Authors: Erik Larson
A
T DAWN
, S
ATURDAY
,
ABOARD
U-20,
THERE WAS COFFEE
, bread, marmalade, cocoa.
The boat’s ventilators issued a monotonous buzz. Schwieger, atop the conning tower, noted that the sea was calm, “
here and there rain and fog.” A steamship appeared up ahead but was so obscured by mist and gray that he chose not to attack. Members of the crew took turns smoking on deck, a pastime forbidden within the boat itself.
The fog grew dense, so much so that at 7:15
A
.
M
. Schwieger ordered a dive to U-20’s customary cruising depth, 72 feet. The depth was great enough to ensure that U-20 would pass underneath vessels of even the deepest draft. This was prudent practice, for U-boats, despite their fearsome reputation, were fragile vessels, complex and primitive at the same time.
Men served as ballast. In order to quickly level or “dress” his boat, or speed a dive, Schwieger would order crewmen to run to the bow or the stern. The chaos might at first seem funny, like something from one of the new Keystone Cops films, except for the fact that these maneuvers were executed typically at moments of peril. U-boats were so sensitive to changes in load that the mere launch of a torpedo required men to shift location to compensate for the sudden loss of weight.
The boats were prone to accident. They were packed with complicated mechanical systems for steering, diving, ascending, and
regulating pressure. Amid all this were wedged torpedoes, grenades, and artillery shells. Along the bottom of the hull lay the boat’s array of batteries, filled with sulfuric acid, which upon contact with seawater produced deadly chlorine gas. In this environment, simple errors could, and did, lead to catastrophe.
One boat, U-3, sank on its maiden voyage. When it was about two miles from the naval yard, its captain ordered a trial dive. Everything seemed fine, until the deck of the U-boat passed below the surface and water began pouring into the boat through a pipe used for ventilation.
The boat sank by the stern. The captain ordered all the crew, twenty-nine men, into the bow; he and two other men stayed in the conning tower. As the crew squeezed forward, water filled the boat behind them, causing air pressure to build to painful levels. All this occurred in absolute darkness.
The batteries began generating chlorine gas, which rose in a greenish mist. Some gas entered the bow compartment, but the boat’s air purification system kept it from reaching deadly concentrations. The air supply dwindled.
On shore, naval officials did not learn of the crisis for two hours and then dispatched two floating cranes and a salvage ship, the
Vulcan
. The rescuers devised a plan to raise the bow to the surface so that the men within could climb out through the two forward torpedo tubes.
It took eleven hours for divers to place the necessary cables around the bow. The cranes began lifting the boat. The bow became visible.
The cables broke.
The boat fell backward into the sea. The divers tried again. This attempt took fourteen more hours. By then the twenty-nine crewmen had been sitting crammed into the bow in nearly airless darkness for more than twenty-seven hours. But this attempt worked. The men emerged through the tubes, tired and gasping for air, but alive.
The conning tower containing the captain and the two other men remained underwater. Five more hours passed before the
Vulcan
at last managed to bring the entire boat to the surface. When the rescuers opened the conning-tower hatch, they found its interior to be nearly dry, but the three men within were dead. Chlorine gas had seeped upward into the tower through speaking tubes designed to allow officers to communicate with the control room below.
A subsequent investigation found that the indicator governing the ventilation valve through which the water entered the boat had been installed incorrectly. It showed the valve was closed when in fact it was open.
This outcome, though, was still better than what befell a training U-boat that sank with all aboard and could not be raised for four months. Divers who participated in an early, failed attempt at rescue heard tapping from within. When the boat was finally raised, the cause of the disaster was obvious. It had struck a mine. As to what had occurred within, a seaman present when the hatch was forced open found vivid evidence of the kind of death submariners most feared. He wrote, “
The scratches on the steel walls, the corpses’ torn finger-nails, the blood-stains on their clothes and on the walls, bore all too dreadful witness.”
T
HE FOG
remained dense until about eleven o’clock Saturday morning, when Schwieger gauged visibility to be good enough to allow him to surface and continue under diesel power. It was always important to recharge the batteries, in case of a chance encounter with a destroyer or the sudden appearance of a choice target.
Soon after surfacing, Schwieger’s wireless man attempted to communicate with the
Ancona
, back at U-20’s base in Germany. There was no response. The wireless man reported, however, that he had picked up “strong enemy wireless activity” nearby, at 500 meters. Schwieger told him to stop signaling, to avoid revealing the boat’s presence.
U-20 continued north, well off the eastern coast of England, following a course that would take it over the top of Scotland, then
south along Scotland’s west coast. From there Schwieger would make his way farther south to Ireland and sail down Ireland’s west coast, then turn left to enter the Celtic and Irish Seas between Ireland and England and proceed to his destination, Liverpool Bay. This route was far longer, certainly, than traveling through the English Channel but also much safer.
The boat moved through 4-foot swells, against winds that now came from the northeast. Schwieger’s lookouts watched for other ships, but in such gray and dreary conditions it was hard to spot the plumes of smoke exhausted by steamers.
Visibility remained poor throughout the day, and in late afternoon again worsened, until Schwieger once more found himself enclosed in fog. By this time, U-20 was crossing the sea-lanes off Edinburgh, Scotland, that funneled into the Firth of Forth. On a sunny day, with so many ships coming and going, the possibility of finding a target in these waters would have been high; but now, in the fog, attack was impossible and the risk of collision great. At four o’clock he ordered the boat to submerge and descend again to cruising depth.
That night the skies cleared, and stars arced from horizon to horizon. U-20 surfaced and Schwieger set a course toward Fair Isle, in the Shetland Islands, astride the imaginary line that divided the North Sea and the North Atlantic.
Two days out, and no longer able to communicate with his superiors, Schwieger was now wholly on his own.
O
NCE OUTSIDE
N
EW
Y
ORK
H
ARBOR
,
THE
L
USITANIA
accelerated, but Captain Turner did not yet order its cruising speed. He first had a rendezvous to make, after the ship exited American territorial waters, and it was pointless to waste the coal necessary to reach top speed when he soon would have to bring the ship to a complete stop.
The ship’s decks grew markedly cooler, subject now to the winds of the open Atlantic and the breeze generated by the ship’s own forward motion. Some passengers still lingered at the rails to watch the coastline recede, but most went inside to settle into their accommodations and unpack their belongings. Older children roamed the decks, making friends and testing out various means of recreation, including, yes, shuffleboard on the top deck. Younger children—at least those in first and second class—met the stewardesses who would tend to them during the voyage and occupy them while their parents dined in their respective dining rooms.
Theodate Pope, the architect-spiritualist, and her companion, Edwin Friend, went to the ship’s first-class reading and writing room, part of which was reserved for women, but which also served as the ship’s library, to which men also had access. It was a large but comfortable place that spanned the width of A Deck, the ship’s topmost level, and was fitted with writing desks and chairs.
Its walls were covered with pale silk in soft gray and cream. Silk
curtains in a pinkish hue called Rose du Barry hung at its windows. The carpet was a soft rose. Men had exclusive use of a separate similarly sized chamber farther back on A Deck, called the Smoking Room, paneled in walnut.
Theodate found a copy of that morning’s
Sun
, a New York newspaper, and began to read.
The paper devoted a good deal of attention to a visit that Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan had made to New York the previous day. He had taken time off from foreign concerns to speak at a rally at Carnegie Hall, in support of a campaign by evangelist Billy Sunday to persuade people to renounce alcohol, and to sign a pledge of “total abstinence.” For a previous talk on the subject, in Philadelphia, Secretary Bryan had drawn an overflow crowd of 16,000 people. The organizers in New York expected a similar crush at the hall. It didn’t happen. Only about 2,500 people showed up, leaving about a third of the house empty. Bryan wore a black suit, a black alpaca coat, and his black string tie. At the end of his talk, toasting the audience, he raised a glass—of ice water. Booker T. Washington, newly turned fifty-nine, got up to speak as well and signed one of Billy Sunday’s pledge cards.
Another item, this out of Washington, reported President Wilson’s unhappiness at the fact that critics continued to take him to task for allowing the film
The Clansman
, by D. W. Griffith, to be screened at the White House. It was May now; the screening had taken place on February 18, with Wilson, his daughters, and members of the cabinet in attendance. Based on the novel
The Clansman
, by Thomas Dixon, which was subtitled
An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan
, the film described the purported evils of the Reconstruction era and painted the Klan as the heroic savior of newly oppressed white southerners. The film, or “photoplay,” as it was called, had become a huge hit nationwide, though its critics, in particular the six-year-old National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, decried its content and held protests outside movie theaters, prompting Griffith to give the film a more palatable name,
The Birth of a Nation
. On Friday, April 30, the president’s personal secretary, Joseph Tumulty, had issued
a statement saying, “
The President was entirely unaware of the character of the play before it was presented and has at no time expressed his approbation of it.” Wilson had agreed to the showing, Tumulty said, as a “courtesy extended to an old acquaintance.”
And of course, there was the latest news of the war.
A German drive against the Russians along the Baltic Sea had gained ground; back-and-forth fighting in Champagne and along the Meuse had gained nothing. German troops reinforced their position in the Ypres Salient. In Van Province, the Turks renewed their attacks against Armenian civilians; far to the west, Allied forces on the Gallipoli Peninsula were said to have routed the Turks, though this account would shortly be proven inaccurate. There was also a brief report about the bombing of the American ship
Cushing
.
T
HEODATE LOATHED
the war. She saw Germany as wholly at fault and rejected German attempts to shift blame to Britain. “
Whatever else could they expect when they have insulted England for years, and she is now simply and honorably keeping her agreement with the Triple Alliance?” Theodate wrote, referring to England’s intervention in defense of Belgian neutrality. She longed for a crushing Allied victory that would leave Germany blasted “beyond recognition.” She did not want the United States to get involved, however. The preceding October she had heard from a spirit medium, an acquaintance, who claimed to have received a message from the beyond: “
Under no circumstances, whatever, should the United States participate belligerently in the European conflict.” Theodate had forwarded the message to President Wilson.
What most caught Theodate’s attention in Saturday’s
Sun
was an item at the top of page 1, about the German Embassy’s warning. This was the first she had heard of it. The only warning of any kind that she had seen thus far was in the “Information for Passengers” brochure she had received from Cunard after buying her ticket, which named her fellow first-class travelers and included this notice: “
Passengers are informed that Professional Gamblers
are reported as frequently crossing on Atlantic Steamers, and are warned to take precautions accordingly.”
The
Sun
cast the German announcement in benign terms, under the headline “Germany Moves to Stop Tours Abroad.” The item included the text of the warning, calling it the first step in a campaign by Germany “
to head off American travel to Europe during the coming summer.”
Theodate told Friend about it and said, “
That means of course that they intend to get us.” She was certain, however, that when the
Lusitania
reached British waters it would receive an escort. The prospect gave her comfort.
N
ELLIE
H
USTON
, thirty-one years old and on her way back to England after nearly a year staying with her aunt and uncle in Chicago, began a long letter to a woman named Ruth, which she planned to continue writing throughout the voyage. It was full of chatty details. She was traveling in second class and noted how crowded it was because of the additional passengers from the
Cameronia
—so crowded that the breakfast service had been divided into two sittings. She complained that she had been assigned to the first, at 7:30
A
.
M
., which meant she would have to get up each morning at 7:00. She noted as well that the day was surprisingly cold and that she was glad she had brought her heavy coat.