(Lusitania, World War I.) Charles Emelius Lauriat Jr: 'The L...

Hammer

£210

(Lusitania, World War I.) Charles Emelius Lauriat Jr: 'The Lusitania's Last Voyage. Being a Narrative of the Torpedoing and Sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania by a German Submarine off the Irish Coast, May 7, 1915', Boston & New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1915, 1st edition, signed and dated by the author on half title "by Charles E. Lauriat Jr. I-XII-1915", tissue guarded b/w frontis depicting RMS Lusitania + 2 b/w plates as called for (double page plate deck plans + plate of Lusitania's lifeboats at Queenstown from a pen & ink drawing), vii,158,[4]pp, original pictorial cloth. Very scarce first hand account of the sinking of the Lusitania by Charles Emelius Lauriat, Jr (1874-1937), rare book dealer from Boston who was a passenger on the Lusitania's fateful last voyage and survived to tell the tale. Lauriat was an experienced traveller, but the last voyage of the Lusitania was his first on the Cunarder. He was on a business trip, traveling with fellow Bostonian Lothrop Withington. Lauriat’s cabin was B-5 and his ticket was 1297. When the Lusitania was sinking, Lauriat attempted to assist Elbert and Alice Hubbard. Lauriat entered lifeboat 7 but jumped out when the lifeboat could not be freed from the mother ship. Lauriat was saved by the Wanderer (Peel 12) and Flying Fish. He led a survivors’ mutiny against the crew of the Flying Fish when the captain of the rescue vessel would not allow the survivors to disembark without clearance from the authorities.