Captain Wolfe then gave sailing directions, and the three boats kept together until nightfall, by which time the wind had increased to the violence of a gale. During the night the three boats became separated, and it was only the magnificent seamanship of Captain Wolfe and the two other Officers, together with the splendid endurance and courage of the crews, that succeeded in bringing any of them to safety. For three days they were adrift in the open Atlantic, rations being reduced to one biscuit and one dipper of water a day. The Captain and Chief Engineer were actually on one occasion washed out of their little boat. It was in the Captain’s boat that the sea-anchors and rudders were carried away, and Captain Wolfe then improvised a sea-anchor out of some canvass, sewing it with his penknife and rope-yarn, and putting in it the last three remaining seven-pound tins of meat, the only articles of weight left in the boat. This contrivance he lashed to the broken rudder, and by this means was enabled to weather the breaking seas. How well to the course the vessel was kept can be gathered from the fact that when she was picked up by a destroyer, she was within 30 miles of the Lizard, having sailed 300 miles without seeing a ship. Both the other boats had similar adventures, but both were at last found and their exhausted and almost helpless crews brought safely to land. Thus ends a record, perhaps equalled, but certainly not excelled, by any other of the great Mercantile Marine Companies, upon whose unsung exertions our success both on land and sea was primarily founded. The list which appears on the next page, in tabular form, summarises in brief the losses sustained by the Cunard Company during this, the severest ordeal, that any maritime nation has ever undergone. From this it will be seen that vessels amounting to over 205,000 gross tonnage were lost by the Company, and this does not include the _Campania_, which had just passed from the Company’s service, or two further losses, that of the _Ascania_ and the _Valeria_, which were wrecked by stranding during 1918, and which added to the total another 14,985 tons. In all, more than 56 per cent. of the Company’s gross tonnage was sacrificed in the performance of services of the highest importance to the nation in the hour of its greatest jeopardy.