Dead Wake (48 page)

8
“Rule, Britannia!”: The title of this song is often written and said incorrectly, as if it were a declaration. The title, however, is meant to be an exhortation, as in “Go Britain!”

9
“You do not get any idea”: Letter, C. R. Minnitt to Mrs. E. M. Poole, July 9, 1907, DX/2284, Merseyside.

10
The ship’s lightbulbs: Minutes, Cunard Board of Directors, July 10, 1912, D42/B4/38, Cunard Archives; Fox,
Transatlantic
, 404.

11
He found it “very gratifying”: Letter, W. Dranfield to W. T. Turner, Jan. 20, 1911, D42/C1/2/44, Cunard Archives; Letter, W. T. Turner to Alfred A. Booth, Feb. 6, 1911, D42/C1/2/44, Cunard Archives.

12
Its 300 stokers: Bisset,
Commodore
, 32.

13
Cunard barred crew members: The company called the permissible matches “Lucifer matches,” though in fact that name harked back to a decidedly unsafe early precursor that lit with a pop and sent embers flying.

14
“counteract, as far as possible”: “Cunard Liner
Lusitania
,” 941.

15
The guns were never installed: Strangely, this remained a point of controversy
for decades, reinforced by reports by at least one diver who reported seeing the barrel of a naval gun protruding from the wreckage. But no passenger ever spoke of seeing a gun aboard, and a film of the ship’s departure shows clearly that no guns were mounted. Also, a search by Customs in New York found no evidence of armament.

16
“devil-dodger”: Hoehling and Hoehling,
Last Voyage
, 42.

17
“Had it been stormy”:
Hobart Mercury
, March 8, 1864.

18
“I was the quickest man”: Hoehliing and Hoehling,
Last Voyage
, 42.

19
“never, at any time”: Letter, George Ball to Adolf Hoehling, July 22, 1955, Hoehling Papers.

20
“On the ships”: Letter, Mabel Every to Adolf Hoehling, May 4, 1955, Hoehling Papers.

21
“a load of bloody monkeys”: Preston,
Lusitania
, 108; also see “William Thomas Turner,” Lusitania Online,
http://www.lusitania.net/turner.htm
.

22
On one voyage: “Captain’s Report, Oct. 15, 1904,” Minutes, Cunard Executive Committee, Oct. 20, 1904, D42/B4/22, Merseyside.

23
“Madam, do you think”: Letter, George Ball to Adolf Hoehling, July 22, 1955, Hoehling Papers.

24
more “clubbable”: Preston,
Lusitania
, 108.

25
“He was a good, and conscientious skipper”: Letter, R. Barnes (dictated to K. Simpson) to Mary Hoehling, July 14, 1955, Hoehling Papers.

26
“Captain’s compliments”: Albert Bestic to Adolf Hoehling, June 10, 1955, Hoehling Papers.

27
“one of the bravest”: Letter, Thomas Mahoney to Adolf Hoehling, May 14, 1955, Hoehling Papers.

28
“The wave,” Turner said:
New York Times
, Jan. 16, 1910.

29
The Cunard manual: The manual was an exhibit in the New York limit-of-liability proceedings. Cunard Steamship Company, “Rules to Be Observed in the Company’s Service,” Liverpool, March 1913, Admiralty Case Files: Limited Liability Claims for the Lusitania, Box 1, U.S. National Archives–New York.

30
The dangers of fog: Larson,
Thunderstruck
, 376.

31
“to keep the ship sweet”: Cunard Steamship Company, “Rules,” 54.

32
“The utmost courtesy”: Ibid., 43.

33
“much to the amusement”:
New York Times
, May 23 and 24, 1908.

34
“should not be made a market place”: Minutes, Sept. 1910 [day illegible], D42/B4/32, Cunard Archives.
   There were other sorts of complaints. On a couple of voyages in September 1914 third-class passengers “of a very superior type” complained about the fact that Cunard did not supply them with sheets, unlike other less exalted steamship lines, according to a report by the chief third-class steward. He wrote, “They did not quite understand why sheets should not be supplied on vessels like the LUSITANIA and MAURETANIA where higher rates were charged.” The company studied
the matter and found that it could supply two thousand sheets and one thousand quilts at a cost of £358 per voyage. Memoranda, General Manager to Superintendent of Furnishing Department, Sept. 30, 1914, and Oct. 2, 1914, D42/PR13/3/24-28, Cunard Archives.

35
“When you have it on”: Lauriat,
Lusitania’s Last Voyage
, 21.

36
“to be severely reprimanded”: Captain’s Record: William Thomas Turner, D42/GM/V6/1, Cunard Archives.

37
“tired and really ill”: Preston,
Lusitania
, 110; Ramsay,
Lusitania
, 49.

WASHINGTON: THE LONELY PLACE

1
The train carrying the body: Schachtman,
Edith and Woodrow
, 41; G. Smith,
When the Cheering Stopped
, 11;
New York Times
, Aug. 12, 1914.

2
just a year and a half: In 1913, Inauguration Day came in March.

3
“For several days”: Schachtman,
Edith and Woodrow
, 72.

4
“felt like a machine”: Ibid., 48. Harlakenden House was owned by an American author named Winston Churchill, whose books were, at the time, very popular—enough so that he and the other Winston exchanged correspondence and the latter resolved that in all his writings he would insert a middle initial, S, for Spencer. His full and formal name was Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill.

5
The South in particular suffered: Berg,
Wilson
, 341–42.

6
The lead story:
New York Times
, June 27, 1914.

7
In Europe, kings and high officials: Keegan,
First World War
, 53–54, 55, 57, 58; Thomson,
Twelve Days
, 89.

8
In England, the lay public: Thomson,
Twelve Days
, 186. When Shackleton read a report in the press that Britain was soon to mobilize, he rather chivalrously volunteered to cancel his expedition and offered his ship and services to the war effort. Churchill telegraphed back: “Proceed.”

9
“These pistols”: Ibid., 64, 65, 67, 97.

10
Far from a clamor for war: Keegan,
First World War
, 10, 12, 15.

11
the Ford Motor Company:
New York Times
, June 27, 1914.

12
But old tensions and enmities persisted: Devlin,
Too Proud to Fight
, 220; Keegan,
First World War
, 17, 18, 19, 38, 42–43.

13
“Europe had too many frontiers”: Thomson,
Twelve Days
, 23.

14
As early as 1912: Tuchman,
Zimmermann Telegram
, 11.

15
In Germany, meanwhile, generals tinkered: Keegan,
First World War
, 29, 30, 32–33.

16
“It’s incredible—incredible”: Berg,
Wilson
, 334.

17
“We must be impartial”: Ibid., 337, 774.
   Britain resented American neutrality. On December 20, 1914, First Sea Lord Jacky Fisher wrote, “The time will come when the United States will be d—d sorry they were neutral.… We shall win all right.
I am only VERY
sorry
” (Marder,
Fear God
, 3:99). In the same letter Fisher made reference to a widely published poem, popular in Britain, by William Watson, entitled “To America Concerning England.” Watson asks:

… The tiger from his den

Springs at thy mother’s throat, and canst thou now

Watch with a stranger’s gaze?

18
“The United States is remote”: Brooks, “United States,” 237–38.

19
Louvain: Keegan,
First World War
, 82–83; Link,
Wilson: Struggle
, 51;
New York Times
, Oct. 4, 1914.

20
“felt deeply the destruction”: Link,
Wilson: Struggle
, 51.

21
The German toll: Keegan,
First World War
, 135–36.

22
By year’s end: Ibid., 176.

23
For Wilson, already suffering depression: Berg,
Wilson
, 337.

24
“I feel the burden”: Link,
Wilson: Struggle
, 50.

25
“The whole thing”: Ibid., 52.

26
There was at least one moment: Berg,
Wilson
, 339–40; Devlin,
Too Proud to Fight
, 227; Schachtman,
Edith and Woodrow
, 52.

27
“We are at peace”: Berg,
Wilson
, 352.

28
On entering waters: Doerries,
Imperial Challenge
, 94. Wilson wrote to House, later: “Such use of flags plays directly in the hands of Germany in her extraordinary plan to destroy commerce” (290).
   And indeed, news of the
Lusitania
flag episode incensed the German press and public, as reported by America’s ambassador to Germany, James Watson Gerard. “The hate campaign here against America has assumed grave proportions,” he cabled to Secretary Bryan, on Feb. 10, 1915. “People much excited by published report that
Lusitania
by order of British Admiralty hoisted American flag in Irish Channel and so entered Liverpool.” Telegram, Gerard to Bryan, Feb. 10, 1915,
Foreign Relations
.

29
At the beginning of the war: Germany’s first U-boat sortie seemed to affirm the German navy’s initial skepticism about the value of submarines. On Aug. 6, 1914, after receiving reports that English battleships had entered the North Sea, Germany dispatched ten U-boats to hunt for them. The boats set out from their base on Germany’s North Sea coast, with authority to sail as far as the northern tip of Scotland, a distance no German submarine had hitherto traveled. One boat experienced problems with its diesel engines and had to return to base. Two others were lost. One was surprised by a British cruiser, the HMS
Birmingham
, which rammed and sank it, killing all aboard. The fate of the other missing boat was never discovered. The remaining submarines returned to base having sunk nothing. “Not encouraging,” one officer wrote. Thomas,
Raiders
, 16; see also Halpern,
Naval History
, 29; Scheer,
Germany’s High Sea Fleet
, 34–35.

30
“this strange form of warfare”: Churchill,
World Crisis
, 723.

31
Only a few prescient souls: See Doyle, “Danger!” throughout.

32
Doyle’s forecast:
New York Times
, Nov. 16, 1917.

33
“The essence of war”: Memorandum, Jan. 1914, Jellicoe Papers.

34
“abhorrent”: Churchill,
World Crisis
, 409. In British eyes the sinking of a civilian ship was an atrocity. “To sink her incontinently was odious,” Churchill wrote; “to sink her without providing for the safety of the crew, to leave that crew to perish in open boats or drown amid the waves was in the eyes of all seafaring peoples a grisly act, which hitherto had never been practiced deliberately except by pirates” (672).

35
“if some ghastly novelty”: Ibid., 144, 145.

36
German strategists, on the other hand: Breemer,
Defeating the U-Boat
, 12; Frothingham,
Naval History
, 57; Scheer,
Germany’s High Sea Fleet
, 25, 88. The German term for “approximate parity” in naval strength was
Kräfteausgleich
. Breemer,
Defeating the U-Boat
, 12.

37
“So we waited”: Churchill,
World Crisis
, 146; Scheer,
Germany’s High Sea Fleet
, 11. This stalemate did not sit well with either side. Both navies hoped to distinguish themselves in the war and chafed at the lack of definitive, glory-yielding action. German sailors had to bear mockery by German soldiers, who taunted, “Dear Fatherland rest calmly, the fleet sleeps safely in port.” On the British side, there was the Admiralty’s long heritage of naval success that had to be protected. As one senior officer put it, “Nelson would turn in his grave.”
   Jellicoe was sensitive to how so defensive a strategy would sit with his fellow navy men, current and former. In an Oct. 30, 1914, letter to the Admiralty he confessed to fearing that they would find the strategy “repugnant.”
   He wrote, “I feel that such tactics, if not understood, may bring odium upon me.” Nonetheless, he wrote, he intended to stick to the strategy, “without regard to uninstructed opinion or criticism.”
   Koerver,
German Submarine Warfare
, xxviii, xv; see Jellicoe’s letter in Frothingham,
Naval History
, 317.

38
“In those early days”: Hook Papers.

39
He was soon to learn otherwise: Breemer,
Defeating the U-Boat
, 17; Churchill,
World Crisis
, 197–98; Marder,
From the Dreadnought
, 57. Breemer states that more than 2,500 sailors died in the incident.

40
“the live-bait squadron”: When Churchill first heard the nickname “live-bait squadron” during a visit to the fleet, he investigated and grew concerned enough that on Friday, September 18, 1914, he sent a note to his then second in command, Prince Louis of Battenberg (soon to be forced from the job because of his German heritage), urging him to remove the ships. The prince agreed and issued orders to his chief of staff to send the cruisers elsewhere. “With this I was content,” Churchill wrote, “and I dismissed the matter from my mind, being sure that the orders given would be complied with at the earliest moment.”
   But four days later the ships were still in place, and in a state even
more exposed than usual. Ordinarily a group of destroyers kept watch over them, but over the next several days the weather became so rough that it forced the destroyers to return to their home port. By Tuesday, September 22, the sea had calmed, and the destroyers began making their way back to the patrol zone. Weddigen got there first. Churchill,
World Crisis
, 197–98.