WHEN THE ANGLIA WENT DOWN

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2624, 20 November 1915, Page 5

WHEN THE ANGLIA WENT DOWN

VIVID NARRATIVE BY A SURVIYOft TERRIBLE TIME IN- ICY WATER fly TeleeraDli—Press Association—Conyrixlit (Rec. November 18, 6.6 p.m.) London, November 18. A signaller named Hunter, who had been in the trenches for eleven months, and had been invalided sick, boarded the Anglia at Boulogne on Wednesday morning.. The convalescents were on deck takine tea and sandwiches when suddenly thoy heard a sound like the ship's plates breaking up. with a loud boring amd whirring, followed by the dull noise of an explosion. "I and my five comrades," he said, "tried to get a lifeboat off the davits, but tho ship heeled while we were looseniiig the rope, and my foot was jammed between the boat and the deck- I lay hanging over the side of the ship, head downwards, until the Anglia took a big list, which released tho crushed foot, and I regained the deck. The Anglia by this time was aoso down, and the waves were breaking over the bridge. A number of lis gave our lifebelts to the badly wounded men, and told them to jump into the sea: Many of them hesitated; as it was very choppy.

''Meanwhile, the collier Lusitanla, which was approaching, was hit three hundred yards off. In the distance we oould see the destroyers coming out •from Dover. They came alongside the Anglia, which was settling fast. I saw steam issuing from the deck in great clouds, and expected the ship to make her last plunge every moment, so I jumped. I had not a lifebelt, and had never been able to swim a yard in my life, but I knew I had to go for it "bliis_ time. I had seen fellows in the swimming baths at Hampstead, so I' just did like that, and got hold of a log of wood, to which three were clinging. •

"A few minutes later wo passed a pran with a badly fractured arm, and my olram and I got hold of him, and paddled alongside liho log again. . The water was terrifically cold, and he begged us to let him go, but we managed to get his right leg over -the log, and the four of us got our knees underneath him.

"We must have been in the water thirty-five minutes. ■> Time I 'after time men camo alongside, hung on for a few minutes, and then disappeared. It wa.s simply awful to see their faces as they went under. Eventually a destroyer lowered a boat and picked us up. Perhaps the most terrible sight was w*hen tlie desOroyer_ was coming slowly alongside the Ajiglia. The warship's men shouted to our fellows:

"Jump!" Lots of them jumped, but two of them missed the deck of the destroyer and fell between the two vessels. They got ' flattened out, and sank."