I saw the wake of the first torpedo the moment before the _Lusitania_ was struck. I was on the upper deck. Looking out to sea, I saw all at once the wash of a torpedo, indicated by the snakelike churn on the surface of the water. It was about thirty feet away. Then came the thud as it struck the ship. Mr. Berth and his wife, of New York, first class passengers, were the last persons I spoke to on the ship. About this time all the passengers in the dining saloon had come up on deck. The upper deck was crowded, and the passengers were wondering what was the matter, few really believing that the ship had been torpedoed. They began to lower boats. I saw Berth help his wife into a boat. I fell into the same boat and we were shipped down into the water. About a minute after the boat struck the water, I looked up and cried out: "My God! The _Lusitania_ is gone!" We saw her entire bulk, which had been almost upright just a few seconds before, suddenly lurch over away from us. Then she seemed to stand upright in the water and the next instant the keel of the vessel caught the keel of our boat and we were thrown into the water. There were only about thirty people in the boat and I should say that all were stokers or third class passengers. When the boat was overturned I sank fifteen or twenty feet and I thought I was a goner. However, I had my lifebelt around me and I managed to rise again to the surface. There I floated for possibly ten or fifteen minutes, when I made a grab at a collapsible lifeboat, to which other passengers were clinging. We managed to get it shipshape and clamber in. There were eight or nine in the boat. It was partly filled with water, and in the scramble which occurred the boat overturned, and once more we were pitched into the water. This occurred, I should say, eight times, the boat righting itself each time. Before we were picked up by the _Bluebell_ six of the party of eight or nine were lying drowned in the bilge water in the bottom of the boat. It was cold-blooded, deliberate murder and nothing else--the greatest murder the world has ever known. V--STORY OF CHARLES T. JEFFREY, AN AMERICAN PASSENGER I was in the smoking room when the explosion took place. It shook the whole ship, just as a train would shake if the locomotive suddenly stopped and backed into it. I did not, of course, know what it was, and it did not occur to me that we had been torpedoed. I thought it might be a mine, or that we had run upon a rock, but it simply did not occur to my mind to imagine anything so horrible as that this defenseless ship with its helpless passengers would be torpedoed without warning.