Page:The Lusitania's Last Voyage (lusitaniaslastvo00lauriala).djvu/178

 Just above this in the report one reads: "That, since the commencement of the war, the Cunard Company has lost all its Royal Reserve and Fleet Reserve men, and the managers have had to take on the best men they could get and to train them as well as might be in the time at their disposal." Is it likely that any officer could take untrained men and in a few weeks, or even months, make such efficient seamen of them that they could, in a disaster of this magnitude, work "with skill and judgment"? I do not believe it could be done.

As one of the passengers who was moving around the deck and saw the heroic efforts made by his fellow passengers to achieve that which the crew utterly failed to accomplish, I resent, with every spark of manhood that is in me, the finding of Lord Mersey's Court when he says that "Probably (the) disastrous attempts of the frightened passengers