DEPARTMENT OF STATE.

142 G.4SE 0F THE HEBSIA.
warning given. As soon as the ship was struck I attempted
to give the five-blast signal on the whistle
which had been agreed upon to order all to their boat stations,
but could not work the whistle, as the steam had
gone. I then ran down to the lower bridge and asked
Captain Hall if I .could help with the secret despatches,
and he answered, "No; I am attending to them myself;
get out the port boats as quickly as possible and look
after your passengers." I left the bridge and went aft,
as directed, taking my life belt on the way. The Captain
had been personally in charge of the navigation
all the day directing and verifying the courses and had
not, I gather, been down to the Saloon to lunch.
The weather was fine, but the sea was choppy and
it would have been difficult to see the periscope of a
submarine, although all were on the alert for such a
contingency. The torpedo struck the ship on the port
side just abaft the forward funnel and probably fractured
the bulkhead separating No. 3 hold (one of the
largest holds) from the stokehold. After the first explosion
caused by the torpedo there almost immediately
followed another explosion, and as I saw no second
torpedo I concluded one of the boilers had blown up,
partly because of the quantity of steam which was
rising and for the reason I could not get steam for the
whistle, and also from the fracture there was in the deck
through which coal and ashes had been blown.
There were 20 boats on the Persia, 10 on either side of
the ship, which would accommodate nearly 1,000 people
and sufficient, even with the starboard boats out of
service, to accommodate all the persons on board.
One of the boats on the port side No. 6 was blown
away by the first explosion, but the crew were going to
their appointed stations, as prearranged, and when I
reached the poop Nos. 14 and 16 boats were already
being properly lowered.
I then looked to the two inside boats and found their
gripes had been already released so as to enable them to
float when the ship went down, so I went over to the
starboard side to see if anything could be done to release
any of the boats there, and found the third engineer
trying to clear away No. 15 starboard boat, which had a
number of people in it, but the boat, owing to the ship's
list, was caught on the eyebrows of the ports, so I called
out to the people in the boat to jump into the water,
which was the only thing for them to do.
I saw No. 14 port boat clear, but No. 16 was sunk by
the ship's davits cutting it as the vessel went over.
The Persia went down under my feet, and when I got
into the water, I saw two empty boats floating with no
one in them, evidently the inside boats No. 14A and 13A,
the gripes of which had been released to admit of their
floating when the ship sank. I swam to one of them and
just as I got hold of it it turned turtle, and I then went
to the other, got into it, and picked up altogether 43 people
from the water, subsequently taking five more out of
the Chief Officer's boat, which was overloaded.