The following account of the sinking of the SS Artist is an extract from the book

The merchant seaman in war
by L. Cope Cornford, with a foreword by Admiral Sir John R. Jellicoe.

"BUT NINE OF HER CREW ALIVE"

NINE O'CLOCK on the morning of January 27th,

1917, in very dirty weather, in the North Atlantic.

One of his Majesty's patrol boats fighting out a

full easterly gale with a breaking sea, smothered

in water, violently flung to and fro. To the

lieutenant-commander, R.N.R., comes a mes-

senger with a signal pad, on which is neatly

written an intercepted wireless S.O.S. call :

" S.S. Artist sinking rapidly, mined or torpedoed

in ' then followed her position. The lieu-

tenant-commander replied by wireless that he

was proceeding to her assistance. No answer

came, then or afterwards. The lieutenant -

commander increased his speed up to the limit

the boat could stand in that sea, and steered for

the spot indicated. He shoved along for two

hours ; then, as the vessel was being strained

and the engines were racing, he reduced speed ;

an hour later he was obliged again to reduce

speed. At half-past one he arrived at the

position indicated. There was nothing but the

boiling waste of waters.

The lieutenant-commander cruised twelve

miles in one direction and twelve miles in another ;

the wind increasing, the sea rising higher, the

cold very bitter.

At three o'clock in the afternoon the lieu-

tenant-commander was obliged to heave-to. He

did not think that in such weather the boats of

the sinking ship could have been launched, or if

they were launched, that they could live. That

night it blew harder than ever, and the thermo-

meter fell to 37 degrees. At nine o'clock the

next morning the lieutenant-commander went

to succour another ship in distress, and so passes

out of this story.

He was right and wrong in his surmise. A

little after the lieutenant-commander had

received the S.O.S. call from the Artist, the

boats had been launched from her, and one lived.

While the lieutenant-commander, the same

afternoon, was beating to and fro in the raging

sea and icy spindrift, there was a boat with its

miserable crew somewhere near.

It was between eight and nine on that Saturday

morning, January 27th, 1917, when the Artist's

wireless operator sent out his call. The Artist,

sailing from an American port, had run right

into the gale ; and she had been hove-to for

three nights and two days. Between eight and

nine in the morning, without a sign of a submarine,

the dull boom of an explosion roared through the

tumult of the gale, and a torpedo, striking the

starboard side forward, tore a huge hole close

upon the water-line.

There was not a moment to lose. The violent

pitching of the ship, lying head to sea, ominously

slackened as she began to settle by the head. The

sea poured over her bows and swept the decks

from stem to stern. Waist-deep in water, the

crew struggled desperately to lower the three

lifeboats. In one boat were the master with the

second and third officers and part of the crew ;

in another were the chief officer and part of

the crew ; and in the third were a cadet and

part of the crew. What followed is taken from

the cadet's narrative.

He was in his boat, which was swung out on

the falls, and he saw the chief officer's boat, also

swung out, dashed against the ship's side as

she rolled, and broken. The next moment the

cadet's boat was borne upwards by a rising wave,

so that the after fall was pushed upwards and

thus unhooked. As the boat was left hanging

by the bows her stern dropped suddenly. Two

men were flung overboard and sank at once.

The next wave bodily lifting the boat on an

even keel, enabled the cadet to unhook the

foremost fall, and the men, pulling hard, got

clear of the ship.

As he pulled clear, the cadet saw the chief

officer's boat filled with water to the gunwale,

broadside on to the tremendous sea, and help-

less. She was never seen again.

In the meanwhile the master's boat had also

pulled clear of the sinking ship. Both boats laid

out sea anchors and drifted in sight of each other

all that terrible day.

There were forty-five persons in all on board

the Artist when she was torpedoed. Some had

gone down in the chief officer's boat, some were

in the captain's boat, and in the cadet's boat were

sixteen persons.

That night, the night of January 27th, as

the lieutenant-commander stated, the gale

increased in violence and the thermometer

dropped to 37 degrees. Somehow, the frozen,

wet, exhausted men must keep baling out the

boat, and her head to the sea. Concerning the

horrors of that night the cadet says nothing.

It is possible that the partial paralysis of the

faculties, induced by long exposure, dulls the

memory. There is no consciousness of time, but

a quite hopeless conviction of eternity. The

state of men enduring prolonged and intense

hardship seems to them to have had no beginning

and to have no end. After a period of acute

suffering, varying according to the individual,

the edge of pain is blunted and numbness sets

in. In many cases the retardation of the

circulation, withdrawing the full supply of

blood to the head, causes delirium, in which

men shout and babble, drink salt water, and

leap overboard. By degrees the heart's action

is weakened, and finally stops. Then the

man dies. Seven men in the cadet's boat did

in fact die.

After the night of the 27th the captain's boat

was no more seen. The cadet and his crew alone

were left of the people of the Artist.

They drifted in the gale all that Sunday, the

28th, all Monday, all Monday night. Men died,

one after another, and the pitiless sea received

their bodies. When each one passed the cadet

does not state. Probably he could not remember.

For the survivors were dying, too. They were

dying upwards from their feet, in which frost-

bite had set in. One man, a fireman, endured

the agony of a broken arm. . . .

On the night of January 29th-30th, when

the castaways had been adrift for three days

and three nights, they saw the distant lights of

land towards the north. The wind and sea

began to go down, and at daylight the crew

hoisted sail and steered north. At a little

after nine on that Tuesday morning, exactly

seventy-two hours since they had cleared the

sinking ship, they sighted the smoke of an

outward-bound steamer. Twenty minutes later

nine men were taken on board, and one dead

man was left in the boat.

The rescued men were transferred to a

patrol boat, which landed them in an Irish

port the same evening. Here, says the cadet,

" the Shipwrecked Mariners' authorities took

care of us and did all they possibly could

for us."

Five of the nine survivors were placed in

hospital. The remaining four, of whom the

sturdy cadet was one, speedily recovered.

The boat with the dead man in her was picked

up by a patrol vessel.

A brief official account of the affair was

published at the time by the Secretary of the

Admiralty, who remarked that ' The pledge

given by Germany to the United States not to

sink merchant ships without ensuring the safety

of the passengers and crews has been broken

 before, but never in circumstances of more

cold-blooded brutality."

But when it comes to brutality the Germans

can do better than that, as will be seen. What's

the use of talking ?

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