Five Months on a German Raider | Page 3

as apparently no more boats were being
lowered from the port side, and we did not know whether the raider
would start firing again. The No. 1 starboard boat was being lowered;
still there was no one to give orders. The passengers themselves saw to
it that the women got into this boat first, and helped them in, only the
Second Steward standing by to help. The women had to climb the rail
and gangway which was lashed thereto, and the boat was so full of gear
and tackle that at first it was quite impossible for any one to find a seat
in the boat. It was a difficult task for any woman to get into this boat,
and everybody was in a great hurry, expecting the firing to
recommence, or the ship to sink beneath us, or both; my wife fell in,
and in so doing dropped her jewel-case out of her handbag into the
bottom of the boat, and it was seen no more that day. The husbands
followed their wives into the boat, and several other men among the
first-class passengers also clambered in.
Directly after the order to lower away was given, and before any one
could settle in the boat, the stern falls broke, and for a second the boat
hung from the bow falls vertically, the occupants hanging on to
anything they could--a dreadful moment, especially in view of what we

had seen happen to the No. 1 port boat a few moments before. Then,
immediately afterwards, the bow falls broke, or were cut, the boat
dropped into the water with a loud thud and a great splash, and righted
itself. We were still alongside the ship when another boat was being
swung out and lowered immediately on to our heads. We managed to
push off just in time before the other boat, the falls of which also broke,
reached the water.
Thus, there was no preparation made for accidents--we might have
been living in the times of profoundest peace for all the trouble that had
been taken to see that everything was ready in case of accident. Instead
of which, nothing was ready--not a very creditable state of affairs for a
great steamship company in times such as these, when, thanks to the
Huns' ideas of sea chivalry, any ship may have to be abandoned at a
moment's notice. Some passengers had asked for boat drill when the
ship left Singapore, but were told there was no need for it, or for any
similar preparations till after Cape Town, which, alas, never was
reached. Accordingly passengers had no places given to them in the
boats; the boats were not ready, and confusion, instead of order,
prevailed. It was nothing short of a miracle that more people were not
drowned.
If the ship had only stopped when ordered by signals to do so, there
would have been no firing at all. Even if she had stopped after the
warning shots had been fired, no more firing would have taken place
and nobody need have left the ship at all. What a vast amount of
trouble, fear, anxiety, and damage to life and property might have been
saved if only the raider's orders had been obeyed! It seemed too, at the
time, that if only the Hitachi had turned tail and bolted directly the
raider's smoke was seen on the horizon by the officer on watch on the
bridge--at the latest this must have been about 1.30--she might have
escaped altogether, as she was a much quicker boat than the German.
At any rate, she might have tried. Her fate would have been no worse if
she had failed to escape, for surely even the Germans could not deny
any ship the right to escape if she could effect it. Certainly the seaplane
might have taken up the chase, and ordered the Hitachi to stop. We
heard afterwards that one ship--the Wairuna, from New Zealand to San

Francisco--had been caught in this way. The seaplane had hovered over
her, dropped messages on her deck ordering her to follow the plane to a
concealed harbour near, failing which bombs would be dropped to
explode the ship. Needless to say, the ship followed these instructions.
"There was no panic, and the women were splendid." How often one
has read that in these days of atrocity at sea! We were to realize it now;
the women were indeed splendid. There was no crying or screaming or
hysteria, or wild inquiries. They were perfectly calm and collected:
none of them showed the least fear, even under fire. The women took
the matter as coolly as if being shelled and leaving a ship in lifeboats
were nothing much out of the ordinary. Their sang-froid was
marvellous.
As we thought the ship