I was in my room getting ready to go to bed. I had half my clothes off. I was carpenter on her and I used to be working day shift, all days.

There was another man sharing the room with me, the bo'sun. He was lying down on his bunk. He never had on any clothes, only just his shorts. He was in the top bunk. I was in the bottom one. I never had any time to put on any clothes. I had on a pair of pants and one boot, and a singlet.

I went up on deck. We used to have a raft on the afterdeck and all the crew back aft was up in this raft, sitting down, waiting for the boat to sink. She was going down by the head. She was almost up on end then. I said to my buddy, one of my nephews, from Corner Brook, Alfred Rose, "Come on Alfred, get down out of this. Let's go for the boats."

And he jumped on my back. Now, I don't know how far I carried him, but I went up over all those big crates and went down on the other deck and when I got there they were trying to untie this big knot which held the lifeboat in. I went and slipped the joint and the lifeboat went out.

There weren't many in our boat, only four at first.

Some of the men were in the boat when she was lowered. I had to go down the line. I know I burned my hands. So I don't know if I still had Alfred on my back or not!

When the Kitty's Brook sank, we were probably about a hundred yards or more away from her. It was seven minutes, from the time she struck until she went down. She didn't catch fire, but the oil was flowing right out of her, out of the stack. Everybody was covered with oil.

We got in the boat, but the boat didn't have the plug in, and she started to sink. Leak! She leaked like a basket.

Well, with the force of the water coming in, it was a hard job to get the plug in. But we managed to do it and get the water out. We picked up one fella. He went down with the raft. He said he went right to the bottom with the ship. Now, you don't know if he did or not, but he was holding onto a suitcase in under his knees and that suitcase come back with him. He hollered out, "I'm on a raft, all by myself."