| Leslie Morton Able-Bodied Seaman Saved |
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| Born | Leslie Noel Morton 1896 Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, United Kingdom |
| Died | 22 September 1968 (age 71) Surrey, England, United Kingdom |
| Age on Lusitania | 18 |
| Lifeboat | collapsible |
| Rescued by | Indian Empire |
| Citizenship | British (English) |
| Other names | “Gertie” |
| Spouse(s) | Constance Hill (1920 -?) (please provide dates) |
Leslie Morton (1896 – 1968), 18, was an able-bodied seaman working aboard Lusitania with his brother, Cliff. Leslie was also the first man to spot the torpedo(es) coming toward the Lusitania. Leslie helped lower load and lifeboats. The brothers were separated when they jumped into the water. Leslie, along with another crewman, Joseph Parry, rescued about 100 survivors while they were in the water in a collapsible boat. Both Leslie and Cliff Morton were rescued from the Lusitania disaster. For his heroism, Leslie was awarded the Silver Board of Trade Medal for Gallantry in Saving Lives at Sea. He always maintained that he saw two torpedoes heading towards the Lusitania instead of just one.
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“Gertie”
Leslie Noel Morton was born in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, in 1896, the son of John William and Annie Morton, (née Swinburne). He had an older brother named John Clifford ‘Cliff’ and a younger sister named Winifred. In 1900, the family moved to ‘Wynnmere’, Kirkstall, near Leeds, in Yorkshire, and early in 1901, Annie Morton died in Leeds.
He spent all his early holidays with his elder brother Cliff, at the home of their maternal grandmother, Mrs. Swinburne, at 94, Buchanan Road, Seacombe, Wallasey, Cheshire. The two of them spent most of their time there on the nearby dock estate and both developed a great love of the sea and ships from these holidays.
When Leslie Morton was aged 13 years in 1910, instead of returning with his brother to school – The School for Gentlemen’s Sons, at Barry Road, Dulwich, from his parents’ new home in Kirkstall, he instead caught a train to Liverpool and engaged on the sailing ship Beeswing, owned by the shipping firm of J.B. Walmsley and Co., as an ordinary seaman – which began, for him, a long career at sea. On board this vessel that he acquired the nickname ‘Gertie’, because of his then high, unbroken voice, and this name stuck with him throughout his career.
He sailed for four years on the Beeswing, during which time he had circumnavigated the world three times and had been round Cape Horn six times. After his return to England in December 1914, however, Clif persuaded Leslie to join him on another Walmsley square rigger, the Naiad, on a sixty-three-day voyage to Australia, via New York, taking oil to the southern continent and bringing grain back to England. His brother needed some moral support on the Naiad as he had jumped ship on his previous Walmsley vessel, the Wray Castle, and needed to make up his apprentice time. With the promise of promotion to Acting Second Mate on the Naiad in March 1915, when his own apprenticeship had finished, Leslie Morton agreed to signed on. By this time the Great War had been raging on Europe for some five months. Neither brother was totally happy with this arrangement, however, as they both feared that the war might be over before they had had a chance to become properly involved in it.
Jumping ship
The brothers had found the trip aboard Naiad to be “particularly vicious” and regretted their decision to sign on for the year-long voyage. once in New York, the brothers appealed to their father for help in Kirkstall to send them enough money for their passage home. Their father sent them each £37-10s-0d., (£37.50p.), enough to buy a second cabin ticket aboard Lusitania. They were eager to return to England and see something of the Great War, which they believed would be over in a matter of months.
To them, the Lusitania looked “as large as a mountain”. One of Lusitania‘s officers persuaded the brothers to sign on as deckhands for the ship instead of spending money and buying tickets as passengers, as the ship was short of good crewmen. Leslie recalled the exchange in his 1968 autobiography, The Long Wake:
“Why do you want to come home in Lusitania paying your fare? We have had ten of our deck hands run away this trip in New York, we suspect it is the threat of conscription coming in at home. They don’t like the idea. I could use two boys like you.”
As a result, they engaged on the spot as able seamen in the Deck Department at a monthly wage of £5-10s-0d., (£5.50p). Cliff and Leslie also recruited other disillusioned shipmates, including Arthur “Jo” Elliot. The money that their father had sent them, they spent it all with shipmates from the Naiad. They then reported for duty before the ship left the Cunard berth just after mid-day on 1st May 1915.
Attempting to sneak off the Naiad and unable to take their trunks with them, the deserting sailors wore as many of their clothes as possible and waddled onto the Lusitania. The £37 10s. 0d. that the brothers’ father had sent them would no longer go towards buying a ticket, but on drinks. It was the second time Leslie had had alcohol, and after a night of Manhattan cocktails, he passed out on Broadway. Yet, he and his comrades reported to Chief Officer Piper promptly at 8:30 on Friday, 30 April.
Lusitania
The brothers were astounded by the size of the Lusitania, as the small Naiad could not be compared to their new accommodations. Seamen’s quarters were akin to workhouse dormitories on land. Leslie had a bed by a porthole, where he could see the Lusitania cutting through the waves.
One of Leslie’s jobs on board the ship was to paint the lifeboats with grey paint known as “crab fat.” He had been lying with his back to the deck, painting, when he heard two girls and their nanny run up to him. These may have been the Allan girls Anna and Gwen, or the Crompton girls Alberta and Catherine with their nanny, Dorothy Allen.
Leslie recalled that the older girl was wearing a white pleated skirt and a sailor blouse. The two girls asked Leslie what he was doing and then asked if they could help.
“I hardly think this is a job for girls.” Leslie answered.
Even so, the older girl took the rag Morton was using and slopped paint all over the lifeboat he was painting and “also all over her beautiful clothes.” Morton was “aghast” at what the girl had just done (Hickey and Smith, 122). He then heard Boatswain John Davies approach. The girl dropped the swab and ran off with her younger sister.
Morton, not wanting to be yelled at by either the boatswain or the girls’ furious nanny, slid over the side and down one deck.
Torpedoed
Another of Morton’s job was to be a lookout for the ship, as the ship was sailing into the war zone and needed extra lookouts. One of his shifts was from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. On the day of the disaster, he had another lookout shift starting at 2 p.m. He had started duty at noon but spent the earlier part of the day in the baggage room to prepare for landfall.
So the morning of Friday, 7th May dawned and the preparations were in hand on Lusitania for the anticipated arrival at Liverpool. I had watch below in the fore noon, coming on duty at twelve o’clock; I also had an extra lookout’s duty to take over at four bells in the afternoon, at two o’clock. For the first two hours of my watch on deck, that is twelve to two, I, along with nearly the whole of the starboard watch of deckhands, was down in the mail room and luggage room to which the only entrance was by electric lifts, employed in sending up the mail bags and the luggage on deck in preparation for arriving in Liverpool.
At five minutes to four bells I went on deck to put my sweater and gear ready for going on the lookout at two o’clock. My place was extra lookout right up in the eyes of the ship on deck; my responsibility being the starboard side of the bow from ahead to the beam. My mate on the extra lookout with similar responsibilities on the portside was Jo Elliott, with whom I had served nearly five years in sailing ships. We were, of course, as close as brothers after all that time of being shipmates. Being a shipmate at sea, as I learnt much later in life, is a very different thing to being a business mate on shore. The two things are diametrically opposed in every way.
Leslie was stationed on the starboard side. Jo Elliot would be watching from the port side. They were assisting Frank Hennessey and Tom Quinn in looking out for anything suspicious.
I was keeping a keen eye on my job as extra lookout, watching the water (and seeing a dozen things every few minutes) until, exactly at ten past two, I was looking out about four points on the starboard bow when I saw a turmoil, and what looked like a bubble on a large scale in the water, breaking surface some 800 to 1000 yards away. A few seconds later I saw two white streaks running along the top of the water like an invisible hand with a piece of chalk on a blackboard. They were heading straight across to intercept the course of Lusitania. I grabbed the megaphone which was provided for the lookout’s use and, having drawn Jo Elliott’s attention to them, reported to the bridge : “Torpedoes coming on the starboard side, Sir.”
Hennessey and Quinn heard Leslie and relayed the message to the bridge. Second Officer Percy Hefford heard the warnings, but it was too late to take evasive action. The torpedo struck the ship just as Captain Turner ran to see the torpedo’s wake heading for the ship. Leslie would always maintain that he saw two torpedoes head toward the ship, not just one.
This was acknowledged from the bridge, before I had time to think of anything else, there was a tremendous explosion followed instantly by a second one and a huge column of water and debris and steam went shooting into the air on the starboard side between No. 2 and 3 funnels of the ship. I immediately dived down the scuttle to the fo’c’sle to see if my brother, who was in the other watch, was moving and met him coming up the scuttle in his shirt and nothing more, very annoyed at the interference with his watch below. He asked me: “What the hell are you doing with the ship, Gertie?”
If I had had time to think I should have been very flattered indeed at this sudden promotion. I said, “We have been torpedoed we must get to our boat stations,” and with that went back up the scuttle and along to my boat station on the starboard side of the boat deck at No. 11 Lifeboat.
At this juncture, having arrived at my boat station, I feel it necessary to say that in so far as my memory serves me I shall be describing the actual happening and events which I, personally, both saw and had a part in. This will, of course, provide a localised view-point of the ensuing thirteen minutes, by which time Lusitania was 300 feet down on the bottom of the sea.
Temptation very naturally exists for me to draw on the many able and competent books and articles which have been written on this disaster and also to call upon my memory of the subsequent very comprehensive official enquiry held at Caxton Hall later in the year, but this is a true picture, as I, a young man of eighteen years of age, actually saw and experienced it.
By the time I reached the boat Lusitania was already heeling fifteen to twenty degrees over to starboard, being drawn down on that side by the tremendous inrush of water into the great holes which had been torn in her hull by the explosion of the torpedoes, and she was going steadily over to starboard at that time without much indication that she was ever going to steady. At the same time she was going down by the bows so that we had the ship with a heavy and increasing list to starboard and a marked tilt down for’ard. The immediate effect of this list, which finally steadied at something approximating thirty degrees from the vertical, was to render the whole of the lifeboats on the port side of the boat deck completely useless, in so far as getting any people away from the vessel was concerned. They were, of course, all swinging into the ship’s side and it was quite impossible to lower them on the type of derricks which at that time were in use.
This reduced the available boats to the starboard side, both lifeboats and the collapsible boats which were stored on deck under the lifeboats. Here again the problem of holding the boats into the ship’s side to enable the passengers to embark in them required a considerable amount of skill, knowledge and seamanship, and it must be borne in mind when reading this description of the disaster, that we had lost over half the seamen in the explosion; they had been killed in the luggage and mail room which I had vacated some thirteen or fourteen minutes before the torpedoing. Whilst other members of the crew and, indeed, the passengers could be and in many cases were practical and useful, it is my opinion a job for seamen to get lifeboats out into the water and away with a maximum of security, efficiency and speed.
There was great excitement on the heavily listing boat deck with passengers, and crews of all departments rushing here and there, although the general excited comments, to my memory, seem to have been “surely she cannot sink. Not the Lusitania?” To me, a sailor, there was a strange feeling underfoot which one gets when a vessel is losing the buoyancy which will keep her afloat and which seems to be transmitted to the sailor’s mind by the very feel of the deck under his feet. I have experienced a similar feeling in later years on a ship which was not truly stable and had a tendency to fall all over the place due to lack of stability. On this occasion even before we left port I remember feeling somehow under my feet that all was not right with this ship. I learnt later, from a few of the seamen that survived, that they also knew after the first few minutes that Lusitania had the feel of a ship which was doomed and could not recover her buoyancy.
I was at my boat’s station by the after lifeboat fall, that is the tackle with which one hoists and lowers boats, and we had her strapped in to the ship’s side, at least partially, to prevent her swinging too far away with the heavy list and were getting passengers into the boat. Some of the more able-bodied were jumping the seven or eight feet into the boat which was, of course lower than the boat deck level. Others, in one way or another we helped across the gap. I remember at the subsequent enquiry when I was giving evidence, the incident of this gap between the lifeboat and the deck was the subject of a question put to me, as to how the “brave” seamen got the passengers into the boat with a gap between the deck and lifeboat. My reply was that if you had to jump six or seven feet, or certainly drown, it is surprising what “a hell of a long way” even older people can jump!
The lifeboat was quickly filled with her complement and in the word of one of the petty officers, I do not remember who he was, the man on the for’ard falls and myself on the after falls received the order “lower away“. Here again this is a specialist job, lowering a lifeboat with sixty people in it, into the water, from a heavily listing ship. We lowered her down almost to the water’s level but, with Lusitania still moving ahead through the water in the great circle which she was by this time describing and still travelling at four to five knots through the water, this presented a problem. Finally we lowered her into the water by letting the falls run for the last couple of feet. Immediately the boat dropped back on its painter (which was fast for’ard); that is the common practice in these circumstances. She fell back one boat’s length, came up alongside the heavily listing Lusitania and was directly under No. 13 lifeboat which was still in the davits. This lifeboat had been filled and I was about to go down the ropes, as was my duty, to try and get No. 11 lifeboat away from the sinking ship. The falls or tackles on No. 13 lifeboat, for which instructions had been given to lower away, were both handled by inexperienced men from one section or another of the catering or stewards’ department and, instead of being lowered away the ropes went with a rush and No. 13 lifeboat, full of people, dropped twenty-five or thirty feet fairly and squarely into No. 11 lifeboat which was also full of people.
Leslie’s naming of lifeboat 11 and 13 was the one that fell on top of it does not match the testimony occupants of lifeboat 13, who do not mention anything extraordinary in the lowering of their boat. It is likely, then, that the boat Leslie lowered as lifeboat 9 and lifeboat 11 was the one that fell on top of it. Lifeboat 11 had spilled earlier in the sinking before it was filled again and cast away safely.
Terrible as this incident was, the tragedy of the overall picture did not give one time to waste in either horror or sympathy and I was looking out (having no boat now to attend to) to see if I could get a glimpse of my brother. The turmoil of passengers and life belts, many people losing their hold on the deck and slipping down and over the side, and a gradual crescendo of noise building up as the hundreds and hundreds of people began to realise that, not only was she going down very fast but in all probability too fast for them all to get away, did create a horrible and bizarre orchestra of death in the background.
I suddenly saw my brother at the for’ard end of the boatdeck at No. 1 lifeboat which they had lowered halfway down to the water, full of people, so I went along at the ‘double’ and joined him and, finding that he had no one at the stern end of the boat to assist him, I took over the after fall and together we managed to lower away and get No. 1 boat into the water, Lusitania by this time had slowed down to about one or two knots. We immediately went down the falls into the boat which was full of passengers with no crew members in it and time was running extremely short.
Having got into the boat my brother at the for’ard end tried to push off with the boat hook and get her away from the ship. I was trying to do the same thing at the after end of the boat, but many of the passengers were hanging on to bits of rope from the side of the ship and the rails, which were now level with the water, in some mistaken belief that they would be safer hanging on to the big ship rather than entrusting their lives in the small lifeboat. Despite all our efforts we could not get her away from the ship’s side and, as Lusitania started to heel over a little more, just before starting to settle by the head for her final dive, a projection on the side of the boat deck, which was nearly level with the water, hooked on to the gunnel of the boat we were in and inexorably started to tip it inboard. The time for heroics was obviously past and my brother yelled at the top of his voice, “I’m going over the side, Gertie.” I replied, “So am I,” and we waved and both dived over the outboard side of the lifeboat.
Lifeboat 1 escaped the ship safely and was later towed to Queenstown.
In the water
Leslie’s account, countinued:
As I hit the water, and it is strange what one thinks about in times of stress, I suddenly remembered that my brother had never been able to swim, whereas I was a very strong and useful swimmer, one of the few sporting exercises at which I excelled. Having hit the water in a shallow dive and come up, I looked around to see if I could see my brother, but seeing the turmoil of bodies, women and children, deckchairs, lifebelts, lifeboats, and every describable thing around me, coupled with no less than 35,000 tons of Lusitania breathing very heavily down my neck and altogether too close for my liking, I went into what I used to believe was a useful double trungeon stroke with a quick glance over my shoulder as one of Lusitania’s outsize funnels appeared to have its eyes exclusively on me.
The last clear impression in my mind at that time was seeing a collapsible boat slip off the deck of Lusitania into the water all lashed up. Why I should have noticed that, I do not know, but I had cause to he thankful in the course of the next few hours that I had seen it. I also remember Captain Turner on the bridge as she dived. I was swimming as hard as I could away from what we always thought would be a tremendous vortex created when the ship went down, and whilst swimming I suddenly heard, with the water splashing around me and my head, and all the other things and people around, an increasing and growing “wail” and looking again over my shoulder, thinking I was far enough away from Lusitania, 1 turned on my back and watched her as she started to settle rapidly by the head. The stern rose in the air, the propellers became visible and the rudder, and she went into a slow, almost stately, dive by the head, at an angle of some forty-five or fifty degrees. As she went down bodies, wreckage, people alive and dead were wiped off the decks until the water reached the stern, where hundreds had scuttered along as hard as they could go, climbing up the deck like a mountain to get to the back end. When Lusitania was better than half submerged for her total length, she hit the bottom, jarred, turned slowly over on her starboard side and disappeared from view for ever.
In the meantime, whilst there were all sorts of pieces and bits of wreckage, I suddenly thought of the collapsible boat which I had seen slip off the deck and, turning vaguely in the direction of where Lusitania had slowly come before diving, with the greatest good fortune in the world, at about 800 yards, I found the collapsible boat; it was like an oasis in the desert of bodies and people and momentarily was quite alone and unattended. I managed to scramble aboard and, although not being very strong physically, I had the knack, which is a good substitute for strength, learnt probably in my long years of hauling ropes and walking round windlasses in windjammers, and managed to get the canvas cover off and the sides, which were also canvas, up into position by hauling at the thwarts, one at a time. Just as I was completing this, a hand came over the rail or gunnel which I grabbed. It turned out to be Fred Perry [sic, Joseph Parry], one of the seamen. He did not seem to be injured although he was very, very sick, probably from some blow. However, he joined me in the boat, and we proceeded to collect as many people from the water as was possible; many of them we had to go out and collect as they were in danger of sinking. Others managed to get to the boat side and we hauled them aboard.
Also aboard Leslie’s collapsible boat was Charles Lauriat. They heard Fred Gauntlett call out Lauriat’s name and helped him aboard. The men tried to raise the boat’s sides; however, desperate people in the water were clinging onto the sides of the boat, and they were convinced the men meant to push them away.
They managed to raise the sides, but for oars they had to jump overboard to look for as the collapsible had none. Samuel Knox and James Brooks also climbed into the boat. They continued to pick up more people in the water until the boat had, in Lauriat’s words, “sunk flush with the water.” Next the boatload of survivors rowed for the lighthouse on the Old Head of Kinsale, continuing to pull people in.
One lady in particular, I so well remember, was the Rev. Gwyer‘s bride. At that time they were coming home, combining a honeymoon with a transfer to England in ecclesiastical circles, and she was written up as the “woman who went down the funnel“. I think, in point of fact, she must have been very near the left of the funnel as Lusitania came over and was probably momentarily drawn in and thrown out again because she was covered with soot and grime and was black. I went out to her because she seemed to be in extremis and hauled her along and got her into the boat where, with that wonderful recuperative power that women have in particular, more often than not in moments of great physical danger, she certainly cheered us up in the boat during the next hour.
Margaret Gwyer was celebrated at the time for her adventure with one of Lusitania’s funnels. Other survivors known to have undergone a similar ordeal are First Class Bedroom Steward Edward Bond, Saloon Passenger Inspector William John Pierpoint and Third Class passenger Harold William Taylor.
By the time our collapsible boat had got about eighty people in it which was really the limit it could carry, probably a little over, the problem crossed my mind what to do and looking around I saw in the distance the smoke of some craft approaching. There were also a couple of South Irish fishing boats which had come up by this time, and so, getting the oars out with the help of those able bodied passengers, we pulled over. Before steering for the trawler which turned out to be the Indian Empire, I had been steering towards one of the Irish fishing drifters which were picking up people, but deciding that the steam trawler would certainly make the port of Queenstown before the drifters, I altered course and went off to intercept Indian Empire.
The Indian Empire was HMS Indian Empire a Royal Naval trawler of 289 tons, operating out of Queenstown.
In their book The Last Voyage of the Lusitania, Adolph and Mary Hoehling state that after being picked up from a collapsible boat, Margaret Gwyer was transferred to the Manx fishing smack Wanderer, also known by its registration number, PL (Peel) 11, and then to the Queenstown harbour tender Flying Fish, where she had a delirious re-union with her husband, The Reverend Herbert Gwyer.
This latter is known to be true, so it is possible that Morton did transfer some of his passengers to what he called a South Irish fishing boat, (Peel 11) which must have included Margaret Gwyer and simply forgotten about it over sixty years later when he wrote his autobiography!
The rescue vessel Wanderer came to unload the collapsible boat, but Leslie stayed with the lifeboat, continuing to pull people out of the water and ferrying survivors to rescue vessels. Along with Joseph Parry, they rescued about 100 survivors. When he did what he could, he was taken aboard the auxiliary patrol vessel Indian Empire.
By half past three we got all the people out of our collapsible boat on to Indian Empire. Quite nearby was an upturned lifeboat with eighteen or twenty people sitting on the upturned bottom, so we took our collapsible boat over, with the help of two of the crew of Indian Empire and picked up these people, together with others who were still floating. We did not know if they were alive or not; it turned out in this case that they were. We took them to Indian Empire and then boarded her ourselves. In the meantime she had been picking up survivors from the water, the lifeboats, improvised rafts, one or two collapsible boats, on both sides, and in no time had three or four hundred people aboard.
The Captain, supported by this time by the arrival of other rescue craft, turned the bows of Indian Empire for Queenstown. In the meantime I was wondering what had happened to my brother, Jo Elliott, and all my shipmates from sailing days as, apart from joining my brother in No.1 boat, before Lusitania went down, I had not caught a glimpse of hair or hide of any of them. Two of them had been with me down in the luggage room and I was in no doubt what had happened to them.
Reunion
It was dark when Leslie Morton was eventually landed at Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, and Leslie did not know what had become of his brother. He sent a telegram to his father, stating: AM SAVED. LOOKING FOR JOHN.
Cliff, who was also saved, sent a similar telegram to his father: LOOKING FOR LES.
After spending the night in a hostel for seamen, the next day he began the grim task of looking for the body of his brother in the temporary mortuaries set up in the town. He had last seen him just as they had both jumped into the sea. Leslie prepared himself for the unhappy task of looking for his brother in the impromptu morgues of the city.
Funny thing next morning I learnt that many of the bodies that had been collected after the ship had gone down and brought ashore, were being laid out in one of Queenstown’s larger halls. I do not remember whether it was a church hall or what it was, but as soon as I learnt this, I made my way to this building and went in at one end; there were entrances at both ends of a very long room. Laid out in rows all the way down on both sides were sheeted and shrouded bodies, and a large number of people in varying states of sorrow and distress were going from body to body, turning back the sheets to see if they could identify loved ones who had not yet been found. I started at one end on the same grisly job, hoping that I would not, but fearing that I might, find my brother.
I had turned back I don’t know how many sheets until, coming to one body, I put out my hand to turn the sheet back and, by the most amazing coincidence I shall ever know, a hand on the other side went to turn the sheet back and I looked up and there was my brother. He was engaged on the same job as I, and had worked from the other end of the room.
We were both glad to see each other but I do not remember that there were any histrionics or demonstrations of excessive joy, it was just a case of “Hallo, Cliff, glad to see you.” My brother said “Am I glad to see you too, Gert?. I think we ought to have a drink on this.”
Cliff had apparently equipped himself on Cunard’s dime, buying for himself “the loudest check suit, check tie, cap and horrible yellow shoes”. Leslie himself was still wearing his sailor’s jersey. The brothers celebrated their reunion with their first Guinness.
We went out of the hall and many people were moving about the town, survivors, passengers, searching; there was a big air of unreality about it, and word was going round of the total people lost, total people saved, although nobody knew at that time exactly what the figure was. As we turned to the right coming out of the hall who should I see coming along the pavement but the lady of the funnel, Mrs. Gwyer, on the arm of a Reverend gentleman. She greeted me effusively and he greeted my brother equally effusively. It seemed that my brother got into a lifeboat after doing the first and most efficient swim of his life and helped to pull Mr. Gwyer over the gunnel, so we were both introduced to each other by our grateful rescued. Mrs. Gwyer had told her husband about her rescue, no doubt adding many heroics to it which did not actually exist: when they learnt we were brothers they could not get over their surprise.
Before leaving this episode. . . I must mention that some time later I received a very beautiful gold wristlet watch with an engraving on the back expressing the Reverend Gwyer’s feelings for my having rescued his bride.
Wearing ill-fitting and most unsuitable clothes obtained in Queenstown, the brothers then went by rail to Dublin, from where they took a ferry to Holyhead in north Wales. From there, they travelled further by rail to Liverpool.
The reception at Lime Street Station was terrific; wives, sweethearts, the Press and public numbered thousands, but we survived. Next day we went to the Cunard offices and were told to report at the shipping office in Paradise Street that afternoon, where our ‘pay off’ was rushed through, our discharges given with injunctions to remain handy for further instructions at our respective homes, or to notify our whereabouts, but not yet to sign on again to go to sea.
Leslie Morton was given the balance of wages owing to him, which amounted to £2-7s-0d., (£2.35p.). This was in respect of his sea service from 1 May until 8 May 1915, 24 hours after the liner had gone down.
So we all made our different ways home. My brother and I, of course, went on the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway from Exchange Station, through to Leeds. We arrived in Leeds fairly early in the afternoon, and instead of going home we went to my father’s place of business which was a fairly large building, with a very commanding Commissionaire on the door. He saw these two figures coming in the main entrance (I was a few steps behind). My brother’s brilliant check outfit caught the Comissionaire’s eye at once; it was probably to his taste. He had been advised that the Boss’s sons were coming in that afternoon and he immediately greeted my brother; “Sir, come this way,” leaving the jerseyed figure of myself standing there. Having led my brother, who did not give any sign by a look or a word (as I said before he had quite a sense of humour), through to my father’s office, the Commissionaire came back and asked me what I wanted. Looking a little puzzled but with an expression of alarm on his face he said “Are you Mr. Leslie, Sir?” I said, “That’s the general idea.” “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t recognise you in those clothes.” I replied, “No, but we do go to sea in them occasionally” and then grinned at him, and so I too was escorted to my father’s office.
After he had been home for a while, Leslie Morton went to see the parents of Jo Elliot, who had served with him on the Beeswing, the Naiad and the Lusitania, to break the news that their son had not been listed amongst the survivors. They had only just heard the news from Cunard that morning and Leslie Morton was able to fill in some of the details of their son’s last days.
Recognition
In June 1915, Leslie Morton was called, along with his brother, to give evidence in Caxton Hall London, to the Lord Mersey Enquiry into the sinking of the Lusitania, where Leslie was a key witness. Leslie always insisted that he saw two torpedoes approach Lusitania, which was the accepted version of events in the Mersey Inquiry and Mayer Hearings but denied by the German submariners and other passengers on board. Official histories have now recorded only one torpedo striking the ship.
It was during this enquiry that his bravery after the sinking came to the attention of the Board of Trade and this resulted in the award of a Silver Medal for Gallantry in Saving Life at Sea. Joseph Parry was awarded the same medal but in bronze. Both medals were subsequently presented to them by King George V himself. The official citation stated:
On 7th May 1915, the steamship Lusitania, of Liverpool, was torpedoed off the Old Head of Kinsale and foundered. Morton was the first to observe the approach of the torpedoes and he reported them to the bridge. When the torpedoes struck the ship he was knocked off his feet but he recovered himself quickly, and at once assisted in filling and lowering several boats. Having done all he could on board, he jumped overboard.
While in the water he managed to get hold of a floating collapsible lifeboat and with the assistance of Parry, he ripped the canvas cover off it and succeeded in drawing into it 50 or 60 passengers. Morton and Parry then rowed the boat some miles to a fishing smack. Having put the rescued passengers on board the smack they returned to the scene of the wreck and succeeded in rescuing 20 to 30 more people.
Continued career at sea
The same summer, Leslie Morton decided to enroll at nautical college to study for his Board of Trade Second Mate’s Certificate and while doing so, lived with his grandmother in Buchanan Road, Seacombe. After passing his Second Mate’s Certificate, he then served as Third Officer on the Cunard cargo steamer Tyria, in the Mediterranean sea and the Allen liner Corinthian, before joining the brand new Ellerman Hall liner, City of Florence.
Having sailed on her to Africa and India, and through the Mediterranean, he was on board when she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine UC-17 in the Atlantic 200 miles off Ushant, on 20th July 1917, en route for Falmouth. After being in an open boat for four days, the captain and all the crew were rescued, safe and well, by the destroyer HMS Midge and landed at Plymouth.
Both of his previous ships, the sailing ships Beeswing and Naiad were also lost during the Great War. Both were sunk by German submarines having first been captured, Beeswing, on 2 May 1917 and Naiad on 15 December 1916.
After his return to Yorkshire, he made up his mind, like his brother, to join the Royal Naval Reserve and after training at HMS Excellent, at Whale Island, Portsmouth, Hampshire, he was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant at the end of 1917. Following a month’s posting to a salvage tug, HMS Seahorse, he joined the armed merchant cruiser HMS Ophir at his native Birkenhead.
He then served on board her as a junior officer for the rest of the war, mainly in the far east, returning when the war was over, to England, via the Hawaiian Islands and The Panama Canal.
In 1920 in Bradford, Leslie Morton married Constance Hill, whom he had first met as a little boy and returned to merchant navy service, mainly with The Blue Funnel Line sailing out of Liverpool.
In 1968, he published his autobiography, The Long Wake, at the age of 70 years. By this time, he was a renowned broadcaster on both radio and television on various maritime topics, especially the sinking of the Lusitania.
He died in Surrey, aged 71 years, on 22 September 1968.
The silver Board of Trade medal is now in the collections of Merseyside Maritime Museum. His inscribed watch presented by The Reverend and Mrs. Gwyer is no longer in his family’s possession and its whereabouts is unknown.
Links of interest
Leslie Morton at the Merseyside Maritime Museum
Leslie Morton’s Silver Board of Trade Medal for Gallantry in Saving Lives at Sea
Contributors
Frank Davies
Peter Kelly, Ireland
Steve McGreal
Ellie Moffat, UK
David Slater
References
“Silver Board of Trade medal for gallantry in saving lives at sea.” Merseyside Maritime Museum. Web. 8 August 2011. <http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/maritime/collections/liners/lusitania/mortonmedal.aspx>.
Hickey, Des and Gus Smith. Seven Days to Disaster. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981.
Hoehling, A. A. and Mary Hoehling. The Last Voyage of the Lusitania. Madison Books, 1956.
Morton, Leslie. The Long Wake. Routledge & K. Paul, 1968.
Preston, Diana. Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy. Berkley Books, 2002.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths
1911 English Census
1901 English Census
British Merchant Vessels Sunk By U-Boats
Cunard Records
A Merchant Fleet at War
Ships of the Royal Navy I
Wallasey News
Yorkshire Post
UniLiv D92/2/541
PRO BT 348
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