Before Manchester could answer, Hamden jumped, knocking McKenna off the bale and falling in the water with him. Ignoring Hamden, Manchester hauled McKenna back on the bale. Then he found a length of board that was floating past and began paddling away from the blazing boat. As had Captain Hillard earlier when abandoning the boat, he checked his watch. It was just midnight.

Lexington had burned for four hours.

Second Mate Crowley also reached a cotton bale empty of life. He Pulled himself aboard, and with surprising presence of mind stuffed his clothing full of cotton to ward off the frigid night air. He was luckier than the others who had reached the temporary safety of the cotton bales. Without the added weight of a second body, he was able to lie the full length of the bale without immersing his legs and feet.

Drifting with the current, he could do little but fight to keep warm and identify the different points of land as he floated past.

The most harrowing escape from the inferno was by stoker Charles Smith. He had just fallen asleep between shifts of firing the boilers when he was awakened by a friend, who informed him there was a fire.

He quickly rushed to the engine room, attached the fire hose to the water and opened the valve. But he was unable to reach the end of the hose to spray water on the blaze. The smoke and flames drove him aft, where he intended to board one of the lifeboats. He found Captain Child standing by the davits that swung out the starboard lifeboat, and heard him shouting for Chief Engineer Courtland Hemstead.

In less than a minute, Hemstead appeared, his eyebrows and much of his hair singed away. "You wanted me, captain?"

"For God's sake, stop the engine," Child implored. "We can't launch the boats while we're underway."

Hemstead shook his head wearily. "The fire drove us from the engine room before I could shut down the pressure valves. There's no going back in the inferno. I'm sorry."

Child nodded. "You did your best. Take your engine-room crew and see what you can do to hold back the flames for as long as it takes to get everyone safely off the boat."

Hemstead vanished in the smoke while Child stepped over the rail and tried to steady the lifeboat as it was lowered with a full load of frightened passengers. At that instant, someone cut the stern line and the boat swung outward, its bow plunging under the turbulence from the rotating paddle wheels. Child fell into the boat. Passengers, Captain Child, and the half-sunken boat drifted away and disappeared into the night, joining the dead bodies already floating in the wake of the Lexington.

Soon after, the engine finally stopped and the boat began to drift. By waiting another few minutes the doomed passengers in the swamped boats might have been saved. Only four souls would survive.