Equally heroic was the conduct of the First Officer, Mr. Arthur Rowland Jones, who was in the luncheon saloon when the torpedo struck the vessel. He immediately went to his boat station on the starboard side and began to fill his boat with passengers--a matter of extreme difficulty, owing to the ever increasing angle which the ship was presenting to the sea, which caused the boat to swing away from the tilted surface of the deck. After great efforts, however, he succeeded in getting about 80 passengers aboard before she was lowered into the water, entered her himself when the boat deck was level with the surface of the sea, and only some 15 seconds before the _Lusitania_ sank. It was fortunate for the passengers that he succeeded in doing so, since it was only by his skill and coolness, combined with that of two or three members of the crew who had also clambered on board, that the little lifeboat was able to survive the suction and disturbance caused by the disappearing liner. [Illustration: IN THE SPRING OF 1918 THE “MAURETANIA” BROUGHT 33,000 AMERICAN SOLDIERS TO EUROPE] She did so however, and afterwards transferred some of her passengers into another empty boat, the two boats then putting back in order to attempt further rescues. This they succeeded in doing, and the First Officer again filled his boat up, thereupon pulling off to a little fishing smack, the _Bluebell_, then about five miles distant. Having disembarked his passengers, Mr. Jones once more went back to the scene of the disaster, and after pulling some two and a half miles, fell in with a broken collapsible boat in a bad condition with about 35 people inside it. Some of these were lying exhausted in the bottom of the boat and others were injured, so Mr. Jones took them all on board, afterwards transferring them to a trawler. He then pulled off once more and saved yet another 10 people, whom he took to the _Flying Fox_, a Queenstown Tender. By this time it was 8 o’clock in the evening, and his crew were at the last point of exhaustion, having been working hard without food and water. There was too, by this time, a large number of destroyers and patrol boats on the scene, so Mr. Jones and his weary helpers themselves boarded the _Flying Fox_.