16. The story of the SS Vestris sinking led to the first byline from a woman in The New York Times
On November 12, 1928, the sixteen-year-old passenger steamer SS Vestris was en route from New York to the River Plate in South America when it developed a list following an encounter with a storm while off New Jersey. The list caused a shifting of poorly stowed cargo, which served to increase the list further. As the ship leaned yet further to starboard, its coal bunkers shifted as well, further increasing the list to the point that the ship began to take on water. The ship began transmitting an SOS, giving its position incorrectly, at about 10 AM, and rebroadcast the distress call about an hour later. By noon, with the ship about 200 miles out to sea from Norfolk, Virginia, the decision was made to abandon ship.
The abandonment was mishandled, leading to two of the lifeboats which were loaded with women and children being sunk when the ship went down. Another was swamped and its passengers were dumped into the water. Of the 128 passengers aboard, sixty survived, 155 members of the crew lived through the ordeal, while 43 crew members, including the captain, were killed. There were thirty-three women and thirteen children aboard Vestris, only eight women survived, and none of the children. Among the ships which arrived to take aboard, survivors was the battleship USS Wyoming, dispatched from Norfolk. A woman correspondent from the Associated Press covered the story, and it appeared under her byline, Lorena Hickok, in the New York Times, the first woman’s byline in the newspaper’s long history.
