Authors: Erik Larson
17
“The crew of the
Lusitania
”: Telegram, April 27, 1915, Box 2, Bailey/Ryan Collection.
18
“You’re not going to get back”: Francis Burrows, interview,
Lusitania
, BBC Written Archives Centre.
19
“began doing something we shouldn’t”: Robert James Clark, interview,
Lusitania
, BBC Written Archives Centre.
20
In fact, exactly one year earlier: Memorandum, May 7, 1914, D42/PR13/3/14-17, Cunard Archives.
21
He made his way to Broadway: Preston,
Lusitania
, 110; Ramsay,
Lusitania
, 51;
New York Times
, March 30, 1915.
22
He went to Lüchow’s: Preston,
Lusitania
, 110.
23
That evening, back at his sister’s apartment: Lauriat, Claim.
24
Elsewhere in the city: See the website Lusitania Resource,
www.RMSLusitania.info
, which presents an easily searchable database about the ship and its passengers.
ROOM 40: “THE MYSTERY”
1
In London, two blocks from the Thames: My description of Room 40 and its operations is derived from documents held by the Churchill Archives, Churchill College, Cambridge, and the National Archives of the United Kingdom, at Kew, in its Admiralty Papers. For further reading, see Beesly,
Room 40
; Gannon,
Inside Room 40
; Adm. William James,
Code Breakers
; and Ramsay,
“Blinker” Hall
.
2
By far the most important: I cannot tell you how delighted I was when during one of my visits to the National Archives of the United Kingdom I was able to examine the actual codebook. It came to me like a gift, wrapped in paper with a cloth tie, in a large box. Touching it, and opening it, and turning its pages—gently—gave me one of those moments where the past comes briefly, physically alive. This very book had been on a German destroyer, sunk by the Russians in the early days of World War I.
Signalbuch der Kaiserlichen Marine
, Berlin, 1913, Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4156, National Archives UK; see also Beesly,
Room 40
, 4–5, 22–23; Halpern,
Naval History
, 36; Adm. William James,
Code Breakers
, 29; Grant,
U-Boat Intelligence
, 10.
3
The Russians in fact recovered
three
copies: For varying accounts of the recovery of the codebook, see Churchill,
World Crisis
, 255; Halpern,
Naval History
, 36–37; and Tuchman,
Zimmermann Telegram
, 14–15.
4
“chiefly remarkable for his spats”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
5
“It was the best of jobs”: Ibid.
6
said to be obsessed: Halpern,
Naval History
, 37; Beesly,
Room 40
, 310–11.
7
“I shall never meet another man like him”: Adm. William James,
Code Breakers
, xvii.
Even before the war, while then in command of a cruiser, the HMS
Cornwall
, Hall distinguished himself with an intelligence coup. The year was 1909, and his ship was to be among other British vessels paying a ceremonial visit to Kiel, Germany, home of the German fleet. The Admiralty asked Hall for help in gathering precise information about the configuration of ship-construction slips in the harbor, which were kept from view by a cordon of patrol vessels.
An idea came to Hall. The Duke of Westminster was present for the regatta and had brought along his speedboat, the
Ursula
, to show off. German sailors loved the boat and cheered every time they saw it. Hall asked the duke if he could borrow it for a couple of hours. The next day, two of Hall’s men went aboard the
Ursula
disguised as civilian engine-room hands. The boat then put on a display of speed, racing out to sea and tearing back through the harbor. The yacht roared through the line of patrol boats, drawing cheers from their crews. But then, something unfortunate happened. The
Ursula
’s engines broke down, right in front of the Germany navy’s shipbuilding facilities. As the boat’s crew made a show of trying to start the engines, Hall’s men took photograph after photograph of the shipyard. One of the patrol vessels ended up towing the boat back to its moorage. “The Germans were delighted to get such a close view of her,” Hall wrote, “but they were hardly less delighted than I was, for one of the ‘engineers’ had secured the most perfect photographs of the slips and obtained all the information we wanted.” “The Nature of Intelligence Work,” Hall 3/1, Hall Papers.
8
The Machiavelli side: Adm. William James,
Code Breakers
, 202.
9
the empire’s first defeat: Gilbert,
First World War
, 102.
10
British warships nearby: Gibson and Prendergast,
German Submarine
War, 19; Gilbert,
First World War
, 124.
11
And then came April 22: Clark,
Donkeys
, 74; Gilbert,
First World War
, 144–45; Keegan,
First World War
, 198–99.
12
“I saw some hundred poor fellows”: Clark,
Donkeys
, 74.
13
The Admiralty also harbored: Frothingham,
Naval History
, 66, 75.
14
“no major movement”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
15
“the risk of compromising the codes”: Memorandum, Henry Francis Oliver, CLKE 1, Clarke Papers.
16
“Had we been called upon”: History of Room 40, “Narrative of Capt. Hope,” CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
17
“shook the nerve”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
18
“soul-destroying … object of hatred”: Ibid.
19
“Watch this carefully”: Beesly,
Room 40
, 92.
20
“Any messages which were not according to routine”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
21
“The final note”: Memorandum, Herbert Hope to Director of Operations Division, April 18, 1915, “Captain Hope’s Memos to Operations Division,” Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4689, National Archives UK.
22
“Whenever any of their vessels”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
23
a sense of the flesh-and-blood men: Reports derived from interrogations of captured U-boat officers and crew yield a sense of U-boat life far richer than that provided by any other published memoir or book. Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4126, National Archives UK. Specifically, see interrogations involving crew from U-48, U-103, UC-65, U-64, and UB-109; see also Grant,
U-Boat Intelligence
, 21.
24
They used their wireless systems incessantly: Beesly,
Room 40
, 30.
25
“extreme garrulity”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers; Beesly,
Room 40
, 30.
26
“I fooled ’em that time”:
New York Times
, May 8, 1915.
27
Room 40 had long followed: “Capt. Hope’s Diary,” Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4169, National Archives UK.
28
Addressed to all German warships: Record of Telegrams, March 3, 1915, Norddeich Naval Intelligence Center, Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4177, National Archives UK.
29
“Four submarines sailed”: Intercepted telegrams, April 28 and 29, 1915, Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/3956, National Archives UK. Anyone examining these files will note, to his or her pleasure, that these are the actual handwritten decodes.
30
“that of mystifying and misleading the enemy”: “A Little Information for the Enemy,” Hall 3/4, Hall Papers.
Hall loved the surprise of intelligence work and loved knowing the real stories behind events reported in the news, which often were censored. For example, Room 40 learned the real fate of a German submarine, U-28, that had attacked a ship carrying trucks on its main deck. One shell fired by the U-boat’s gun crew blew up a load of high explosives stored in the ship, and suddenly “the air was full of motor-lorries describing unusual parabolas,” Hall wrote. Officially, the U-boat was lost because of explosion. But Hall and Room 40 knew the truth: one of the flying trucks had landed on the submarine’s foredeck, penetrating its hull and sinking it instantly. “In point of actual fact,” wrote Hall, “U-28 was sunk by a motor-lorry!”
As strange as such stories were, Hall wrote, “I am sometimes inclined to think that perhaps the strangest thing of all was the intelligence Division itself. For it was like nothing else that had ever existed.” “The Nature of Intelligence Work,” Hall 3/1, Hall Papers.
LUSITANIA: A CAVALCADE OF PASSENGERS
1
All these things were captured on film: The film,
SS Lusitania on Her Final Departure from New York City, During World War I
, can be viewed at
CriticalPast.com
(
www.criticalpast.com/video/65675040085_SS-Lusitania_passengers-arrive-at-the-dock_passengers-aboard-SS-Lusitania_author-Elbert-Hubert
). An agent for the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation (not yet the
Federal
Bureau of Investigation) watched this film twice in succession during a private showing at a theater in Philadelphia. The agent, Frank Garbarino, was struck by the detail it captured and believed it would provide all the information necessary to confirm that the film was not a fake. “It will be easy to identify many of the persons who were aboard the steamer by those who knew them intimately,” he wrote. “Furthermore we were able to distinguish the numbers of the license on three taxicabs which drove up to the pier with passengers and the features of the passengers as they emerged from the taxicabs are very clear. The license numbers of the taxicabs were 21011, 21017, 25225. It will be easy to ascertain what taxicab company has these licenses and they will probably have a record of the persons they took to the Cunard pier that morning.” Letter, Bruce Bielaski to Attorney General, June 27, 1915, Bailey/Ryan Collection.
2
Here came Charles Frohman: For details about Frohman and his life, see Marcosson and Frohman,
Charles Frohman
, throughout; also
New York Times
, May 16, 1915; Lawrence,
When the Ships Come In
, 126.
3
Another arrival was George Kessler: For an overview of Kessler’s flamboyant life as the “Champagne King,” see “Compliments of George Kessler,”
American Menu
, April 14, 2012 (courtesy of Mike Poirier); for the Gondola Party, see Tony Rennell, “How Wealthy Guests Turned the Savoy into the World’s Most Decadent Hotel,”
Daily Mail
, Dec. 17, 2007,
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-502756/How-wealthy-guests-turned-Savoy-worlds-decadent-hotel-shuts-100m-refit.html
, and “The Savoy: London’s Most Famous Hotel,” Savoy Theatre,
www.savoytheatre.org/the-savoy-londons-most-famous-hotel/
For reference to “freak dinners,” see
Lexington Herald
, May 16, 1915.
According to one account, Kessler had brought with him cash and securities valued at $2 million. Preston,
Lusitania
, 137.
4
“misconducting himself”:
New York Times
, May 26, 1908, and June 11, 1909.
5
“Just Missed It” club: “Titanic’s ‘Just Missed It Club’ an Elite Group,”
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
, April 16, 2012,
www.post-gazette.com/life/lifestyle/2012/04/15/Titanic-s-Just-Missed-It-Club-an-elite-group/stories/201204150209
.
6
“Ships do have personalities”: Jack Lawrence’s memoir,
When the Ships Came In
, to which I was directed by
Lusitania
ace Mike Poirier, is really very charming and conveys a sense of New York’s vibrant maritime days in compelling fashion, to the point where a reader has to long
for those days when dozens of ships nuzzled Manhattan’s Hudson River shoreline. Lawrence,
When the Ships Came In
; 116, see also 15, 16, and 117.
7
“to give satisfaction”: 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, 73.
8
“I’m about to become”: Lawrence,
When the Ships Came In
, 119–21.
9
“Alfred Vanderbilt may have been a riot”: Ibid., 124.
10
“The
Lusitania
is doomed”: Ibid., 125.
11
Lawrence came across Elbert Hubbard: Ibid., 123.
12
“When I showed it to him”: Ibid.
13
“When you are getting ready to sail”: Ibid., 122.
14
“A feeling grew upon me”: See “Not on Board,” under “People,” at Lusitania Resource,
www.rmslusitania.info/people/not-on-board/
.
15
A few others canceled: Ibid., and
New Zealand Herald
, June 26, 1915.
16
“From the very first”: Letter, A. B. Cross, published June 12, 1915, in
Malay Mail
, Doc. 1730, Imperial War Museum.
17
“there is a general system”:
New York Times
, May 1, 1915.
18
“Perfectly safe; safer than the trolley cars”: Testimony, Ogden Hammond, Petition of the Cunard Steamship Company, April 15, 1918, U.S. National Archives–New York, 166. For details about trolley accidents, see
New York Times
, Jan. 3, 1915; May 3, 1916; July 9, 1916.
19
“Of course we heard rumors”: May Walker, interview transcript, BBC Radio Merseyside, 1984, Imperial War Museum (with permission, BBC Radio Merseyside).
20
“looked personally after their comfort”: Letter, Charles P. Sumner to Alfred A. Booth, May 26, 1915, D42/C1/1/66, Part 2 of 4, Cunard Archives.
21
Theodate Pope: I came across several worthy accounts of Pope’s life and work. See Cunningham,
My Godmother
; Katz,
Dearest
; Paine,
Avon Old Farms School
; and S. Smith,
Theodate Pope Riddle
.