When once I had reached the shelter-deck I never tried to go below again; but some of the men did, and they were almost instantly driven out by the force of the huge volumes of water which were rushing into the side through the gaping holes.
One man had an extraordinary escape. He had rushed below to get a hammock, and had laid hands on it when the ship heeled over. It seemed as if he must be drowned like a rat in a trap, and would have no chance, but the rush of water carried him along until he reached an entry-port--one of the steel doorways in the ship’s sides--and then he was hurled out of the ship and into the sea, where he had, at any rate, a sporting chance, like the rest of us, of being saved.
I saw the three ships turn turtle, and a dreadful sight it was. The _Hogue_ was the first to go--she was not afloat for more than seven minutes after she was struck; then the _Aboukir_ went, but much more slowly--she kept afloat for rather more than half-an-hour; and the last to go was the _Cressy_. The _Cressy_ heeled over very slowly and was quite a long time before she had completely turned turtle. When that happened the bottom of the ship, which was almost flat for most of its length, was where the deck had been. And on this big steel platform, which was nearly awash, the Captain was standing. I saw him quite clearly--I was not more than forty yards away--and I had seen men walking, running, crawling and climbing down the side of the ship as she heeled over. They either fell or hurled themselves into the sea and swam for it; but the captain stuck to his post to the very last and went down with his ship. It was the old British Navy way of doing things, though probably he could have saved himself if he had taken his chance in the water.
One thing which proved very useful in the water, and was the means of saving a number of lives, was a target which had been cast adrift from the _Cressy_. Targets vary in size, and this was one of the smaller ones, known as Pattern Three, about twelve feet square. It was just the woodwork without the canvas, so it floated well, and a lot of the survivors had something substantial in the way of a raft to cling to. Many of them held on gamely till the end, when rescue came; but other poor chaps dropped off from sheer exhaustion, and were drowned.