Then tonight Norman Ratcliffe, who lives in Gillingham,
Kent, and was returning from Japan, offered verification. Mr. Ratcliffe
was rescued, after clinging to a box in the sea for three hours. With
him was a steward of the Lusitania. He said:_
This steward told me he had seen Mr. Vanderbilt on the Lusitania's deck,
shortly after the ship was struck, with a lifebelt about his body. When
the ship gave every indication that it would sink within a few minutes,
the steward said, Mr. Vanderbilt took off his lifebelt and gave it to a
woman who passed him on the deck, trembling with fear of the fate she
expected to meet. The steward said Mr. Vanderbilt turned back, as though
to look for another belt, and he saw him no more.
_Telling of his last moments on the ship and his last sight of Mr.
Vanderbilt, Mr. Slidell said:_
I saw Alfred G. Vanderbilt only a few minutes before I left the ship. He
was standing with a lifebelt in his hand. A woman came up to him, and I
saw him place the belt around the woman. He had none for himself, and I
know that he could not swim.
Only the day before we had been talking of a day and a dawn some years
ago when we went down the bay at New York in his yacht and waited to
welcome and dip our flag to the Lusitania on her maiden voyage.
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