When it was seen that most of the boats would be useless, hundreds of passengers donned life-belts and jumped into the sea. Others seized deck chairs, tubs, kegs, anything available, and hurled themselves into the water, clinging to these articles. The first-cabin passengers fared worst, for the second- and third-cabin travelers had long before finished their midday meal and were on deck when the torpedo struck. But the first-cabin people on the D deck and in the balcony, at luncheon, were at a terrible disadvantage, and those who had already finished were in their staterooms resting or cleaning up preparatory to the after luncheon day. The confusion on the stairways became terrible, and the great number of little children, more than 150 of them under two years, a great many of them infants in arms, made the plight of the women still more desperate. LUSITANIA GOES TO HER DOOM After the life-boats had cut adrift it was plain that a few seconds would see the end of the great ship. With a great shiver she bent her bow down below the surface, and then her stern uprose, and with a horrible sough the liner that had been the pride of the Cunard Line, plunged down in sixty fathoms of water. In the last few seconds the hundreds of women and men, a great many of them carrying children in their arms, leaped overboard, but hundreds of others, delaying the jump too long, were carried down in the suction that left a huge whirlpool swirling about the spot where the last of the vessel was seen. Among these were Elbert Hubbard and his wife, Charles Frohman, who was crippled with rheumatism and unable to move quickly; Justus Miles Forman, Charles Klein, Alfred G. Vanderbilt and many others of the best-known Americans and Englishmen aboard. Captain Turner stayed on the bridge as the ship went down, but before the last plunge he bade his staff officer and the helmsman, who were still with him, to save themselves. The helmsman leaped into the sea and was saved, but the staff officer would not desert his superior, and went down with the ship. He did not come to the surface again. Captain Turner, however, a strong swimmer, rose after the eddying whirlpool had calmed down, and, seizing a couple of deck chairs, kept himself afloat for three hours. The master-at-arms of the Lusitania, named Williams, who was looking for survivors in a boat after he had been picked up, saw the flash of the captain’s gold-braided uniform, and rescued him, more dead than alive. INTERVIEW WITH CAPTAIN TURNER Despite the doubt as to whether two torpedoes exploded, or whether the first detonation caused the big liner’s boilers to let go, Captain Turner stated that there was no doubt that at least two torpedoes reached the ship.