Authors: Greg King
Lusitania
’s First Class passengers passed their days in comfortable uniformity, enjoying games of cards, leisurely strolls on deck, and lengthy, indulgent meals. For her Second Class travelers, life aboard the ship offered echoes of this ordered social world of tradition without the pretense. The distinctions were subtle: while First Class rooms featured Corinthian columns, those in Second Class had simpler Doric capitals.
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It wasn’t merely wealth or status that separated those traveling in First and Second Class aboard
Lusitania
. Cunard imposed a visible gap between the two, a constant reminder of their unequal positions. First Class decks cascaded from the rear of her main body, to her tall mast, only to meet a second superstructure dominating the last quarter of the ship. Here, as close to the stern as possible, Cunard lodged its Second Class passengers.
“Only in magnificence, and not in comfort,” a contemporary announced, “does the First Class accommodation surpass the Second Class, the same care and attention having been exercised in the equipment of both.… Indeed, a passenger on first going on board might well be excused for mistaking the Second Class public rooms and staterooms for the First Class.”
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The boast was true enough: Second Class rooms aboard
Lusitania
were far more luxurious than on previous liners, and in many cases equal to First Class on other ships.
Hoping to reclaim some of the revenue inevitably lost owing to the downturn in wartime travel, Cunard had cut Second Class fares from $70 to $50. As a result, many who would otherwise have traveled in Third Class had booked passage in Second Class, and accommodations meant to house 460 passengers were now stretched thin with 601 souls.
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Most Second Class passengers were solidly respectable and engaged in professions: teachers, lawyers, merchants, and doctors. Second Class passage, noted one author, was suggestive of “a quietly satisfactory business arrangement between equals,” often preferred by frequent travelers for its informality and lack of social pretense.
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Second Class passengers tended to adhere to a more traditional segregation of the sexes than their counterparts in Saloon Class. The Writing Room was even known by the formal designation of the Ladies’ Drawing Room. This was a suitably refined, feminine space in the Louis XVI style of light gray paneled walls, with a leaded dome over comfortable groupings of satinwood furniture, and a piano atop the rose-colored Brussels carpet.
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As in First Class, men congregated in the adjacent Smoking Room, lined with carved mahogany paneling and topped with a white plasterwork ceiling pierced by a stained glass, barrel-vaulted skylight. Wide, blue-tinted windows opened onto the deck; one wall featured an intricate mosaic of a river scene in Brittany.
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Here, Professor Ian Bernard Stoughton Holbourn had spent much of the voyage, resting after his third lecture tour of America.
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Born in 1872, Holbourn came from a well-to-do, eminently respectable family: his minister father had several times preached sermons before Queen Victoria.
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After graduating with honors in mathematics from Merton College at Oxford, Holbourn decided to suddenly change course: now he wanted to focus on art and classical literature. He studied, wrote articles, and lectured on the classical world so successfully that Oxford even gave him a job as a visiting professor.
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He again strayed from his newfound specialty in 1903, publishing a biography of the painter Tintoretto, though he continued to lecture on classical subjects. Holbourn was generally mild-mannered, but could work himself into a frenzy of enthusiasm over his favorite topics; he could be equally adamant in his denunciations, and was especially critical of modern architecture, deriding the idea that form should follow function.
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He had just labored over his own theories in
The Need for Art,
a manuscript he’d finished between lectures in America.
Holbourn was a proud Scot, living in Edinburgh with his wife, Marion, and their three sons, Hylas, Alasdair, and Philistos. But he was most proud of his position as Laird of Foula, a small island off the coast of Scotland that he purchased in 1900. Lost amid the remote Shetland Islands, Foula was indeed a miniature—if somewhat barren—kingdom, some two miles wide and four miles long. Fewer than two hundred people lived along its rugged shores, working the peat bogs, fishing, raising sheep, and knitting sweaters. Holbourn liked the idea that, as Laird, he had joined the ranks of the landed aristocracy; he also enjoyed being master of the island and benevolent ruler of its superstitious people.
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One afternoon, Holbourn wandered into
Lusitania
’s Second Class Lounge, where a wide wooden staircase descended amidst comfortable groupings of sofas and chairs, and spotted a young girl forlornly sprawled on a sofa. Twelve-year-old Avis Dolphin, he decided, had an “air of superior breeding” and gradually she unraveled the details of her sad story.
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Her father had fought in the Boer War, and in 1905 had taken Avis and her mother to Canada, where two more children were born. Tuberculosis claimed her father’s life; to provide for her young family, Avis’s mother took over the operation of a nursing home in St. Thomas, Ontario. It wasn’t hard for Holbourn to be impressed with Avis: she was quiet, dignified, and obviously intelligent—so intelligent, in fact, that despite the war her mother had decided to send her back to England to live with her grandparents so that she could get a more refined education.
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A recent bout with measles had left Avis weak and tended to by nurse Hilda Ellis, who insisted that she rest as much as possible; this allowed Hilda to spend time aboard
Lusitania
with her friend Sarah Smith.
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Avis was left to while away her days at sea. Although she marveled at
Lusitania
—“like a floating palace,” she said—she was bored and lonely.
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Holbourn fetched an extra pillow, made Avis more comfortable, and began chatting with her.
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He told her about his own children; entertained her with tales of life on Foula; and even promised to make her an honorary citizen of the little island. When she learned that he was a writer, Avis complained that “girls’ books were too tame.” Most girls, she insisted, “preferred to read the more exciting books of their brothers.” To rectify this, Holbourn promised Avis that he would write an adventure story just for her.
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And, although she seemed unperturbed by the potential danger, he promised that—if anything happened to
Lusitania
—he would take care of Avis.
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Margaret Mackworth had been surprised to see so many children traveling aboard
Lusitania
. A pregnant Emily Anderson sailed with her nearly three-year-old daughter Barbara. Young Barbara had never seen her English relatives—certainly a frivolous reason for potentially dangerous travel. But this explanation actually concealed a more pressing concern: twenty-four-year-old Emily suffered from tuberculosis. Hopefully a specialist in her native England could successfully treat her disease. Emily left her husband behind: Rowland Anderson worked at a Winchester Repeating Arms factory in Connecticut as a draughtsman.
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The factory could barely keep up with orders to provide Russia and France with rifles, and so Rowland had to make do with seeing his wife and daughter safely aboard
Lusitania
. “If my father had seen the warning from the Germans,” Barbara later insisted, “he would not have let us sail.” She had only the fleeting impressions of a child: standing at the ship’s railing with her mother in New York City, looking for her father on the pier below; a crowded cabin with beds “one on top of the other”; and a little souvenir spoon marked
Lusitania
that someone gave to her aboard the liner.
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Belle Saunders Naish had her hands full on this voyage: her husband, Theodore, was confined to his cabin, suffering from an acute case of seasickness.
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Born in 1865 in Michigan, Belle had spent most of her life as a spinster schoolteacher; not until 1911, when she was forty-five, did she marry the well-to-do Theodore, an engineering draughtsman from Kansas City, Missouri.
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That spring, Theodore decided to visit his brothers in England and introduce them to his wife.
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He seemed unperturbed by the idea that
Lusitania
faced potential danger: “Maybe I can help my adopted country and my native land,” Theodore joked, “by dying than by staying here.”
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Belle, though, was nervous. She saw the rack where lifebelts were stowed in their cabin, but found she couldn’t open it. She poked her head out into the corridor and flagged down a passing steward, asking him to unlock the device. At first he refused: he was expected in the Dining Saloon, and couldn’t be bothered. Refusing to be put off, Belle insisted that he open the rack and show them how to properly put on the lifebelts. From the looks he gave her, she remembered, it was obvious that the man thought this was “a wholly unnecessary waste of time.”
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Scarcely reassured by this attitude, Belle made it a practice to leave and return to their cabin using the same route, “so that in case of anything happening, I would not be confused.”
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And with Theodore sick, Belle was often on the run. He spent most of the voyage in their cabin, with his wife bringing in meals on trays from the dining saloon so that they could eat together. There were no suites in Second Class: passengers were accommodated in two- or four-person berths. Luckily, the Naishes had a two-berth cabin, with deep Brussels carpeting and a mahogany washstand fitted with two porcelain basins adorned with the Cunard logo; thick cotton spreads covered the beds, unlike berths in Third Class where, in a nod to lingering suspicions surrounding the “lower classes,” all the spreads were emblazoned with the Cunard logo to deter theft.
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Some Second Class passengers, like twenty-six-year-old William Meriheina, were traveling on business. When he was four, his parents emigrated from Finland to America, where the family—who abbreviated their last name to Heina for everyday use—eventually settled in New York. He was thirteen when his father died, and quit school, presumably to help his mother with his four siblings. An early job driving a taxi awakened a love of motorcars, and the handsome young man was soon racing along Brighton Beach in expensive vehicles provided by the Lozier Car Company. The company used Meriheina to promote their motorcars, shuffling him around to various events and races, including the inaugural run of what became the Indianapolis 500; more than once, Meriheina narrowly escaped serious injury during devastating collisions. He married, had a daughter, and, while continuing to race, also took an active interest in fledgling air travel—again to nearly disastrous results on at least one occasion. Soon Meriheina took a job with General Motors’ New York City Buick division.
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In the spring of 1915, the General Motors Export Company asked Meriheina to travel to South Africa to demonstrate its new ignition systems, and he booked passage aboard
Lusitania,
keeping a running journal of his experiences.
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Although he noted that the ocean was “quite rough” on Sunday and many aboard were seasick, he enjoyed himself with “a dandy saltwater bath” and “a grand breakfast.” Over the next few days, Meriheina was “feeling great,” enjoying “dandy meals” along with “games, races, a whist drive, and various other entertainments.” On Monday he saw fog and thought that the ship was “rolling quite a little,” though he was not affected. Surrounded by “Scotch, English, and Irish dialects” throughout the voyage, he mused that he might “talk funny” by the end of the journey. But the overall trip was pleasant, and Meriheina was sure that it “will do me good.”
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