followed and a shell exploded on the tourist deck, sending a splinter that “whizzed by my face.” Thomas E. Finley Jr., a teacher at Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut, was sitting with his wife, Mildred, on the tourist-class promenade deck overlooking the stern of the ship when the explosion threw a cloud of black smoke and debris into the air. He and his wife hurried down a stairway toward their staterooms when a second explosion caused such a shock that they were sent sprawling onto the deck below. They got their lifejackets and went to their lifeboat station.28
Dr. Edward T. Wilkes of Long Island City, New York, was returning home with his family when the torpedo struck. Dr. Wilkes was standing on the third-class promenade at the stern of the boat and was thrown off balance by the explosion. He called out for his two sons, Jonathan and Daniel. He then went to find his wife, Matilda, who being seasick had remained in her cabin on D Deck, below the dining rooms. “I had only gone down five steps or so from the deck level in the dark, when a torch shone on black murky water and forms of people could be seen swimming or floating towards the staircase.” He could not go any further, so he returned to the deck to look for his boys but eventually went to a lifeboat station. Jonathan, Dr. Wilkes was told, was last seen being led to a lifeboat, but was eventually listed as missing. Daniel, who had been in the stateroom with his mother, Matilda, when the explosion flooded the staterooms on D Deck, managed to squeeze out through the cabin door, which as a result of debris and fallen timbers could only be partially opened. Daniel eventually made it up from D Deck to a lifeboat, but his mother was lost. Mrs. Doris MacLeod was taking her three children back home to Washington, D.C. She and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Betty, were sitting in the third-class lounge on B Deck while fourteen-year-old John was outside on deck. Fifteen-year-old Dorothy was seasick and remained in her cabin. When the lights went out with the explosion Mrs. MacLeod and Betty got separated but quickly found each other. The two then went down to their stateroom to find Dorothy, “who had got out of bed and was screaming for me.” The three now returned to the deck to where they found John. Mrs. MacLeod also saw “a flash of flame surrounded by smoke,” some distance away from the ship. She concluded they needed their lifejackets. “Betty and I went down below again to fetch lifebelts, leaving Dorothy and John at the top of the stair,” she later remembered. “When we got back on deck I tried to keep my children together but John said he had been ordered to another lifeboat station so I had to let him go.” She and her daughters went to lifeboat No. 10. All of them successfully got off the Athenia in lifeboats.29 The shock and panic and fear of the explosions and flooding on board the Athenia now had to be overcome by the practical, but complicated, procedure of launching the ship’s lifeboats and getting into them.