 Commodore 's lifeboats were lowered in the early hours of the morning on January 2 , 1897 , and the ship sank at 7 a.m. Crane was one of the last to leave the ship in a 10 @-@ foot ( 3 @.@ 0 m ) dinghy . He and three other men ( including the captain , Edward Murphy ) floundered off the coast of Florida for a day and a half before attempting to land their craft at Daytona Beach . The small boat , however , overturned in the surf , forcing the exhausted men to swim to shore ; one of them , an oiler named Billie Higgins , died . The disaster was front @-@ page news in newspapers across the country ; rumors that the ship had been sabotaged were widely circulated but never substantiated . 
