tended to be lifted and lowered by the same davits which lowered
the open boats after the open boats had gotten clear of the ship. It was
the duty of the officers to get the open boats away before giving
attention to the collapsible boats, and that was a question of time.
These boats are designed and arranged to float free if the ship should
sink before they can be hoisted over. They were cut loose and some
people were saved on these boats.

It is to be expected that those passengers who lost members of their
family or friends, and who saw some of the unfortunate accidents, should
feel strongly and entertain the impression that inefficiency or
individual negligence was widespread among the crew. Such an impression,
however, does an inadvertent injustice to the great majority of the
crew, who acted with that matter-in-fact courage and fidelity to duty
which are traditional with men of the sea. Such of these men, presumably
fairly typical of all, as testified in this court, were impressive not
only because of inherent bravery, but because of intelligence and
clear-headedness, and they possessed that remarkable gift of simplicity
so characteristic of truly fearless men who cannot quite understand why
an ado is made of acts which seem to them merely the day's work.

Mr. Grab, one of the claimants and an experienced transatlantic
traveler, concisely summed up the situation when he said:

"They were doing the best they could--they were very brave and working
as hard as they could without any fear. They didn't care about
themselves. It was very admirably done. While there was great confusion,
they did the best they could."

[Sidenote: Captain Turner's comment on the crew.]

It will unduly prolong a necessarily extended opinion to sift the
voluminous testimony relating to this subject of the boats and the
conduct of the crew and something is sought to be made of comments of
Captain Turner, construed by some to be unfavorable but afterward
satisfactorily supplemented and explained, but if there were some
instances of incompetency they were very few and the charge of
negligence in this regard cannot be successfully maintained.

In arriving at this conclusion, I have not overlooked the argument
earnestly pressed that the men were not sufficiently instructed and
drilled; for I think the testimony establishes the contrary in the light
of conditions in May, 1915.

I now come to what seems to be the only debatable question of f