Some of the men, including the chief engineer, were pitching overboard life-rafts, deck chairs or anything else they could find that would float.She joined in and gave them a hand for a while. Then she wandered on. She stopped beside a lifeboat already half-loaded, and noticed that most of the women in it were wearing nothing but their night-clothes. They were huddled together feeling cold.
“I’ll go down and get the blankets,” she told the stewardess who was supervising them. “No don’t” shouted the stewardess in alarm, “it’s terrible down there”.
The woman was speaking of the third-class quarters aft where there was a large area below deck under water, with bodies floating about.
Rebuffed, Barbara Bailey wandered on. Her earlier listlessness had magically vanished now and all she wanted to do was to help other people. But she still did not care whether she saved herself or not.
Then she saw a little steward. He was half-crouched, half-seated against the taffrail, and he was trembling violently. Clearly he had lost control of himself.
She remembered he had been kind to her when she needed sympathy. So she went over and stood looking at him for a moment. Then she took him. “Pull yourself together!” she shouted.
The man stared at her in surprise. He made no effort to speak or protest- but simply waited until she put down her hands, then he moved away.
Dennis McCaffrey, a young Canadian who had gone on the poop deck to help lower some of the boats, saw an Irish Priest walking about without a lifebelt. He followed him, and, as a good son of the Church, took off his own and offered it to him.
The Priest smiled and shook his head “Thank you my son-but keep it yourself. I’ll be alright.”
A woman made her baby secure by using a big blanket pin, which she ran through the baby’s dress and then through her own coat. With the baby thus pinned to her, she had both hands free with which to scramble down a rope.
I SHALL HAVE TO SAY
MILDRED Finley (she and her husband Tom were principals of a school in Windsor Connecticut) was among one of the lucky ones who got away in an early boat. She went in No.9, the emergency boat.
With the ship listing and no one quite certain what was going to happen next- whether the Athenia would go down at once or whether the U boat was going to attack again- the early boats on boat sides were dropped quickly to the water, passengers boarding by climbing down rope ladders or sliding down lifelines in this way at least some people were certain to be saved.
Mildred’s biggest shock came as they ran towards the rail when Tom said: Remember I’ll have to stay behind until the women and children are off.” (To be continued- (In the next Sunday edition of the Guyana Chronicle.)