Mr. William Uno Meriheina

We were eating lunch at the time when suddenly, with absolutely no warning, we felt a heavy explosion up forward, near the first cabin section; a grinding and ripping. The boat immediately lurched toward the side that you were looking at as we were tied to the New York dock. She settled so much that dishes fell off tables and it was difficult to walk the aisle between tables. There was little panic – individuals moaned and cried, and just a suggestion of a rush for exits.

About five seconds after the first crash a second one came along, with the same sinking sensation on the one side. The men did a great deal for the women and children, but remember, the boat sank to the bottom in less than twenty minutes.

The lifeboats that were lowered were either overturned or smashed against the side of the boat, dumping the human loads into the ocean. I don’t pretend to describe the total scene; it was too horrible, but I did everything I could to help the women off. I placed a lifebelt on myself and placed several elderly women in life rafts that might tear loose from the decks when the boat sank, which they finally did.

The people who reached the decks were the only ones saved, as the ship sank in a flash when she finally started nose downward. On sinking, her boilers blew up and deck roofs blew off. I had faith in the boat not sinking and therefore remained on the back bridge ‘til I was washed off.

The internal pressure created in the hull by the inrush of water was sufficient to blow out port hole plates, and the air shot out of these like steam. I saw many bodies floating away deep in the water. Just before the final plunge the back of the hull lifted away up out of the water, revealing to me the propellers and bottom of the hull. At this time I was probably 175 feet above the surface of the water. All the time up to the last second several other fellows and myself were loosing the rafts, so that they would float and not be carried down with the hull. Our labor was for naught, as only a couple of the rafts tore loose, and in doing so smashed themselves to pieces, anyway.

The sight of the people falling overboard and sinking, with apparently no effort to swim, was maddening. Well, when the final plunge came I believe that I was the last, or one of the very last, to get off. And I tried to jump, but got fouled with the angle of the deck and the rail posts and was washed off, only to be slammed back downward with the hull. I lost consciousness and then I came to with the bright sun shining in my eyes.

It was cold, and I felt stunned, but I struck out for an overturned lifeboat that was about a city block away. There were people all around, both live and drowned. On reaching the boat I hung on to the side by the rope for a minute or so, when a man, grabbing my neck, placed his arm over my shoulders and pulled me off. I turned and hit him. He weighed over two hundred pounds, and I could not shake him off, so I sank purposefully and he let go at once. I again reached the boat and the man also had a finger grip on the rope. Several others were hanging on.

One after another, we managed to climb up on the slippery sides and lie on the keel. I finally reached out and helped this particular man up on the boat, and several others. We finally had about twenty men and women on the overturned lifeboat and she threatened to sink, when another overturned boat came near and some of the men made for it. We kept these two overturned boats together, loaded with humans half dead and some dead.

Then a broken raft was forced near us, and we placed all of the women and children thereon. Right near us was an upright lifeboat, but entirely submerged so that only the oar locks were visible at times. This boat contained about a half dozen women and twenty men. We finally got the women off of her on the raft, and the men remained, several drowning within.

We had a lot of trouble with our crew of these two overturned lifeboats and one upright lifeboat and one raft – the crew I mean were the people thereon.   Some wanted to paddle to shore, which looked twenty miles off, and others wanted to save their strength. We sang “Tipperary” a couple of times (sacrilege) and then, due to the women’s crying and begging us to stop, we sang “Lead Kindly Light.”

All this time we could see other lifeboats at a distance, either upturned or straight, but all loaded to the water’s edge. Only about ten boats were afloat, and more than half were overturned and the rest were broken or half submerged. I did not see one good lifeboat afloat.

I counted the boats and estimated their inmates as nearly 500. We had nearly one thousand nine hundred altogether. By the way, sing “Tipperary” and think you are adrift on the ocean with death everywhere in evidence.

Then after more than three and one half hours, the fleet from Queenstown came into view. They picked most of the other boats first as we were farthest away, and then came to us. All this time we were constantly adding to our crew, and sinking deeper and deeper. In the three and one half hours agony I found time to take out my fountain pen, which I still had, and dug out a couple of wet postcards from the drawing room of the boat. I wrote my impression very mildly on two of them. The rest of my time was taken up either pumping arms up and down or squeezing some poor “half-gone’s” wet clothing. We finally had more than seventy on our improvised combination raft consisting of raft, overturned and submerged boats

Then they picked us up. The Indian Empire was our rescue boat. We were landed in Queenstown at half past nine, about seven and one half hours after taking to water.