A Higher Form of Killing (22 page)

Wesley Frost, U.S. consul in Queenstown (now Cobh) on the southeast coast of Ireland, where the
Lusitania
had in the past called in to pick up or deposit passengers and on one occasion when diverted there because of U-boat danger, also thought the warning hollow: “The reference to the
Lusitania
was obvious enough but personally it never entered my mind for a moment that the Germans would actually perpetrate an attack upon her. The culpability of such an act seemed too blatant and raw . . . In addition, I did not believe that the submarines had yet shown any striking power equal to the task of attacking and destroying a ship as huge, well-built and fast as the
Lusitania.
”

Meanwhile, aboard the
Lusitania
, passengers learned that three men thought to be Germans had been found hiding in a steward’s pantry during a routine check for stowaways. The ship’s detective, Liverpudlian William Pierpoint, interrogated them through an interpreter. Finding that they were indeed German, he ordered them to be locked up in cells beneath the waterline so they could be questioned properly on arrival in Liverpool. The rumor among the passengers was that the trio were spies or saboteurs. Otherwise why travel clandestinely to a country with whom their nation was at war?

By May 5, with the
Lusitania
nearing the war zone, the
U-20
was rounding the southern tip of Ireland after Schwieger had decided not to take the North Channel but to sail down the west coast of Ireland. The previous days had proved eventful for the
U-20
. On May 2, forty miles off Peterhead on Britain’s northeast coast, Schwieger had dived to avoid six British destroyers sailing toward him “in a broad searching line.” By May 3 the
U-20
was in the North Atlantic where in fading light, Schwieger spotted a small steamer. The British ruse of disguising their ships as neutrals was now well known. His experienced pilot Lanz was convinced it was a British vessel from Leith despite the neutral flag—that of Denmark—she was flying. Schwieger ordered an attack but the torpedo stuck in its tube, a common problem. From February to September 1915 nearly two thirds of German torpedo attacks failed through faulty triggers, defective steering mechanisms, or dud warheads with the risk that a torpedo that failed to launch might explode in its tube.

On May 4, off Black Rock Light on Ireland’s northwestern point, Schwieger spotted another ship—“Swedish.
Hibernia
with neutral markings, no flag.” He ordered the
U-20
to dive but the
Hibernia
passed too close for him to launch “a clean bow shot.” On May 5, hoping for better luck he entered the Irish Channel to find thick fog and gave the order to dive. When he surfaced some hours later, he was relieved to discover the weather better, though still a little misty. Toward evening, nearing the Old Head of Kinsale, a small schooner, the
Earl of Lathom
, came in view. At 132 tons she was too small to be any danger so, obeying the Cruiser Rules, Schwieger challenged and stopped her, then allowed her crew to abandon ship before sinking her. However, later that same evening he attacked without warning a much larger three-thousand-ton steamer he again suspected was British despite her neutral markings. His torpedo missed, and fearing its trail of bubbles would betray the submarine’s presence, Schwieger “ran away to avoid the danger of being fired upon.”

By now, the
U-20
had been at sea for five days and provided the British Admiralty with ample evidence of her presence. They had intercepted all her early radio messages and at ten
P.M.
on May 5 learned of the attack on the
Earl of Lathom
from Vice Admiral Sir Charles Coke, naval commander in Queenstown near Kinsale. At ten thirty
P.M.
Coke began warning all ships at regular intervals: “Submarines active off south coast of Ireland.”

The following day, May 6, Schwieger enjoyed further success. Off the Waterford coast the
U-20
sank the six-thousand-ton Liverpool steamer
Candidate
, whose name had been painted out and which was flying no flag, and later that day her sister ship the
Centurion
, torpedoing both ships without warning. He attempted to sink without warning a sixteen-thousand-ton passenger steamer, again with no visible markings, which he identified correctly as the White Star Liner the
Arabic
, but she was too quick for him. Then, according to the
U-20
’s war diary, Schwieger submerged and headed further out to sea while he considered what to do. He was some twenty miles south of the Coningbeg Lightship and his orders from his commander Hermann Bauer were to make for the approaches to Liverpool. He still had three of his original seven torpedoes but was under standing orders to save at least two for the return voyage.

The war diary records Schwieger making a momentous decision—not to sail to his “true field of operations,” Liverpool. One stated reason was the weather. The fog of the past two days seemed unlikely to clear fully, which would force him to submerge often or risk being run down in these busy shipping lanes. Such conditions would make it difficult to attack troop transports which would be likely to slip out at night under cover of the fog, perhaps with a naval destroyer escort. Another reason the diary cites was that sailing to Liverpool would leave insufficient fuel to return to Germany around the south and west of Ireland, forcing the
U-20
to take the more hazardous North Channel between England and Ireland. Schwieger therefore decided to remain in the southern Irish Channel, attacking steamers until
U-20
had used up 40 percent of her fuel. Then he would begin his return journey to Emden, retracing his outbound route. That night he ordered his crew to make for the open sea where the
U-20
could surface and recharge her batteries unobserved.

At seven fifty-two that same evening bellboy Ben Holton handed the
Lusitania
’s Captain William Turner a message. It was one of the warnings of U-boat activity that Coke had been broadcasting for nearly twenty-four hours but the first that the
Lusitania
had received. The message—“Submarines active off south coast of Ireland”—seemed so terse and also so vague that Turner wondered whether part had been lost in transmission. He at once asked one of the ship’s Marconi operators to tap out a request in Morse for the transmission to be repeated. A few minutes later, a message arrived identical to the first. However, soon after at eight thirty
P.M.
came a further message from the Admiralty, this time in code: “To all British ships 0005: Take Liverpool pilot at bar and avoid headlands. Pass harbours at full speed. Steer mid-channel course. Submarines off Fastnet.”

Turner pondered the implications for his ship, now some 370 miles, or eighteen hours’ sailing time, from the Fastnet Rock landfall. In the circumstances, he was even less in the mood than usual for socializing with his passengers whom he routinely if privately dismissed as a group of “bloody monkeys.” However, the traditional passengers’ talent concert in aid of the Seamen’s Charities was taking place that night in the first-class saloon and his presence was expected. The concert was the last important social event of the voyage and, among the rich, a pretext for some final lavish entertaining. New York wine merchant George Kessler, known as the “Champagne King,” was once again urging cocktails on his guests, including Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat, the formidable Theodate Pope, and Staff Captain John Anderson who undertook the main burden of the social responsibilities Turner so disliked. Charles Frohman was entertaining the theatrical set on board including his friend actress Rita Jolivet as well as Alfred Vanderbilt, who had just received an affectionate radio message from a woman named May Barwell in England: “Hope you have a safe crossing. Look forward very much to seeing you soon.”

However, arriving at the concert, Oliver Bernard thought most passengers were still keeping to themselves and that “a submarine would have at least socialized the audience.” During the interval Captain Turner stepped forward and told his passengers of the submarine warning, assuring them that “on entering the war zone tomorrow we shall be securely in the care of the Royal Navy” and that “of course there is no need for alarm.” The next day he would steam at full speed so as to arrive at Liverpool in good time. He requested male passengers not to light their cigarettes or cigars on deck that night.

The concert continued, but as soon as the small ship’s orchestra wound up with “God Save the King” and “America,” passengers anxiously discussed the captain’s news. Munitions manufacturer Isaac Lehmann decided not to go to bed but to remain “dressed all night” in his stateroom on the upper deck. Some passengers, too nervous to spend the night in their cabins at all, slept in the public rooms. Others walked on deck to calm their nerves. That night in Scotland, Professor Holbourn’s wife had what she described as “a waking vision.” Going to bed about eleven, she was not yet asleep when she saw “a large vessel sinking with a big list from side to side and also from stem to stern. There was a crush of frightened people, some of them slipping and sliding down the sloping decks. I thought it strange that I could be seeing this while I was wide awake, and I stretched my arms out of bed and clenched and unclenched my fingers to make sure that I was not dreaming!”

*
On the
Lusitania
’s maiden voyage passengers in all classes and crew had consumed forty thousand eggs, four thousand pounds of fresh fish, two tons of bacon and ham, four thousand pounds of coffee, one thousand pineapples, five hundred pounds of grapes, one thousand lemons, twenty-five thousand pounds of meat, nearly three thousand gallons of milk, over five hundred gallons of cream, and thirty thousand loaves of bread.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“They Got Us This Time, All Right”

Passengers woke next morning, May 7, to the mournful sounds of the
Lusitania
’s foghorn and to find the ship sailing slowly through dense mist. The noise worried some like Oliver Bernard who “could not understand the policy of announcing a liner’s whereabouts to friend and foe alike.” A few began planning what to do if a U-boat attacked. One group of men agreed that “in view of the number of women and children on board” no man could honorably get away by lifeboat. These should be left to the women. They themselves would meet on the poop deck below the boat deck to see how best they could save themselves. Surgeon Major Warren Pearl, concerned about his young family, ensured that his wife and their two nurses, Alice Lines and Greta Lorenson, “had been drilled as to what to do in an emergency.”

However, by ten
A.M.
the fog was lifting and ship’s lookouts saw “the loom of the land through the haze.” By midday the sun was shining brightly and the visibility good enough for Captain Turner to identify familiar landmarks along the Irish coast. Having earlier dropped the ship’s speed to fifteen knots, he ordered the engine room to bring it back up to eighteen knots.

The sight of the coast of Ireland “in the sunshine of an ideal early summer day” reassured some but not Charles Lauriat who reflected that “if a German submarine really meant business” the conditions—‘“light wind, a smooth sea, and bright sunshine”—could not have been more ideal. Others worried about the ship’s continuing slow speed. To Mabel Henshaw, an English emigrant who had settled in Saskatoon and was taking her baby Constance home to England to show her family, it was as if the
Lusitania
were saying to the enemy, “Here I am, do your darndest.” Oliver Bernard also felt that Turner was calling the bluff of the German newspaper warnings. He noted how “the general feeling . . . that morning was . . . patient expectation, that when the fog lifted the
Lusitania
would at last give some demonstration of speed to meet the potential danger she now faced.”

Yet as the
Lusitania
sailed on across a pancake-smooth, deep-cobalt sea nothing changed. Was Captain Turner “waiting for something to happen, perhaps for an escort?” wondered some, recalling how at the concert Turner had promised that on entering the war zone they would be safely in the care of the Royal Navy. Scanning the empty seas they saw no sign of warships. Turner, however, had a quite different reason for not running at full speed. He was planning to cross the final stretch of the Irish Sea in darkness, timing his arrival at the Mersey Bar for two or three hours before high tide at six fifty-three a.m. This would enable him to sail straight over the bar into the harbor without waiting for a pilot and thus avoid delaying in notoriously submarine-infested waters.

Shortly after eleven
A.M.
that morning, Turner received a message relayed by the Valentia station from naval headquarters in Queenstown in the Admiralty’s Merchant Vessel (MV) code. It read simply: “
QUESTOR
”. Meaning “Which edition of the MV code do you have?” The
Lusitania
replied “
WESTRONA
,” meaning “I have the first edition of the MV code.” Having established this, the Valentia station quickly transmitted a coded warning. “Submarines active in southern part Irish Channel; last heard of twenty miles south of Coningbeg Lightship.” The Valentia station had been ordered to “make certain the
Lusitania
gets this.”