SOS Lusitania (11 page)

CHAPTER 23

W
AITING FOR THE
R
OYAL
N
AVY

‘F
inbar, Finbar.’ I felt someone tugging at my sleeve. It was my father and he looked anxious. ‘You were talking in your sleep, Finbar. Are you all right? I have to go to the
wheel-room
. Dawn is breaking so you need to get up. Today we enter the war zone. You will be expected to keep watch with the rest of the crew, as well as do your other duties.’

‘I had an awful dream,’ I told him.

‘Many of us are having dreams about submarines, Finbar. Don’t worry about it. I have to go. Make sure you report to the chief steward as soon as you’re ready.’ Dad brushed his jacket, straightened his peaked cap and went out. The cabin
door slammed with the jolting of the liner and the noise brought me to my senses. Dreams, visions – whatever – I had better get to work. I washed, as usual, with the basin half-full of water as Dad had shown me in case it spilled with the movement of the liner. My tunic needed a good brushing, as did my trousers, and I had to polish my boots. Then I proudly donned my cap, straightened my collar, and combed my hair. I was ready for work.

I walked out on the top deck past some passengers who were still in evening clothes. They must have been up very late at one of the parties in the Verandah Café or in the first class lounge. These were two places that the other bellboys and I vied for as the tips were always generous, especially from Americans and the Hollywood movie people who gave us more than the usual dollar or 50 cents, especially as the night wore on.

I paused, looking out at the vast expanse of sea. It was the seventh day of our voyage from New York. I had got used to the daily aspect of seascape and was reassured by the mighty liner ploughing onwards, ever onwards. I saw some passengers standing at the railings and pointing, and sure enough there was the far off sight of land! What a rare sight. I was very excited after so many days surrounded by nothing but sea
and sky. Then came a swirl of gulls, far out from what must be Ireland’s shores. They swerved and swayed above the four stacks to avoid the guttering smoke that came from the chimneys. The top deck glistened in morning light. I passed the lifeboats that hung like huge white baskets covered in oval canvas hoods. Ireland and home were not too far away.

A steward was in the crew’s galley eating a fried egg, bacon and beans on toast. He sipped a mug of tea and gave me orders to take Captain Turner his breakfast. While I waited for the food to be cooked and laid out on a tray, one of the cooks gave me a bacon sandwich with a thick slice of cheese and a glass of milk that I gorged down quickly, wiping my mouth after it. I arranged the tray for Captain Turner with his porridge, grilled kippers, brown toast with butter and marmalade, pot of tea and jug of milk.

‘Ah Finbar, well done,’ said Captain Turner when I arrived with the tray. He was reading a weather chart on his desk. ‘Is my tea strong enough so that you could trot a mouse on it?’

‘Aye, aye, Captain!’ I replied, leaving the tray beside his binoculars, his twenty-four hour clock, papers, documents, and a navigational map of the Atlantic, Ireland and Britain. The
Lusitania Log Book,
a black-covered ledger, was open and Captain Turner asked me to fetch a pen and ink from a shelf.
I waited to run other errands as he ate the porridge. Then he picked at the kippers with the fork and bit into some toast, leaving the crusts, before writing in the liner’s log. On a new page he wrote: 7 May 1915. Time: 07.24. His handwriting was very neat:

‘Take this chart up to the wheel-room.’ The captain suddenly snapped out an order, then, in a more kindly voice, added, ‘Leave the tray, Finbar.’ I clambered up two flights of iron stairs and into the wheel-room, panting. My father was there and he unrolled the chart, then went over to talk to Officer Bestic, who was steering a coarse due south of Valentia, the first lighthouse in Irish waters. I heard them discussing the details. My joy increased as I knew we were nearing home, but fear also gripped me.

‘How are the sea conditions, Jack?’ Captain Turner burst in the door. Dad muttered positively and alongside him Bestic held the wheel. All three men stared ahead and the great liner
trundled along, unstoppable, it seemed to me, so I felt all might be well.

‘She is at a goodly cruising speed of twenty-one knots, three knots short of maximum capacity,’ I heard Bestic shout out in a joyous mood.

‘We can expect to see Valentia Lighthouse within the hour. We’ll be glad to be on the final leg of the journey,’ my father muttered to Turner, who nodded vigorously.

‘Amen to that,’ the Captain said as McCormick rushed in from the Marconi room with a sheet of paper in his hand.

‘You must read this message, Captain, sir.’ McCormick was flustered and his voice quivered.

‘Show me.’ Captain Turner grabbed the bulletin page that had been signed by the radio operator and exhaled heavily.

‘What does it say?’ my father asked, frowning.

‘It’s from Valentia:
Submarines active off south coast of Ireland.’
Captain Turner’s voice was sharp. ‘Hold the present course. Keep our speed up. I’ll call all the officers to the bridge. We’ll need to order some more of the crew on deck-watch duty.’ The Captain lifted the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the sea ahead. ‘At least the sea’s fairly calm. Visibility is good. I need another weather report. And, McCormick, cable Valentia for every sighting of submarines they possess. Hurry, man!’

McCormick nearly knocked me over as he ran out, and no sooner had the door of the wheel-room slammed behind him than it opened again and in filed all the liner’s officers for emergency duty. Turner gave each an order, and each one nodded silently and quickly went out to organise the crewmen for the deck watch.

‘We will have naval support soon.’ Captain Turner picked up his binoculars after some minutes of silence in the
wheel-room
. I felt weak with fear. I had been given no orders yet, so I waited. Should I say something about my dreams? About Penny’s fears? About her mother’s crazy ideas? I wished I could speak to Penny because she’d know what to do. The liner sailed on and a haze developed which soon became a thick, foggy swirl, with the sun’s disc becoming a silver pennant in the morning behind the vast curtain of fog. Suddenly the horizon narrowed and long-range visibility was gone. The curtain of smoky fog became our only sight. Bestic repeatedly rang the foghorn. It was a gloomy, droning sound, a groan above the liner’s churning noise.

‘Another message!’ McCormick burst into the wheel-room and everyone moved out of his way.

‘What?’ gasped Captain Turner when he read the message. ‘
Reduce speed
. But why?’ He read the message again and
looked aghast at my father. ‘This is an order from British Naval Intelligence that we must slow our speed. Why? But I have to obey orders, damn it!’ The Captain shouted out a message on the tannoy that would transmit his orders to the engine room.

‘Perhaps it will help the naval escort to find us more easily?’ my father suggested, but his voice had a worried tone.

‘It seems a dangerous course to follow,’ Captain Turner answered. ‘I shall stay close by the Irish coastline as we have been ordered for the morning. Where is the convoy of battleships to protect us?’ He banged the desk with his fist.

Yes, I thought, good question, where were the British battleships? I ran messages all morning from the wheel-room to the Marconi room, but there were no further important messages.

Around noon the Captain called all the officers to the wheel-room again. He checked through everything with them in turn: ‘The deck watch is in place? The passengers are calm and comfortable? The orchestra is playing? The children are at their games and recreation?’ Yes, Captain, came the answers. ‘Tell the galley not to spare anything,’ he continued. ‘Let the food be the best the dining rooms and buffets can offer.’ Captain Turner’s voice changed suddenly as he took a deep breath: ‘It is alarming that the Royal Navy has sent no
battleships or submarine destroyers to protect us yet. And I do not understand this order to reduce our speed. However, we will keep our nerve and get the liner into land. I have alerted the engine room to slow down. We have reserve steam and if we see a German U-boat, we can muster almost twice their speed if we have to make a dash for Queenstown in case Liverpool is too risky a venture, being the furthest port of call. Get out the relevant maps, please. Now, return to your posts and keep up the deck watch. Anything that looks even vaguely like a periscope on top of the ocean, send your fastest runner to tell Captain Kennedy and me, understood?’

‘Finbar,’ he gestured towards me, ‘run to McCormick. Ask him about further sightings of German submarines. Stay there until he has up-to-date news on this situation. Understood?’

‘Yes sir, Captain Turner,’ I said, and raced off to do his bidding.

I reached the Marconi room and noticed the clock: 12.11. McCormick was ready with a pencil between his fingers for any message that might come. Suddenly the machine began to vibrate and tap. McCormick carefully wrote down each word. I did not dare open my mouth.

‘Rush this message to Captain Turner!’ he screamed. I took the paper, folded it quickly and pushed it deep in my pocket. This time I ran so fast I nearly fell on the steps up to the wheel-room but caught myself, tugged out the message and rushed in. I handed it over. Turner read it out loud and his voice became shrill:
‘Submarines active in the Irish Channel, twenty miles south of Coningbeg Lightship
. That’s where we’re passing now,’ Captain Turner’s voice was tense. My father and Turner stared at the fog bank. The horizon was still lost and merged with the sky as in the landscape of a dream. Captain Turner pressed the binoculars to his eyes. ‘Where are we?’ he asked Dad, who was studying a chart carefully. ‘Why is there no further message from Naval Intelligence and why is there is no sign of the British Navy?’ Turner shouted, hitting his forehead with the palm of one hand.

‘I think we must be near Kinsale,’ said Dad. ‘At least, my reckoning tells me so.’ He wrote calculations with a pencil as he moved a ruler and dividers rapidly across the chart.

‘Right, Jack,’ said Turner. ‘Look,’ he suddenly shouted, so loudly his voice became hoarse, and pointed to the landmass barely visible far off across the waves. ‘It’s the Old Head of Kinsale. It must be! Am I glad to see the lighthouse!’

‘You’re right. It would be impossible to mistake the Old
Head of Kinsale even in this fog,’ said Dad to the Captain, and both men sounded relieved.

‘I reckon,’ Turner said with resolution, ‘we should set a straight course for half an hour. Pray to God that we sight a Royal Navy battleship soon.’ Captain Turner and my father both looked through their binoculars while Officer Bestic steered, gripping the wheel firmly. I bit my lip and felt queasy. I could hardly get off duty at such a critical time to go and look for Penny, but I wished that I could.

CHAPTER 24

A
TTACK
!

K
apitän Schwieger stood in the periscope bay. His hands were on the handles of the periscope, the U-boat’s visual link to the top of the sea.

‘Klaus,’ he called to one of the officers, ‘quick, take a look!’ The U-20 approached a position ten miles off the Old Head of Kinsale. There was the
Lusitania
.

‘Yes, Kapitän, she is a beauty,’ Klaus shrieked, ‘but she is turning away from us.’ Klaus moved away from the periscope to let the Kapitän see for himself.

‘Increase our sped to twelve knots!’ screamed Schwieger.

Klaus spun a wheel and drew down a switch. He pulled back another lever and looked at dials as the speed increased from the four diesel engines. The U-boat throbbed, hummed
and vibrated. Hooper, the
dachshund
, aroused himself and looked about.  

‘Mein Gott!’
said Schwieger as he watched the huge hull and bulk of the liner enter his sights in the lens of the periscope. ‘Battle stations!
Achtung
!’ he shouted. ‘Prepare to load the torpedo shafts. Everything is going according to plan.’

Four men lifted torpedoes to the round hatches and pushed in the sleek, conical-headed cylinders, marked with the word
trotyl
and, in large letters, T. N. T. printed beside a red skull logo.

‘Torpedoes loaded, Kapitän,’ shouted Klaus, wiping his sweating face with an oily rag.

‘Turn rudder five degrees to port.
Schnell! Schnell
,’ shrieked Schwieger as Hooper pricked up his ears. ‘Steady rudder, steady speed.
Achtung
. Attack the
Lusitania
! Prepare to fire torpedoes. Fire one!’

All eyes watched. Hooper stood up, his tail wagging. The torpedo shot out of the firing tube and entered the ocean, making the submarine shudder. The torpedo hit the underwater surge of pressure with a hiss, sending a trail of bubbles past the portholes.

‘We will have to wait a few seconds and see how good our aim is,’ Schwieger’s voice screamed.

‘Kapitän, it cannot miss. Look closely,’ Klaus’s confidence of a hit was infectious.

‘And if this torpedo misses we can fire another – and another. I will have my iron cross,’ Schweiger bellowed and turned to Klaus. He reached for the photograph of Monika, the Baroness, Klaus and himself. He kissed it, pushed it into his tunic pocket and stared through the periscope with intense excitement.