Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924; Essays; Literature -- History and criticism
She was off the Spanish coast, homeward bound, and fairly full, just like
the _Titanic_; and further, the proportion of her crew to her passengers,
I remember quite well, was very much the same. The exact number of souls
on board I have forgotten. It might have been nearly three hundred,
certainly not more. The night was moonlit, but hazy, the weather fine
with a heavy swell running from the westward, which means that she must
have been rolling a great deal, and in that respect the conditions for
her were worse than in the case of the _Titanic_. Some time either just
before or just after midnight, to the best of my recollection, she was
run into amidships and at right angles by a large steamer which after the
blow backed out, and, herself apparently damaged, remained motionless at
some distance.
My recollection is that the _Douro_ remained afloat after the collision
for fifteen minutes or thereabouts. It might have been twenty, but
certainly something under the half-hour. In that time the boats were
lowered, all the passengers put into them, and the lot shoved off. There
was no time to do anything more. All the crew of the _Douro_ went down
with her, literally without a murmur. When she went she plunged bodily
down like a stone. The only members of the ship's company who survived
were the third officer, who was from the first ordered to take charge of
the boats, and the seamen told off to man them, two in each. Nobody else
was picked up. A quartermaster, one of the saved in the way of duty,
with whom I talked a month or so afterwards, told me that they pulled up
to the spot, but could neither see a head nor hear the faintest cry.
But I have forgotten. A passenger was drowned. She was a lady's maid
who, frenzied with terror, refused to leave the ship. One of the boats
waited near by till the chief officer, finding himself absolutely unable
to tear the girl away from the rail to which she dung with a frantic
grasp, ordered the boat away out of danger. My quartermaster told me
that he spoke over to them in his ordinary voice, and this was the last
sound heard before the ship sank.
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