I think about 1420. For 10 minutes Turner acted with the belief that he could save the ship. Then he changed his mind.
didn't the Mortons go aft and try to launch two more boats before jumping out of one of them?
From His Testimony
"We lowered her down almost to the water's level but, with
Lusitania still moving ahead through the water in the great circle which she was by this time describing and still travelling at four to five knots through the water, this presented a problem. Finally we lowered her into the water by letting the falls run for the last couple of feet. Immediately the boat dropped back on its painter (which was fast for'ard); that is the common practice in these circumstances. She fell back one boat's length, came up alongside the heavily listing
Lusitania and was directly under No. 13 lifeboat which was still in the davits. This lifeboat had been filled and I was about to go down the ropes, as was my duty, to try and get No. 11 lifeboat away from the sinking ship. The falls or tackles on No. 13 lifeboat, for which instructions had been given to lower away, were both handled by inexperienced men from one section or another of the catering or stewards' department and, instead of being lowered away the ropes went with a rush and No. 13 lifeboat, full of people, dropped twenty-five or thirty feet fairly and squarely into No. 11 lifeboat which was also full of people.
Terrible as this incident was, the tragedy of the overall picture did not give one time to waste in either horror or sympathy and I was looking out (having no boat now to attend to) to see if I could get a glimpse of my brother. The turmoil of passengers and life belts, many people losing their hold on the deck and slipping down and over the side, and a gradual crescendo of noise building up as the hundreds and hundreds of people began to realise that, not only was she going down very fast but in all probability too fast for them all to get away, did create a horrible and bizarre orchestra of death in the background. I suddenly saw my brother at the for'ard end of the boatdeck at No. 1 lifeboat which they had lowered halfway down to the water, full of people, so I went along at the 'double' and joined him and, finding that he had no one at the stern end of the boat to assist him, I took over the after fall and together we managed to lower away and get No. 1 boat into the water, Lusitania by this time had slowed down to about one or two knots. We immediately went down the falls into the boat which was full of passengers with no crew members in it and time was running extremely short. Having got into the boat my brother at the for'ard end tried to push off with the boat hook and get her away from the ship. I was trying to do the same thing at the after end of the boat, but many of the passengers were hanging on to bits of rope from the side of the ship and the rails, which were now level with the water, in some mistaken belief that they would be safer hanging on to the big ship rather than entrusting their lives in the small lifeboat. Despite all our efforts we could not get her away from the ship's side and, as Lusitania started to heel over a little more, just before starting to settle by the head for her final dive, a projection on the side of the boat deck, which was nearly level with the water, hooked on to the gunnel of the boat we were in and inexorably started to tip it inboard. The time for heroics was obviously past and my brother yelled at the top of his voice, “I'm going over the side, Gertie.” I replied, “So am I,” and we waved and both dived over the outboard side of the lifeboat."
The site that has his test notes this
"
Leslie's naming of lifeboat 11 and 13 was the one that fell on top of it does not match the testimony occupants of lifeboat 13, who do not mention anything extraordinary in the lowering of their boat. It is likely, then, that the boat Leslie lowered as lifeboat 9 and lifeboat 11 was the one that fell on top of it. Lifeboat 11 had spilled earlier in the sinking before it was filled again and cast away safely."
