[Nurse M. E. B. Gould on H. M. Transport S. S. Marquette]. 1915-10-23.

Nurse Mary Eleanor Baring Gould recalls being on board the transport ship, the Marquette, which was torpedoed during World War I with the loss of thirty-one New Zealanders.

She says it was a mystery as to why their hospital unit was on the Marquette at all, rather than a hospital ship, as there were several in the harbour at Alexandria when they departed.
They were about forty miles from shore and all up on deck after breakfast at about nine o'clock when then there was a huge bang and they realised that they had been hit by a torpedo.

They no longer had an escort ship which had left the night before.
She describes how they put on lifebelts and got into the lifeboats which were very badly lowered. She says this was due to the fact it was not a British ship. The lifeboat she was in capsized from quite high up, while a second boat was lowered on top of a third lifeboat killing some of the nurses.
She was in the water as the ship went down and tried to get away so as not to be sucked down. She got together with a group of Tommies and they could see land in the distance. At about five o'clock they spotted warships coming and putting boats into the water.

She woke up in an officers cabin on a French warship but could not remember how she got there. She recalls being taken to Salonica and met the matron of the Grantully Castle and they transferred to that vessel from the French ship which had rescued them.