On a clear day with the sea a perfect mirror reflecting the blue sky, the French Channel Steamer _Sussex_ left Folkstone harbor on its fateful trip for Dieppe, March 24, 1916. Among the passengers was an English nurse attached to a French hospital, who was returning to duty from a month’s leave of absence in England. The _Sussex_ was a small but finely built, stout passenger boat, unarmed. She left harbor at 1.30 in the afternoon, and in a short time encountered in the Channel thousands of floating bags of a jettisoned cargo. A group of passengers, standing by the rail, began to discuss the possibilities of torpedoing. A British officer, who had braved dangers at Undros, laughed, saying that it was not submarine weather, the Germans being afraid to show themselves in a calm sea. Soon the others of the group strolled off leaving the nurse alone watching a Belgian officer exercising his dog on the deck. Presently they went away, and the nurse turned to look out at the sea and watch for a periscope. What followed the nurse tells, as her personal experience, in an article published in _Blackwood’s Magazine_: “It grew cold, and I was beginning to think of going back to my sheltered chair to roll myself up in my rug, when in a moment the whole earth and heaven seemed to explode in one head-splitting roar. In the thousandth part of a second my mind told me ‘Torpedoed—forward—on my right’—and then the sensation of falling, with my limbs spread-eagle, through space. [Illustration: The _Sussex_ Beached This channel ferryboat was torpedoed at night while carrying a large number of distinguished passengers. The force of the explosion broke her amidships.] “When I came to myself again I was groping amid a tangle of broken wires with an agonizing pain in my back and the fiercest headache I had ever known. My hair was down, and plastered to my chin with blood that seemed to be coming from my mouth. There was more blood on my coat-sleeve. I was conscious that I was bleeding freely internally with every movement. My first definite thought was, ‘If only it is all a ghastly nightmare!’ But I remembered. My next thought was a passionately strong desire not to die by drowning—then. I crawled free of the wires that were coiled all about me and stood up. DEAFENED AND UNABLE TO SPEAK “In one unsteady glance I took in a number of things. Near me a horrible piece of something, and a dead woman. (Afterwards I wondered why I was so sure she was dead and never stooped to make sure.) _Below me, on the quarterdeck and second-class promenade deck_, numbers of people moving to and fro, many with lifebelts on. I never heard a sound from them, but it did not strike me as odd then. Now I know I was deafened. So I had been blown up on to the top deck, to the other end of the ship. I swayed to and fro, and looked for a stairway, but could find none, and began to be aware that I had only a few moments of consciousness left me.