Vale, Cap Trafalgar!
“Just as we got the fire well in hand, and were starting to run to the American coast, we beheld the most awe-inspiring sight of our lives—the last moments of an ocean leviathan. The wounded ship, distant from us about five miles, suddenly lurched over on the starboard beam-ends, looking for all the world as if she were about to turn turtle. Lower and lower she went, until her huge funnels were level with the water, pointing in our direction like two tunnels side by side, and dense clouds of smoke and steam escaped from all parts of her as from a volcano in a high state of activity. As quickly again, the mammoth righted herself; down, down went her bows; up and up her stern, till quite one-third of the hull stood upright to the sky; then, with a majestic plunge, she slid beneath the waves, game to the end, for the last to disappear was the German flag.
“A ring of foam and half a dozen boats crowded with dark forms were all that were left at 2 p.m. of the brave Cap Trafalgar and her ornate saloons and winter gardens, the ship that conveyed Prince Henry of Prussia on his triumphant tour of the South American Republics.”
The casualties of the Carmania are reported to have amounted to nine men killed and twenty-six wounded out of four hundred and twenty-one hands all told, a low percentage owing to the wide distribution of the various parties. The survivors of the Cap Trafalgar landed at Buenos Ayres consisted of eighteen officers and two hundred and ninety-two men, which would give her casualties at about eight officers and one hundred men if she carried the same number of men as the Carmania.
Seventy-nine direct hits were counted on the Carmania, and innumerable small holes from splinters; her boats were riddled, as also masts and ventilators; her rigging and wireless aerial were shot away.