Perhaps the most lucid, and, since he was an American, the most impartial account of the occurrence was that afterwards given by Mr. James Brooks of Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of the saloon passengers. Mr. Brooks, who was making the voyage to England for business purposes, had, in common with most of the other American passengers, read the warning notice issued by the German Embassy, to which we have already referred. Like most of his fellow-countrymen, however, he had decided to ignore it. “No one in America,” he said, “ever dreamed that the Germans would dare to carry out their terrible threat to destroy such a magnificent vessel, and with it hundreds of the lives of innocent men, women and children.... A good many passengers were still at lunch when, on Friday afternoon, the attack came in reality. I had just finished a run on deck and had reached the Marconi Deck, when I glanced out over the water. It was perfectly smooth. My eyes alighted on a white streak making its way with lightning-like rapidity towards the ship. I was so high in that position above the surface of the water that I could make out the outline of a torpedo. It appeared to be about twelve feet long, and came along possibly three feet below the surface, its sides white with bubbles of foam. I watched its passage, fascinated, until it passed out of sight behind the bridge, and in another moment came the explosion. The ship, recoiling under the force of the blow, was jarred and lifted, as if it had struck an immovable object. A column of water shot up to the bridge deck, carrying with it a lot of debris, and, despite the fact that I must have been twenty yards from the spot at which the torpedo struck, I was knocked off my feet. Before I could recover myself, the iron forepart of the ship was enveloped in a blinding cloud of steam, due, not, I think, to the explosion of a second torpedo, as some thought, but to the fact that the two forehold boilers had been jammed close together and ‘jack-knifed’ upwards. This I was told by a stoker afterwards. [Illustration: OFFICERS, NURSES AND R.A.M.C. ORDERLIES OF H.M.H.S. “AQUITANIA”] [Illustration: “HOMEWARD BOUND”]