THE WORLD'S ADVANCE 



133 



he stood on deck until the great leviathan 

 took her final plunge into the icy waters. 



When dawn arrived, and with it the 

 Carpathia on her mission of rescue, his 

 lifeless body was tenderly lifted from a 

 crowded life raft. 



Among the six heroes whose gallant 

 deaths are commemorated as occurring 

 on the Pacific Ocean, the first name is 

 that of Lawrence A. Prudhunt, who per- 

 ished in the wreck of the Rosecrans on 

 January 7, 1913. Little is known of 

 Prudhunt's faithfulness to trust, for his 

 was not a great passenger ship, laden 

 with important people. 

 Only thirty-six mem- 

 bers of the crew 

 were aboard and 

 but three 

 were saved. 

 The vessel 

 struck a 

 rock and 

 sunk soon 

 aft erward. 

 He was of- 

 f e r e d a 

 chance in 

 the boats 

 which the crew were 

 putting over the side, 

 but went instead to 

 the wireless room and 

 continued directing 

 the rescuers until the 

 ship broke up beneath 

 him. When assist- 

 ance came it was 

 found that he had been pinned under the 

 wreckage and washed overboard when 

 the wireless house was swept into the 

 hungry waves. 



In the wireless room also, with all ave- 

 nues of escape cut off by wreckage, Don- 

 ald Campbell Perkins perished on August 

 18, 1913. His ship was the State of 

 California, which sank in Gambier Bay, 

 Alaska, three minutes after she had 

 ripped her bottom off on an uncharted 

 rock. But even in the short time before 

 the mountainous deluge swept through 

 her, Perkins had rushed from his cabin 

 in his pajamas, taken charge of the wire- 

 less apparatus, and given his distress 

 call and position to the Alaskan steam- 

 ship Jefferson. That vessel chanced to 



The Memorial Foun- 

 tain to Wireless Op- 

 erators, and an Im- 

 pressive Moment in 

 the Dedication Exer- 

 cises. 



be near by and arrived on the scene a few 

 hours later; it was broad daylight and 

 no difficulty was experienced in picking 

 up the many passengers whom the crew 

 had succeeded in placing in the lifeboats. 

 Thirty-one were missing, trapped in their 

 staterooms, and among them was the 

 faithful operator. His assistant was 

 saved, and it was he who told how Per- 

 kins had ordered him to go on deck and 

 assist in the launching of the small boats. 

 There was one lifeboat immediately in 

 front of the wireless cabin which they 

 were unable to launch. As the vessel 



took a sudden 

 list to port this 

 boat broke 

 adrift and jam- 

 med fast in the 

 door, making 

 Perkins a pris- 

 oner. Real- 

 izing fully 

 that every 

 second 

 counted i f 

 he was to 

 make his es- 

 cape, the 

 young man 

 elected t o 

 stand by his 

 key and 

 give further 

 directions to 

 the s u m - 

 moned res- 

 cue vessel. 

 Just twenty years old was Ferdinand 

 J. Kuehn when he gave up his life for 

 another, when, on January 30, 1914, the 

 Monroe sank off the Virginia coast. This 

 heavily laden passenger vessel met in 

 collision with a freighter as she was feel- 

 ing her way through a dense fog. It 

 was known instantly that the vessel had 

 received her death blow and Kuehn's as- 

 sistant brought a life preserver to the 

 wireless room, adjusting it as the wire- 

 less instruments again and again crashed 

 forth the SOS. Only twelve minutes 

 elapsed between the time the vessel was 

 struck and when she sank. The crew had 

 succeeded in getting three boats away 

 when the wireless operator appeared 

 on deck, his work done. Just then one 



