Authors: Greg King
According to his war diary, Schwieger now had only three torpedoes left; he was supposed to save either one or two for his return voyage.
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Persistently foggy weather made it unlikely that he’d have another successful chance encounter. He also worried about meeting a troop transport or merchant vessel accompanied by armed escort. Schwieger decided to remain off the Irish coast for the next twelve hours, and then start back for Germany on the afternoon of May 7.
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The British Admiralty was unusually cognizant of the dangers awaiting
Lusitania
off Ireland. Unknown to the Kaiser’s officials, Great Britain had captured all three codes used by the German navy and could thus follow their wireless transmissions and movements. Intercepted messages went through decryption in Room 40, the Admiralty’s center of naval intelligence. Because of the delay in receiving, decoding, encrypting, and sending information from these German messages out to merchant vessels and warships, there was always a slight lag in time, and reported positions were often outdated. But the information allowed Room 40 to follow Schwieger’s progress once he left Emden and to track his general movements. Yet for some reason, specific information about U-20 was not passed on to the major naval stations on Britain’s western coast nor to those along the Irish Sea.
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Passengers aboard
Lusitania
knew nothing of these developments: torpedoing of ships in her path of travel was scarcely the sort of news printed in the
Cunard Daily Bulletin
each morning. The first hint that something had changed came early on the morning of Thursday, May 6. “Shouts and the scuffling of feet” awoke Theodate Pope; peering out her cabin window, she saw members of the crew swarming around the twenty-two wooden lifeboats.
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Over the next few hours, they loosened lines and swung the boats out over the deck. They still hung some eight feet above the deck by their falls, and chains kept them attached to their davits, but the captain had ordered that they be made ready as
Lusitania
approached the war zone.
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Before leaving New York, Turner said that he had received “special instructions” about his ship’s navigation through the declared submarine zone, though he consistently refused to say what they had been.
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The British Admiralty was so diligent in its advice and instructions that Turner actually complained about the sheer volume of communiqués—“I could paper the walls with them!” was his gruff comment.
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The remark suggests Turner’s annoyance at what he viewed as unwelcome interference with navigation of his ship. It also suggests a man unwilling or unable to adjust to changing circumstances dictated by the war.
With her funnels painted gray and no flags flying,
Lusitania
was as disguised as anyone could reasonably expect.
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High up on the bridge, Captain Turner spent that Thursday morning barking out additional orders: all bulkhead doors were to be kept closed unless in use; lookouts were doubled, and extra men were added to watch duty on the bridge; all portholes were to be closed. The engine room was to maintain the highest steam pressure possible, and be prepared for orders to go at top speed—21 knots—if danger threatened.
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Seeing the lifeboats being made ready as
Lusitania
approached the war zone renewed many passengers’ gnawing anxieties. As might be expected, the liner’s officers brushed the worries aside, as did Captain Turner. Having witnessed one of the perfunctory lifeboat drills, and feeling that the purser had dismissed his concerns, George Kessler went to see the captain that Thursday. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to actually involve passengers in the drills? At the very least, Kessler suggested, passengers should be assigned to specific boats “in case anything untoward happened”; surely, he said, this could be done when they booked passage, with the number printed on their tickets. Turner seemed annoyed. After the sinking of
Titanic,
he explained, Cunard had considered and then rejected such an idea as impractical. Even if he wanted to change the existing methods, the captain said, he’d have to first obtain permission from the British Board of Trade, which regulated maritime law. But, Turner assured Kessler, they would “go at all speed and get over the war zone” when they entered it early the following morning.
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When Francis Jenkins, manager of wool importers Holland and Sherry in New York City, tried to discuss his concerns with several officers, they belittled and ignored him. They had, he said, “the utmost confidence, even to the point of boasting,” that nothing would happen to
Lusitania
. Not yet willing to abandon hope, Jenkins also complained to Captain Turner. There was, he told Turner, “considerable talk” of a submarine attack among the passengers. Would it not be best if the passengers also participated in the boat drills, so that they would be prepared? Turner greeted the idea coolly, commenting, “A torpedo can’t get the
Lusitania
. She runs too fast.”
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Yet unbelievably, even after worried confrontations with George Kessler, Ian Holbourn, Francis Jenkins, and others, Turner later lied, insisting that he had never heard any passengers express worries about the possible dangers.
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By that Thursday, passengers also began to talk about the ship’s lack of progress. “The speed of the boat had not been what I had expected,” recalled Charles Lauriat. On the first full day out, it covered only 501 miles; the following days were even lower. But, he thought, “when we sighted the Irish coast” the ship would “show a burst of top speed” and equal her rate of 25 knots.
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Nor could Francis Jenkins understand the ship’s slow progress as she neared the Irish coast. “Everyone knew that was the path of danger,” he said, “and we fully expected the ship to be speeded to the utmost. Instead, she reduced her speed so much as to make the passengers talk of it. I spoke to one officer, and he replied that there was no chance of a submarine getting the
Lusitania,
and her speed didn’t make any difference.” This, Jenkins thought, was “a strange attitude to take.”
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That Thursday afternoon, Charles Frohman abandoned his self-imposed seclusion and hosted a party in his suite, complete with canapés and champagne. Alfred Vanderbilt attended, along with Elbert Hubbard, Rita Jolivet, Josephine Brandell, Justus Forman, and Charles Klein. The egalitarian Frohman even invited Lott Gadd,
Lusitania
’s barber. For all the joviality, Gadd remembered, the atmosphere was tense. “I shall never forget that evening,” he recalled, “being in Mr. Frohman’s room when Mr. Hubbard came in, and we chatted about ships being sunk by submarines.”
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Captain Turner also stopped by, on his way to the Lounge to attend a benefit concert in aid of the Liverpool Sailors’ Orphanage.
Angela Papadopoulos had found the voyage aboard
Lusitania
pleasant, though the unending worry of her husband, Michael, over being torpedoed, coupled with several migraine headaches, prevented her from socializing as much as she might have wished. That evening, she, too, asked a few people to join them for a small party in their cabin on B Deck. Albert and Gladys Bilicke came, along with Sir Hugh Lane, Lady Allan, and Alfred Vanderbilt. “I remember that we were joking about Mike’s fear of the ship being torpedoed,” she wrote. Captain Turner, making his hated social rounds, also dropped in briefly as the talk was under way. Turner, she recalled, “did little to calm him down” or ease Papadopoulos’s fears.
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At the end of the gathering, Lane escorted Angela to the First Class Lounge for an evening concert. Ordinarily, the traditional charity concert, a fixture on most British transatlantic liners, would have taken place on the last night of the voyage. But with
Lusitania
scheduled for an early Saturday arrival at Liverpool, people would likely be busy on Friday evening packing their belongings, and so it was moved to Thursday night.
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Second Class passengers were invited to the First Class Lounge to share the entertainment in aid of seamen’s charities, and the spacious room was crowded as Ian Holbourn escorted Avis Dolphin to her seat.
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Leslie and Stewart Mason attended, as did Lady Allan and her daughters, sitting with Frederick Orr-Lewis; Lady Mackworth and her father, David Thomas; Josephine Brandell; Oliver Bernard; Angela Papadopoulos; Sir Hugh Lane; and Rita Jolivet, sitting next to Albert Vanderbilt and Charles Frohman. Everyone, Rita recalled, was “in high spirits.”
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“Being a young man,” Harold Boulton remembered, “my eyes picked up all the attractive girls I could see.” He spotted Rita, who was “most attractive to look at,” but couldn’t work up the courage to introduce himself.
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“Everyone is willing to do his or her best,” declared a guidebook. “Many professionals who have refused to take part in other entertainments have gladly come forward to give their services on these occasions.”
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Rita Jolivet and Josephine Brandell, though, politely declined to perform.
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Occasionally members of the crew joined in these performances. Purser James McCubbin played the flute, and several times had entertained aboard his previous posting. One night, a mischievous fellow officer filled his flute with flour; when McCubbin blew into the instrument, a shower of fine white powder landed over the elegantly dressed lady accompanying him at the piano.
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McCubbin sat out this evening’s festivities. Instead, the Royal Gwent Singers from Wales performed and there were a number of popular songs.
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Orr-Lewis thought that it was a “splendid” concert.
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Passenger William Broderick-Cloete made an impassioned plea for funds that brought in just over £100, and urged his fellow travelers to buy souvenir programs.
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When Phoebe Amory offered one to Alfred Vanderbilt, he pulled out a $5 bill and handed it to her, saying he “could not resist my good-natured smile,” even though he had already purchased a copy.
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Oliver Bernard, typically, viewed the entire enterprise with cynicism. People were split into little groups, none of which seemed to speak to the other. “A submarine,” he wryly noted, “would have at least socialized the audience.” He was particularly critical of “that guy Vanderbilt,” with “nothing better to do than driving a four-in-hand to Brighton,” and referred to him as one of “New York’s Four Hundred Fools.”
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Vanderbilt was more prominent that evening; at one point, he partnered with Angela Papadopoulos in a dance as the musicians played.
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Officer Albert Bestic remembered peering into the room, “where dancing and gaiety held sway,” and immediately thought of “that famous dance given by the Duchess of Richmond in Brussels on the eve of Waterloo.”
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Captain Turner thanked the performers and the audience for their contributions. Then his comments turned ominous as he told passengers that within the next few hours
Lusitania
would enter the war zone. He reminded them to keep their cabin windows and portholes covered at night, and asked them not to smoke on deck, in case the light was visible to any lurking German submarine. Someone asked if there was any danger. “In wartime, there is always danger,” Turner replied, “but I must repeat there is no cause for alarm.” The following morning, he told the room,
Lusitania
would be at full speed, and “could run away from any submarine.”
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He added his assurances that the ship would “be securely in the care of the Royal Navy.”
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These last words seemed to resolve something that had been nagging away at many passengers: belief that vessels of the Royal Navy would provide a military escort once the ship reached Irish waters. “We certainly had been led to expect” an escort, said George Kessler, “when we reached the war zone.”
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A Cunard official had assured Charles Lauriat of this when he had purchased his ticket.
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“The general opinion,” recalled Francis Jenkins, “was that torpedo-boat destroyers would accompany us through the danger zone.”
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Harold Boulton was sure “we’d be conveyed,” saying people expected that they would “be met by British destroyers or cruisers.”
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Much to his annoyance, several American passengers repeatedly asked Oliver Bernard—as if, being British, he knew something about the ship’s operation—why there were no accompanying warships as escorts. But Bernard had no answer.
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