Hints of Captain Kent's fine work in connexion with the Empress of Australia were obtained; from passengers aboard the Empress of Canada on Saturday. Captain Kent: would only give a sailor's version of it, but seen yesterday he had one of the most vivid stories to relate of his own personal experiences of the earthquake.
He said
the past; in fact it seems so long The earthquake is a thing of ago that I almost find myself trying to believe it was but a dream. It is difficult to piece things together because incidents that happened only an hour after the first shock seem now to have happened days after.
It was a mere fluke that I was not in the Grand Hotel. I had intended remaining in the hotel during the forenoon, but some time after breakfast I was asked if I would take a small trinket back for some one in Shanghai. So, I agreed to go to the Empress of Australia and get it after 11.20 a.m.
I left the ship at 11.50, and the gangway was unshipped at 11.57, There was a fairly good crowd on the pier, and many coloured good-bye ribbons flying, in fact a good-humoured, jolly crowd. Just because I never care for a crowd I walked up the pier by myself to see the ship cast off. There was a strong wind blowing, so that a tug was required to get the ship off. Suddenly something gave the wharf a tremendous jolt which nearly sent me off my feet. I immediately realized what it was and instinctively moved away from the shed—a passenger shed with restaurant on top—which was already assuming various shapes. About three or four of these terrific jolts coi-lapsed the wharf where I was standing, and precipitated me into the water between the cement edging and the woodwork.
1 have always had a horror of earthquakes, and I made sure should be crushed. The. solid cement, however, had been so displaced that the wooden planking did not again get back to its original position as the whart surged, but instead was rapidly breaking up, which is the only reason I can account for my safety. Of course, I felt instinetively that I was going to be crushed The whole pier was on the move, and from my position in the water I got a fleeting glance which I can never forget—the whole inside part. looking shorewards had waves running along it like the sea—the earth and everything else going up and down. 7 About 50 yards of the pier, where it meets the shore, had become entirely submerged, leaving horses, drays, and all kinds of objects floating and struggling in the water.
EVERYTHING BLOTTED OUT, Up till now I should think that) about a minute had elapsed, and a few seconds later everything was blotted out by the terrible dust arising from the destruction ashore. Practically speaking Yokohama colloped at the first shock, which accounted for the dust reaching the pier' almost immediately. The sun being obscure ed, the effect was demoralizing in the extreme, and, floating on a piece of wreckage as I was, with the remains of the wharf still heaving about and swaying the water to and fro, it does not take a vivid imagination to picture the predicament I was in:
Near me in the water three ricshamen were struggling to get to safety—they had been flung in with their ricshas. I think two of them got out; the other seemed to be hit by a motor car which plunged in. There had been four or five cars parked waiting for people on the Empress, and one of them was thrown into the water. With its chauffeur it took a regular header, just missing me, and it possibly struck ths ricsha man, but of this I am not sure. But certainly the car plunged to the bottom.
I felt I could not remain long like this in the water, so a little later I managed to crawl out and get up on the cement. work. This I was able to stand on—or rather I sat for a while resting and trying to collect myself. At this moment I heard cries -from a foreign child, but could not make out where they came from. It completely puzzled me. Later, I have reason to believe, in fact I was told that. it must have been
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.