The Lusitania was another large ship like the Titanic, and was actually one of the reasons the Titanic was built. The Lusitania and her sister ship were the two biggest and most luxurious ships before the Titanic and her sisters came along. They (the Titanic and the Lusitania) were from two rival ship lines. The Lusitania was very beautiful (But not nearly as much as the Titanic!) but she was sunk by a German submarine’s torpedo on May 7, 1915 a little off the coast of Ireland. This action helped get America into World War I for there were many Americans on board her when she sank. She sank 18 minutes after she was hit, and those 18 minutes were filled with chaos as the 1257 plus people on board tried to get off her, but because the Lusitania was listing to the starboard (right) side so badly, and because she was still moving forward as she sank, it made even the lifeboats unsafe. Because of the angle of the list, the only boats that could be launched were the ones on the starboard side. But even then, they were constantly flipping over, spilling their passengers into the water, then another lifeboat would start to descend, and the lines would break, the lifeboat falling and crushing the occupants of the lifeboat before her. Only a few actually made it safely. The people in the water thought that the Lusitania would flip over onto her side, crushing them. They could look up and see her leaning precariously to her starboard side right above them. The power failed, trapping men and women in the electric elevators. The deck was crowded with people, as it tilted farther and farther, noise was everywhere, screams and shouts of passengers, the noise of wood and metal scraping as the lifeboats were lowered, the calls of the officers, and the cries of babies. People were slipping and sliding along the deck. The ship was filled with passengers, and had a lot of babies and young children on board.
Some mothers tried to give their children to strangers, hoping they could save them. Florence Padley was on the deck when one lady asked her to take her baby, but she couldn’t, because she didn’t have a life jacket. Norah Bretherton grabbed her baby from her play pen, and then asked a man who had frequently played with her young son, Paul, to run down to the cabin and get him. He looked right through her. In desperation she forced the baby into a stranger's arms and ran down and grabbed her son. As she made her way up the crowded stairs, she was horrified by the callousness of fellow passengers, not one man offered to help her in her struggle up the sloping stairs, and she saw one lady with a little baby fall and slide down along the deck, and no one bothered to help her. It was every man for himself. Paul Crompton and his wife were trying desperately to gather up their six children ranging from age five months to fourteen. Anne Williams was in a similar plight with her own six children. Parents ran frantically around the boat searching for lost children, while children screamed for their parents. Baby carriages rolled wildly along the tilting deck, some empty, others not. One man remarked that all he saw in the water were
“Children-children were everywhere.” One lady had just laid her eight month old daughter down for a nap when the torpedo hit. She ran back to her cabin, and grabbed the baby. As she started to leave, she remembered her next door neighbor had an eighteen month toddler who was asleep in the cabin right next to her, she could see no sign of the mother, and could not bear to have him stay there. But he was a big child and she could not carry both her baby and the toddler. She had to leave him behind. His little face would haunt her the rest of her life. Many people lost their children; Mabel Henshaw clutched her baby Constance as she jumped into the water, but they both were sucked down, and the force of the water tore Constance from her arms. When Mabel came back to the surface, Constance was gone. Charlotte Pye also jumped in with her baby, Marjorie. “
My baby gave a terrible scream and we both sank. When I came up the baby was gone and I was dragged down a second time.” When she came up again, all she could see where dead bodies “
and those that were living were screaming and shouting, wanting to be saved.” Charlotte was picked up by a lifeboat, she could do nothing but sit there
“Crying and wanting my baby” knowing she would never see her again. The child had met “
such a terrible end” and she tormented herself that
“she could have taken better care of her” Her will to live was gone. Another woman worked hard to keep her three young children afloat. By the time a lifeboat came to help her, two were already dead. Her third child died moments later. She had to leave them floating in the sea. One woman was in the water with her baby for two hours, and just as some other survivors helped her onto a raft, the baby girl closed its tiny eyes in her arms and died, She had to leave the baby behind in the water. Soren Sorenson (weird name!) watched a mother valiantly try to save her baby by putting it on some wreckage, but it died, and she had to let it go, the little bundle drifting away. A Canadian, Percy Rogers saw a young child wearing a lifejacket and crying for her mother. He could not reach her and had to watch her die.
An Irish couple, Walter and Nettie Moore were holding on to an overturned lifeboat, Walter was trying to hold their baby son out of the water. But as time passed the baby’s skin turned a dark bruised color and froth appeared at his mouth. They realized he was dead. Walter lost consciousness, he said
“I can’t hold on any more, Nettie” and slid into the water, still clasping his baby’s lifeless body.
The whole eighteen minutes of sinking was filled with death, chaos, noise, confusion, and fear. The captain of the submarine that fired the torpedo, Scheigner, wrote in his log:
“It would have been impossible for me to fire a second torpedo into this crushing crowd of humanity trying to save their lives.” And we are just thankfully that he didn't. Out of the 1,257 registered passengers, the final toll was 1,198 people dead. There was 129 children on board, 94 were killed, and out of the 39 babies on board, 34 died.