Then I admit that I saw the hopelessness of ever clearing the for’ard davit in time to get the boat away, so I stepped out and made a try for it by swimming. I spoke to several and urged them to come; but truly they were petrified, and only my training from boyhood up, in the water and under it, gave me the courage to jump. I swam about 100 feet away from the ship and then turned around to see if anyone was following to whom I could lend a hand, and found several who needed encouragement. Also I wanted to see when the final plunge of the steamer came, that I might be the more ready to fight against the vortex and tell the others. The Lusitania did not go down anything like head first: she had, rather, settled along{19} her whole water line. This convinces me that practically all the ports must have been open, even those as far down as Deck E. The stern did not rise to anything like a perpendicular, nor did it rise so high that I could see a single one of the propellers or even the end of her rudder. Not one of her funnels fell.

The last I saw of the lifeboat out of which I jumped was that she was being pulled down, bow first, as the tackle had not been freed and the stern of the boat was rising high in the air. While the people were thrown out, they were not so violently thrown as those from some of the lifeboats that were dropped when half lowered into the water.

There was very little vortex; there was rather a shooting out from the ship instead of a sucking in, after she sank; this I am told was partly caused by the water rushing into her funnels and being blown out again by explosions{20} m