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At noon Sunday Captain Carey ordered half speed, according to Engineer Adams, alternating from port to starboard engines.
The gale now was driving. The starboard list increased. In the dining saloon, dishes slid from the tables and chairs toppled over. Officers went about with assuring words. The passengers did not know that a number of cased automobiles had gone crashing through a partition in the hold, toward the starboard side, making matters worse.* They did not know that the stokers were working waist-deep in water, that cabin stewards were bailing there with buckets that might as well have been thimbles.
All Sunday Captain Carey was striving to reach by radio the Voltaire, of his own line, bound north and in the approximate locality. Meanwhile, the Voltaire had been instructed to go to aid the laboring Vestris. She could not do so on account of broken propeller and adverse winds.
Beam-ends. By dawn Monday the gale was but a whisper, the sun burst through a sky of scudding rain clouds. But passengers on the starboard side, looking out of their windows, could not see the horizon. "It was like looking down a deep well." The deck tilted like a barn roof.
At 9 o'clock, Captain Carey, hitherto indifferent to pleas of passengers to "do something," ordered women and children on deck.
At this time too he sent first general alarm, as far as is known, a C Q radio signal to other ships meaning "everybody listen." An hour later he sent SOS giving his position. To New York office of Lamport & Holt Line he reported: "During the night developed 32-degree list. Starboard decks under water. Ship lying on beam-ends. Impossible to proceed anywhere. Sea moderately rough."
U. S. S. Wyoming and several destroyers, as well as various liners, were speeding to the rescue over hundreds of miles. But, 25 miles away, the steamer Montoso, from Porto Rico bound to Boston, kept serenely to her course. She had no radio, did not learn of disaster until she docked.
Lifeboats. On solid land, in Astoria, Anthony J. Lewkowicz, designer of the lifeboat davits and skids with which the Vestris was equipped, gave audience to newspapermen. He declared the lifeboats were unsinkable, the tackle was foolproof. Said he: "With my davits a boat with a full load can be launched safely by one man ... in spite of 32-degree list. . . . The average time is 15 seconds." But lifeboats did capsize and sink; tackle fouled and broke; and some boats, manned by fools or not, took two hours to launch.
At 11:40 a. m. Captain Carey ordered lifeboats lowered. Even now there was no panic among passengers, although several Negro mothers wailed, clutching their babies. Some Negro members of crew became mutinous, plundered sound equipment for their own boats, defied officers and ignored passengers. An officer threatened a raging big buck with his pistol. The Negro seized it and tossed it overboard.
"Women and children first!" cried Captain Carey, haggard and unkempt, in long black coat on the bridge.