It was WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST.
—DONALD A. WILCOX1
The lifeboat is the most important device for preserving the lives of passengers and crew of crippled oceangoing vessels. Even so, the lifeboat and its complicated launching apparatus remain almost inevitably unable to perform perfectly the tasks demanded of them in those very circumstances that require their services. Typically, the lifeboat was a double-ended wooden boat between 25 and 30 feet in length and with a recommended capacity of between sixty and seventy passengers, although capable of actually holding rather more. There were side benches all along both sides of the boat and five or more thwarts that went across the boat for people to sit on while rowing. Along the outside of the boat there were grab lines—rope loops that reached down to the waterline that could be held by people in the water and also used by people to clamber into the boat. In case the boat tipped over, there were often handholds along the bottom which gave people something to grip. Although steel was sometimes used, lifeboats were generally wooden clinker-built—that is to say they were made of wooden lapstrakes, a form of construction that was less vulnerable to drying out while the boat baked in the sun on the side of the ship—and therefore were less likely to leak when put in the water. Even if the boats did leak or were swamped with water they were equipped with watertight compartments that would keep them afloat while fully loaded. It was expected that lifeboats would be powered, or at least maneuvred, by oars, ideally combinations of four, six, or eight, and steered with either a rudder or a steering oar, or sweep. Often the boats were also equipped with a simple sail rig, which it was presumed could be put up and handled safely by the untrained passengers in the boat.
Lifeboats are launched from the side of a ship by devices called davits. The Athenia was equipped with a modern version called Welin Quadrant davits. These were in effect two small cranes, placed at each end of the lifeboat, which both lifted the boat off its cradle, or resting place, and swung it out over the side of the ship. The crane mechanism was moved by a crank and worm gear on the bottom of each davit. The hoisting and lowering power was managed through double block and tackle systems, controlled by a line called a fall, one at the bow and one at the stern of each boat. In the textbook procedure the boat would be hoisted off its cradle by the fall and the davits would then be cranked out, swinging the boat over the side of the ship. The passengers assigned to the boat would then get in and sit down on the side seats. At each end of the boat the bitter end of the fall, given a number of turns around the “gypsy” (a drum with flanged edges), would provide enough friction to hold the boat. Several members of the crew holding the bitter end of each fall could then slowly ease the fall and allow gravity to lower the boat, weighing several tons fully loaded, into the water in a controlled manner. Once the boat was in the water, the blocks were unshackled, and the boat was free to move away from the ship. Unfortunately, in circumstances drastic enough to require that a ship be abandoned, many of these step-by-step actions to launch a lifeboat cannot be practically performed. All of these systematic procedures can be upset by a violent storm or a collision at sea, not to mention the explosions and possible fire caused by a ship being torpedoed, at which time the vessel may be heeling several degrees to one side or the seamen expected to manipulate the boats may have been killed or injured or the passengers panicked and uncontrollable. Furthermore, in the case of this sailing of the Athenia on the eve of the international crisis, a number of the experienced members of the crew had left to join the Royal Navy, which further reduced the efficiency of the remaining crew getting the lifeboats launched and manned.
The Athenia had twenty-six lifeboats, thirteen on each side of the ship. Beginning in the bow with Nos. 1 and 2, the odd-numbered boats were on the starboard side and the even-numbered boats on the port side. The boats were also double stacked, the lower boats being given the additional letter A; thus there were both 1 and 1A, as well as 2 and 2A, all the way up to Nos. 14A and 15A. The exceptions were boats 3 and 4 which were single stacked and placed close to the bridge on the promenade deck, or boat deck. The lower boats were slightly larger, 30 feet 3 inches long and 9 feet 9.5 inches across (9.14 and 2.98 meters), while the upper boats were 28 feet 2 inches long with a beam of 8 feet 2.5 inches (8.58 and 2.50 meters). These boats had benches along both sides and four thwarts. Other exceptions were boats 5 and 6, which were powered by gasoline engines as well as oars and also served as ship’s utility boats. The larger lifeboats were rated to hold 86 souls and the smaller boats 56. The Donaldson Line concluded that they had spaces for 1,828 people in the boats—410 more than the 1,418 passengers and crew the Athenia was carrying. Nevertheless with between 56 and 86 people in the boats they seemed crowded and unmanageable, giving rise to the conclusion by some survivors that the lifeboats had been intended for far fewer people. The Athenia was also equipped with 21 life rafts that could carry 462 more people; 18 ring buoys, essentially for throwing; and 1,600 lifejackets, a barely sufficient number.2 It is not clear how many of the rafts and ring buoys were used.
Lifeboats 1, 1A, 2, and 2A were at the bow of the ship on the third-class open promenade deck on either side of the foremast. Second Officer K. G. Crockett was in charge of these boats. Chief Officer Barnet Copland was specifically in charge of the seven lifeboats on the port side of the cabin-class promenade deck, or boat deck. These were Nos. 4, 6, 6A, 8, 8A, 10, and 10A. However, Chief Officer Copland also had overall responsibility for launching all of the lifeboats, which during the crisis took him to various parts of the ship. First Officer J. J. Emery had responsibility for the seven boats on the opposite side of the boat deck: Nos. 3, 5, 5A, 7, 7A, 9, and 9A. The boatswain, William Harvey, looked after the lifeboats on the tourist-class promenade deck, Nos. 11, 11A, 12, and 12A. The remaining lifeboats at the stern of the ship on the third-class promenade, or poop deck, were Nos. 14, 14A, 15, and 15A, and they were the responsibility of Third Officer Colin Porteous. All of these lifeboats had been inspected by the Board of Trade surveyor just before the ship sailed from Glasgow; and in the aftermath of the declaration of war on Sunday morning Captain Cook had ordered that the boats be made ready for possible use by having the canvas covers removed, the plugs inserted, and additional supplies placed in them.3 Would all of these precautions be adequate if an emergency arose? This would be the test.
When the torpedo struck and the emergency whistle blew, Second Officer Crockett went directly to the four lifeboats on the forward deck of the ship and assembled his crew to get these boats launched. Margaret Ford, a housewife from Dearborn, Michigan, went to lifeboat muster station 2 and had great praise for the deck steward who tried to be cheerful and keep peoples’ spirits up with words of encouragement and by singing songs like “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag.” Boats 1, 1A, 2, and 2A were swung out on their davits and lowered to the deck level, filled with passengers and crew, and further lowered into the water. Boat No. 2 was the responsibility of tourist lounge steward J. Grant, who had about fifty people in his boat, including five or six crewmembers. Mrs. Mary Dick of Boston claimed to be the second person into the boat. Boat No. 2A had seventy-five people on board, mostly women and children. Later on Second Officer Crockett took command of this boat and kept it riding comfortably during the night, firing off flares from time to time. W. Ralph Singleton got into one of the forward lifeboats and commented on how skilfully the crew operated the boat and the fact that it was dry and it shipped no water throughout the night.4 All four of these boats got away very quickly, perhaps before eight o’clock, and stood off about a half mile from the Athenia.
First Officer Emery went to the seven lifeboats on the starboard side of the promenade deck. He had to direct a large number of passengers who had gathered at the muster stations. Boats 3, 5, and 7 were lowered into the water without passengers. Rope ladders were put over the side and passengers began climbing down into the boats. However, the weight of people on the ladders was too great and one of the side ropes broke, leaving people dangling. Ruth Rabenold, who was returning home to New York after two years of study at Oxford, was climbing down the ladder into boat No. 3, but she saw several women ahead of her miss the boat and fall into the water. Emery got most of those on the ladder into the boats by providing another line on which people could slide into the boats. Barbara Rodman was the first to successfully make the switch. Judith Evelyn found herself partway down the broken ladder and was hauled back on board with some trouble. Emery then secured the broken ladder with a piece of rope and enabled people to resume using it to descend into the boats. Miss J. E. Harvie went to muster station 5 and helped a number of elderly women and women with children get into these boats. One of the elderly women was Helen Edna Campbell. A sailor hoisted her up onto the railing and told her to swing her leg over the side and climb down the ladder. When she got to the bottom of the ladder she found it wet and dangerously slippery. “When the boat swings in you jump backward,” someone shouted, “and I’ll catch you.” She found herself more or less tossed into the boat, hurting her ribs in the process. Another woman on the ladder fell into the sea and because she was rather stout the men in the boat had a very difficult time pulling her in, breaking her arm as they did so. There were several of the ship’s crew in Campbell’s boat but none of them were sailors; fortunately there was a fisherman who took charge of the boat, got them clear of the ship, and started people bailing water. Boats 5A, 9, and 9A were launched more or less without incident, although they scraped and bumped along the side of the listing ship. Seaman Dillon took charge of boat No. 5A, which was loaded from the promenade deck with about sixty-four people all wearing lifejackets. The boat was cut away from the falls with a hatchet, and as it pulled away from the ship two stewards climbed down the lifelines into the water and were hauled into the boat.5
Boat No. 7A was the last of these boats to be launched and it got away at about nine o’clock. This was done with some difficulty because by that time the Athenia had developed a list of about 12 degrees to port. Mrs. Elizabeth Campbell of Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, managed to get into this lifeboat, having earlier put her ten-year-old daughter on another boat. Margaret McPherson of White Plains, New York, went to the No. 5 lifeboat with her ten-year-old daughter, Fione, but eight-year-old Margaret was missing. She called Margaret’s name but without success; in desperation Mrs. McPherson and her older daughter got into the last boat. Eleven-year-old Russell Park had been brought to his lifeboat station by his father who told him to wait there until his mother was located. Neither his mother nor father had come back to the boat deck when an officer told young Russell to get into the last boat.6 Georgina Hayworth got her injured daughter Margaret and six-year-old Jacqueline to their lifeboat station. Jacqueline held on to her mother’s skirt while Mrs. Hayworth tended Margaret. However, when Margaret and Mrs. Hayworth were placed in the lifeboat, Jacqueline lost her grip and fell backward into the crowd of people behind her. Mrs. Hayworth called to a sailor to pass her second daughter over to her, but another child was placed in the lowering lifeboat. Jacqueline was picked up and put in a different boat. Jeanette Jordan and Florence Hargrave, with coats over their pajamas, found that their assigned lifeboat was filled, but they went up to the boat deck and got into No. 7A. Miss Hargrave claimed that there was no member of the Athenia’s crew on board. Thomas McCubbin had not been able to get into his assigned boat either, but found a place in the last lifeboat. Mrs. Wilson Levering Smith and her son got into the boat, and while there were a fair number of men in the boat to do the rowing and the boat was relatively dry, she did note that there was only one crewmember and he was the assistant bartender rather than an able bodied seaman.7
The seven lifeboats on the opposite side of the promenade deck, the port side, were the responsibility of Chief Officer Copland. However, his larger duties demanded his presence all over the ship. The assistant purser and several seamen were able to step in and assist both the loading of these boats and their launching. Boats 4, 6, 6A, 8, and 8A were lowered without difficulty and got away safely. Rev. Dr. G. P. Woollcombe left the dining room and got his coat and hat from his cabin and then went to lifeboat No. 4. After about fifty women and children were loaded into the boat, Woollcombe was asked to get in as well. A steward took over the boat and they were lowered unsteadily to the water. He remembered that the light was quickly fading. Patricia Hale and her friend Margaret had made their way to their cabin to change into the warm clothes and lifejackets they had wisely laid out and then reported to lifeboat No. 4. She recalled that once the boat had been lowered into the water the tackle at one end jammed and had to be cut away. No axe could be found, so this had to be done laboriously with someone’s pocket-knife. Miss Hale could hear people in the water calling for help, but the immediate urgency was to move the boat away from the ship. Young Jane Hannah gave up looking for her mother and went to her boat station, but the lifeboat had already been launched. Mercifully, she was able to find a space in No. 6A with a friend.8
Able Bodied Seaman W. J. Macintosh, who took charge of boat No. 8, thought that they were clear of the ship within ten minutes of the emergency signal. Mrs. Mary Steinberg of the Bronx fell into the water and lost her handbag with her passport and money, but was dragged into No. 8. Frank Connolly, his wife Sally, and his three boys, Francis, Raymond, and Thomas, all got in boat No. 8 as well. Connolly and the several other men did the rowing, because there were only two crewmembers on board and most of the passengers were women and children. Seaman Macintosh kept his boat close to the ship to rescue anyone who fell into the water, and he managed to assist several women off the ladders on the side of the ship, but after a number of boats were successfully launched he pulled further away. Barbara Bailey, who had some Civil Defense training, understood the importance of avoiding panic, waited until her dining room had cleared and then went to her stateroom, found her coat and lifejacket, and made her way to the boat deck where she was told to get into No. 8A, which was already in the water and appeared loaded with people. Bailey asked a man standing by her on deck to rip her skirt in order to free her legs and she clambered down the side of the ship holding on to a steel cable. As she got near the water it looked as though the boat was drifting away from the ship, and while she was deciding what to do next a voice said, “Come on, you’re doing fine.” Two hands grabbed her ankles and pulled her into the boat in a heap. “We were seventy living and one dead,” she remembered.9
Getting into the lifeboat itself could be perilous. Dr. Lulu E. Sweigard, a physical education instructor at New York University with a newly minted PhD, was confronted with the problem of having to climb down a fire hose to get into her lifeboat. The hose was too large to get her hands completely around it, “but the strong grip I have in my hands and my training in rope climbing did not fail me.” She landed “without a bump,” but others were not so skilled. Three women behind her fell into the sea, too weak to grip the hose, unskilled in using their legs for support, and too frightened to follow instructions shouted to them. They had to be pulled into the lifeboat. This prospect awaited John and Isabella Coullie. John asked “Bella” if she thought she could make it, and they started down. However, when a wave pushed the boat away from the side of the ship the man in the boat lost his grip on the hose and Bella fell into the sea between the boat and the ship. “I thought she would be crushed to bits,” he later said, and he urged her to hang on to the grab lines along the side of the lifeboat. He then jumped into the sea also and attempted to help her climb into the boat, but this was made extremely difficult not only because of the surging of the boat in the waves but also as a result of the oil pouring from the ruptured fuel bunkers that made everything slippery and impossible to grip. Eventually John climbed into the boat himself and tugged at his wife’s foot while another man pulled on her lifejacket straps so that the two of them managed to drag her into the lifeboat. Both of them were exhausted, covered in oil, and choking on the oil and seawater they had swallowed.10
People were surprisingly calm and orderly, and while many people were clearly frightened there was little panic or hysteria. Many of the male passengers worked to assist the crewmembers to manipulate the boats in the davits, lent their strength and weight to working the falls, and also rowed once the boats were in the water. Various crewmembers called out, “Women and children first,” and for the most part men willingly stood aside, although in some instances this meant that boats did not have enough men in them to effectively row the boats. Copland and his crew had some problems with the foreign passengers at muster station 10 because of the language barrier. After their women and children got into the boats, the male refugees surged forward to get in also. With some forcefulness the “women and children first” loading procedure was made clear. In some instances women refused to get into the lifeboats without their husbands or sons. Indeed in many cases the policy of “women and children first” had the result of splitting up families by putting them in different boats that were rescued by different ships, thereby creating an enormous amount of anxiety and confusion. Barbara and David Cass-Beggs were confronted with this agonizing dilemma. Not certain that the ship would stay afloat until a lifeboat that could take them both would be available, but unwilling to be separated, they made the painful decision to put their three-year-old daughter Rosemary into what they thought was the hospital boat. With the assumption that a child would always be looked after, little Rosemary was passed over the rail to a sailor and into the boat, wearing her pajamas and wrapped in a blanket.11
Passenger Joseph B. L. MacDonald, who had enjoyed a career at sea, eventually took charge of boat No. 10. When he and his wife Elnetta arrived at his muster station the boat had already been lowered to the promenade deck and he helped mothers and children get in. When the boat was in the water and it was seen that some men were needed, MacDonald and his wife climbed down the ladder. Once in the boat, he gave directions to several male passengers for handling the lines and assisted several more people to get on board from the side ladder into the boat, including several ship’s stewards. Among them was nurse Campbell, who took charge of both bailing out water and firing off flares. MacDonald then got the boat about three hundred yards away from the ship and streamed a sea anchor to keep the boat from drifting too far away. Also in the boat were Doris MacLeod and her daughters Betty Jean and Dorothy Mae. She gave great credit to MacDonald and said that he “was very good at his job and everybody obeyed him.”12
Boat No. 10A had been thrown on its side by the explosion of the torpedo, although it did not seem to be seriously damaged by the concussion. With the help of Boatswain’s Mate Macdonald and other crewmembers, the boat was righted and hoisted up by the davits and loaded people, but then problems developed. The boat was not properly released, requiring that all of the passengers get out and the boat be repositioned. A second time the passengers climbed into the boat and then climbed out again. As Bernice Jansen described it, “They cranked and cranked but the boats didn’t come out and so the men lifted them up while the others cranked.” On the third try, loaded with slightly fewer passengers, the boat was successfully lowered into the water. The remaining passengers and members of the crew then scrambled down the lifelines and the falls into the boat. As the lifeboat surged in the waves, Jansen missed the gunwale and fell into the sea. “Deck chairs and parts of the boat were washing against me and the oil from the boat [ship] poured out where I was tredding [sic] water,” she recalled. “My scalp was badly cut but fortunately I didn’t know it.” She thought she was in the water for about twenty minutes and feared being drawn under the lifeboat before seizing one of the grablines, after which she was pulled into the boat by two men. The boat was cast off and while the oars were being dug out from underneath the crowd of people, the boat drifted along the side of the ship underneath another lifeboat that was being lowered. Shouts and cries stopped the second boat and with the help of the newly extracted oars they gradually got under way.13
Boatswain William Harvey looked after the four lifeboats on the tourist-class promenade deck. Boats 11 and 12 were swung out and loaded with passengers and then lowered into the sea without any problems. Quartermaster Angus Graham helped with boat No. 11. College student Don Gifford watched people struggling down the side ladders and it seemed to him that women and children were being thrown into the boats. Therefore he jumped into the water off the port rail and climbed into boat No. 12. Later in the evening Captain Cook had First Officer Emery put in charge of boat No. 12, by which time he was able to reassure the passengers that several ships were on the way to rescue them. No. 12A was filled with between thirty and forty children ages ten to fourteen and eight mothers with infants. This boat was got clear of the ship without difficulty and streamed a sea anchor during the night.14
The increasing list of the ship to the port side presented a problem for launching boat No. 11A on the starboard side. When the loaded boat was about six or seven feet from the sea the stern fall “took charge,” that is, slipped out of control and allowed the stern of the boat to drop faster and further than the bow. Rev. Gerald Hutchinson and several others attempted to help Quartermaster Graham, but they all got terrible rope burns on their hands in the process. Graham shouted immediately for the bow fall to be slacked away quickly, which was done and the boat was brought level in the water. Joseph Insch said that in addition to the officer there were six male passengers attempting to handle the falls. He and his wife, Elsie, got in at the last minute, together with their daughter and another little girl, although the boat was already very crowded. Helen Hannay and her friend Martha Bonnett had found a place in No. 11A. When the fall slipped, people tumbled into the stern of the boat, like “rag dolls,” James Goodson remembered. Several people were thrown out of the boat into the sea, many were bruised or injured, and one broke an arm. The two girls both held on, although Hannay injured her shoulder and was hit in the eye, and the boat was filled with seawater and fuel oil. Mrs. H. DeWitt Smith of Plainfield, New Jersey, was also in the boat and held on when it careened down, but her nineteen-year-old daughter, Jeannette, fell into the sea and was picked up by another boat.15 Witnessed by many people on the Athenia, this incident was a frightening sight. Years later, Scotty Gillespie vividly remembered seeing the lifeboat dangling at a precarious angle.
DeWitt Smith, who had put his wife, Ellen, and daughter, Jeannette, in No. 11A, heard their screams as the boat went on its end, but by the time Smith got back to the rail and looked over the side the fall was being cut and the boat made level. After deciding that there was nothing more he could do to be helpful on the Athenia, Smith took off his shoes and trousers and climbed down a rope into the water and swam about one hundred yards to another boat. That boat was already crowded with between eighty and ninety people, Smith reckoned. He clung to the grab line on the side of the boat until, as he put it, “I was invited to come aboard, an invitation which I gladly accepted.” Chief Officer Copland ordered Quartermaster Graham to take charge of the boat No. 11A, although he had suffered rope burns on his hands and legs attempting to stop the stern fall from taking charge. Graham found that the boat was taking on water and ordered that the crew start bailing. It was presumed that the boat suffered some damage when it landed in the water and was leaking as a result. Even with steady bailing about two feet of water remained in the boat through the night. Ruby Mitchell was also supposed to get into No. 11A, but Mrs. Calder had not been allowed to come up to that lifeboat station. She told the sailor, “Well, that’s my daughter, and my sister, and the little girl that’s travelling with me. I’ve got to go to them.” So Ruby, Margaret Calder, and Cristina Horgan were allowed to join Mrs. Calder in another boat. Ruby remembered that they eventually had to slide down ropes to get into their lifeboat.16
Third Officer Porteous left the bridge and took charge of the four lifeboats at the stern of the ship on the third-class promenade deck. Boats 14, 14A, and 15 were launched quite smoothly. Hugh S. Swindley, a man at least in his sixties who was sailing to Toronto, had been thrown to the deck of the third-class promenade when the torpedo hit. Ironically, he had been shipwrecked twice before, when the Orient liner Oratava went down in 1897 and when a schooner he was sailing on sank off the Australian coast in 1906 or 1907. Swindley made his way up the companionway ladder and helped the crew launch several of the boats. No one was injured in the launching of these boats, he said. They also slid one of the life rafts over the stern of the ship—a “heavy piece of ‘furniture,’” Swindley called it. Mrs. Edith Bridge got her daughter, Constance Edith, into boat No. 14, but when she started down the ladder to the boat it pulled away from the ship. The woman below her on the ladder fell into the water and was pulled into the lifeboat, but Mrs. Bridge climbed back onto the ship and left on a later boat with her son Harry. Assistant Steward R. Grant managed No. 14A with the help of six members of the crew, and they got the boat under way in between fifteen and twenty-five minutes. The boat was filled with 103 women and children and only 2 male passengers. Later in the evening Chief Officer Copland was put in No. 14A with its precious cargo. The boat road easily during the night, but it was low in the water and Copland had the canvas boat cover spread over the occupants as the wind and waves rose. Copland also burned several flares in the course of the night.17
Boat No. 15A, on the starboard side, had trouble launching, in part due to the listing of the ship. The stern fall jammed on the “gypsy barrel,” the flanged drum around which the fall was wrapped several times to provide enough friction to allow several crewmembers to lower safely a boat weighing several tons. In this case, the bow fall had been paid out, leaving the boat dangling at a 45-degree angle about eight feet above the water. Third Officer Porteous gave orders that the after fall be cut and the bow fall let go, allowing the boat to drop the rest of the way into the water, now held along the side of the ship only with the bow line. Agnes Stuppel of Hollywood, California, watched all of this from the deck with considerable misgiving, but eventually climbed down a rope lifeline into the boat About ninety passengers, mostly women, then got into the boat from a side ladder and four lifelines. There was quite a bit of water and oil in the boat. Lucretia Estelle Kelly said that she was “totally immersed,” but the boat righted itself despite the damage to it. Cadet J. T. Donald, who was put in charge, found the plug, which had apparently been knocked out of place when the boat struck the water, and had it installed. However, because of the damage the boat suffered, the boat leaked badly. Even with pails obtained from another boat and steady bailing all night there remained about eighteen inches of water in the bottom of No. 15A. Swindley also climbed down the lines into the boat and struggled to get the oars out from under the crowd of passengers. Eventually he abandoned rowing and used his new handmade English boots to bail for the rest of the night. Nevertheless after the sea anchor was put out, the boat road easily during the night.18
After the last three boats were launched on the starboard side, there remained only boat No. 5, the motorboat, standing by to take off the remaining officers and several passengers who had refused to leave earlier. It was just after nine o’clock, or about one hour and fifteen or twenty minutes after the torpedo attack. James Goodson had been working steadily to help the crew get people out of the damaged part of the ship and then assisting passengers into the lifeboats. When the last lifeboat left he felt depressed and at loose ends. He went down to the purser’s office to see if he could retrieve his money, but of course could not get into the safe. He came back on deck, but decided not to wait for the motor lifeboat to return to the Athenia. He saw a lifeboat about one hundred yards away and made up his mind to swim for it. Goodson climbed over the side of the ship and using a dangling rope went hand over hand until he eventually lost his grip and plunged into the sea. It took a long time to get up to the surface, he swallowed seawater—the North Atlantic waves were rougher and colder than he had expected—and the lifeboat, which he could only see intermittently, now looked much farther away. Goodson was a good swimmer, but he wished that he had a lifejacket. Despite the fact that men were attempting to row the lifeboat, eventually Goodson caught up with it. However, when he attempted to climb into the boat several people tried to push him back out. A sailor ordered them to stop and with the help of several young women he was pulled on board. “I collapsed in a wet heap on the bottom of the boat and gasped my thanks to my rescuers. Amid peals of young female laughter I heard: ‘Hey! You’re an American!’ ‘So are you!’ I mumbled in reply.” He was wrapped in a blanket by several scantily clad college girls, including Caroline Stuart and Anne Baker. This was a rescue much beyond expectation.19
The ship now had a list of between 10 to 12 degrees to port and was noticeably down at the stern. First Radio Officer David Don had been sending SOS signals steadily since the ship was struck, “SSSS SSSS SSSS ATHENIA GFDM torpedoed position 5644 1405.” This was the international code for a submarine attack, the Athenia’s call letters, and her latitude and longitude. By 8:45 p.m. these messages had been picked up by the Malin Head radio station in County Donegal on the northern tip of Ireland and relayed to ships at sea and to the Admiralty in Britain. Radio Officer Don was able to report that the Norwegian freighter Knute Nelson, which had been seen by the submarine U-30 earlier in the day, had responded and was returning to pick up survivors. It was estimated that it would be within sight shortly after midnight. Don told the Knute Nelson that he would be abandoning ship shortly and that he would screw down the telegraph key to make a constant signal to serve as a directional radio beacon in the night to assist the freighter in finding the Athenia. Between 9:22 and 9:26 p.m. the first radio officer was also able to report that the Swedish steam yacht Southern Cross and the American freighter City of Flint had responded and were heading for the Athenia with all possible speed. The Admiralty received the distress signal at 10:30 p.m., and before midnight the order was given to detach two destroyers, HMS Escort and Electra, and just after midnight HMS Fame, from duties escorting the battle cruiser HMS Renown, which was proceeding to the home fleet base at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. The destroyers then made a course for the Athenia at 56° 42′ N, and 14° 05′ W, at a speed of twenty-five knots.20
Before the officers abandoned ship an inspection had to be made to see that there was nothing more that could be done to save the vessel and that no one was left behind. Chief Officer Copland was told by the second steward that all living passengers had been “cleared out” of the ship. Third Officer Porteous reported that the hand-operated between deck watertight bulkhead doors could not be completely closed. The buckling of the ship, caused first by the force of the exploding torpedo and then by the stress put on the ship by the flooding of the stern part of the vessel, had sprung the door fittings and the bulkhead rivets and seams. Copland attempted to make his way to No. 5 hatchway, where the full force of the explosion had been visible and where several people had been killed. However, the between decks passages on the port side were both twisted and flooded and he was unable to get there. He tried to open the control valves for the sanitary discharge, but could not move them. Along the starboard work alleyway he found several bodies and checked to see if they were actually dead. With the aid of a flashlight Copland was able to determine that the water was now nearly up to the midship line on C Deck, having flowed through the third-class dining room. He also checked pantries, galleys, and dining rooms farther forward and found no more water and no more bodies. He could then report to the captain that while he had counted about fifty dead bodies, all living people were off the ship except the ship’s officers and a handful of others. Captain Cook inquired specifically about Mrs. Rose Griffin, the unconscious patient in the ship’s hospital, and was assured that all were gone.21
Nothing more could be done; it was time to leave. The captain, keeping in mind that during the last war the Germans had sometimes taken the sinking ship’s senior officers prisoner, changed out of his uniform and into civilian clothes. He then hailed lifeboat No. 5, the motorboat, and the second wireless operator and the boat was brought alongside the ship. The several remaining passengers, including Dr. Edward T. Wilkes and Father Joseph V. O’Connor, got on board boat No. 5. Father O’Connor would leave behind his portable altar, chalice, and sacred vessels. The remaining officers got into No. 5 between eleven o’clock and midnight. The captain took with him the ship’s papers and log, and he distributed several of the officers and crew to other boats that lacked any experienced sailors to handle the lifeboats. Third Officer Porteous took charge of the boat and carried out the assignment to try to redistribute passengers from the overloaded boats, carefully transferring them to those boats with fewer people in them. The chief officer was put into boat No. 14A, the first officer into No. 12, the second officer into No. 2A, and the boatswain into one of the early boats.22 The Athenia was then seemingly left to her fate.