The Submarine's Departure

A man clung to a deck chair in the cold water, gasping. His fingers had gone white. The Atlantic held the living and the dead in a grip that tightened with each minute before rescue arrived. Somewhere near him, another survivor called out, or tried to. The sound carried poorly across the water. Bodies and wreckage drifted in the current. The Old Head of Kinsale was visible from where the living floated, a low line of green cliff under grey sky, and it was unreachable.

Seven miles away, in the conning tower of U-20, Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger lowered his binoculars. The stern of the great liner had disappeared. He noted the time in his war diary.

The contrast was absolute. On one side of that stretch of water, human beings were drowning in the cold. On the other, a submarine commander was completing a professional report. The distance between the two positions was not only geographical. It was the distance between a doctrine that classified any vessel in the war zone as a legitimate target and the individual human cost of that classification. Schwieger’s log entry for 7 May 1915 would become the definitive German record of the attack, and it is the work of a man writing within a system that had trained him to see a ship, not its passengers.

Born in Berlin in 1885, Schwieger had joined the Imperial German Navy in 1903. From 1911 he served with the U-boat Service. In 1912 he took command of U-14. After the outbreak of the war he was promoted to Kapitänleutnant. In December 1914 he was given command of U-20. He was thirty years old.

His patrol off the southern coast of Ireland in May 1915 was conducted under the terms of the German declaration of 4 February, which had established a U-boat blockade around the British Isles and declared any vessel in those waters a legitimate military target. The declaration had taken effect on 18 February.

As a submarine captain, Schwieger had been noted for a cavalier approach to attacking without being sure about the identity or nationality of his target, sometimes in breach of orders to the contrary. His policy had been described as ‘shoot first and ask questions later.’

On 1 February 1915, he had ordered an attack on the hospital ship HMHS Asturias, misidentified as a troop transport, in which the torpedo failed to detonate. The Lusitania was about to change the diplomatic calculation.

U-20 had been at sea for days. Schwieger had already sunk two vessels on this patrol. Fuel was running low. Torpedoes were nearly spent. One remained in the forward tube when, at about 13:40, the shape of a four-funnel liner materialized in the haze off the Old Head of Kinsale. The submarine submerged. The range closed to approximately seven hundred metres. From a distance of about 700 m (770 yd), Schwieger noted she had four funnels and two masts, making her a passenger liner, and he fired a single torpedo.

The torpedo struck the starboard side, almost directly below the bridge. A second explosion followed, larger than the first. Schwieger wrote that he was surprised by the size of the explosion, reasoning that a second explosion must have happened, possibly caused by coal dust, a boiler explosion or powder. The ship listed. She sank by the bow. The entire process, from the impact of the torpedo to the disappearance of the hull beneath the surface, took approximately eighteen minutes.

Schwieger recorded these facts. His war diary entry for 7 May is the only contemporaneous German account of the attack from the man who ordered it. The entry describes the approach, the firing, the impact, the second explosion, the list, and the sinking. It notes the number of torpedoes expended. It does not record the number of people in the water.

This absence is the chapter’s central fact. The log is a military document. It was written by a commander assessing whether his mission had been successful. In that framework, the mission was successful. A large British vessel had been identified, engaged, and destroyed in waters declared to be a war zone. The torpedo had functioned. The target had sunk. The expenditure of munitions was justified by the result. What the log does not record is everything that the previous chapter established: the cold water, the deck chairs used as flotation, the lifeboats that could not be lowered, the children, the women, the men who could not swim and drowned within sight of land.

Whether Schwieger heard or saw any of this is unanswerable from the log itself. Screams go unmentioned. People in the water go unmentioned. Debris goes unmentioned. The absence could mean several things. The distance may have been too great for sound to carry. The periscope, once the ship had gone, may have shown only empty sea. Schwieger may have chosen not to record what he saw. Or his training and doctrine may have so conditioned his perception that the human dimension did not register as something requiring notation. The log cannot tell us which of these is true. It can only tell us what is in it and what is not.

What is in it is precise. The torpedo struck at approximately ten minutes past two. The ship sank at approximately twenty-eight minutes past two. The elapsed time was eighteen minutes. Schwieger noted this. The speed of the sinking was militarily significant. It confirmed that the torpedo, or the second explosion, had caused catastrophic damage. For Schwieger, this was confirmation of a kill. For the people on the ship, it was the reason they could not reach the boats.

The second explosion is recorded in the log. Schwieger noted that after the torpedo struck, a second detonation followed. He did not identify its cause. He did not need to. His concern was the effect. The effect was that the ship went down.

The cause of the second explosion would become one of the most contested questions in the subsequent inquiries, with theories ranging from a coal dust explosion to a munitions cargo to a second torpedo. Schwieger’s log records only that the explosion occurred and that the ship sank.

He stated that one torpedo had been launched. Some doubt has been cast on this claim, with suggestions that the German government subsequently altered the published fair copy of the log. Accounts from other U-20 crew members, however, corroborate the single-torpedo claim. The entries are also consistent with intercepted radio reports sent to Germany by U-20 once she had returned to the North Sea, before any possibility of an official cover-up.

The log entry, read as a military report, follows a clear structure. Target identified. Position noted. Range estimated. Torpedo fired. Impact observed. Secondary explosion noted. Target sank. Time recorded. These are the actions of a commander operating within a doctrine. The doctrine of unrestricted submarine warfare held that vessels in the declared zone were legitimate targets. Warning was not required. The German embassy had placed advertisements in New York newspapers before the Lusitania’s departure, warning that ships under the British flag faced destruction in the declared war zone. The warning had been printed. The passengers had boarded anyway. In Schwieger’s framework, the attack was not a crime. It was an operation.

The framework did not include the people. This is the mechanism the chapter must examine. The log is not a record of cruelty. It is a record of professional procedure. The cruelty exists in what the procedure excludes. Schwieger did not write about the passengers because his doctrine did not require him to write about them. The ship was a target. The target was destroyed. The report was complete.

This is the stark military logic of unrestricted submarine warfare, and it is visible in the log without embellishment or apology. Schwieger did not gloat. He did not celebrate. He recorded. The tone is clinical. The language is spare. The actions are described in the passive constructions and technical shorthand of a naval officer writing for his superiors. There is no more emotion in the entry than in a gunnery report. This is not because Schwieger lacked feeling. The log cannot tell us what he felt. It can only tell us what he wrote, and what he wrote is a report on the destruction of a vessel.

The counter-argument is straightforward and powerful. A German U-boat commander, acting under clear orders from his government, deliberately torpedoed a passenger liner carrying civilians. The liner was defenseless. The attack came without warning. Nearly twelve hundred people died. This is the act of a state that had declared its intention to sink vessels without warning and a commander who carried out that intention. In this reading, the log is simply the confession. The doctrine is the motive. The torpedo is the means. The dead are the evidence.

This reading is not wrong. It is incomplete. The log reveals not only the act but the system that made the act legible to the man who performed it. Schwieger did not see a passenger liner. He saw a British vessel in a war zone. He did not see civilians. He saw a target. The distinction is not exculpatory. It is explanatory. The log shows how the doctrine worked on the mind of the man who executed it. The ship was a category before it was a collection of people. The category was legitimate target. The people were not in the category.

The same mechanism operated at every level of the system that sent Schwieger to sea. The German government declared the war zone. The Admiralty staff issued the patrol orders. The submarine command assigned U-20 to the southern Irish coast. Schwieger executed the patrol. Each link in the chain processed the decision through the same filter. Vessels were targets. The filter did not include passengers. It did not include children. It did not include the specific human cost of a torpedo striking a ship that was carrying people. The log is the end product of this chain. It is the record of a system working as designed.

The system’s design was the product of a strategic calculation. Britain’s blockade of German ports was strangling the German economy. The German response was to declare a counter-blockade using submarines. The submarine was a new weapon. Its ability to sink vessels without warning was its strategic advantage. If submarines had to surface, warn, and allow evacuation, they would be vulnerable to ramming and gunfire. The doctrine of unrestricted warfare was a military response to a military problem. It was also a doctrine that made no distinction between combatant and noncombatant vessels. The Lusitania flew the British flag. She was a British merchant vessel. In the doctrine’s terms, she was a target.

The passengers were not in the terms.

This is the gap the log reveals. The gap is not personal. It is structural. Schwieger’s log is the record of a man who had been trained to see ships as targets and who saw a ship as a target. The training was effective. The log shows how effective. The entry contains no hesitation. No qualification. No notation that the target carried an unusual number of people. No note that the ship was a passenger liner rather than a freighter. Schwieger identified the vessel. He engaged it. He recorded the result.

The identification itself is significant. The log notes that the vessel was a large passenger liner. Schwieger could see the four funnels. He could see the size. He knew, or should have known, that this was not a cargo ship. The Cunard liner Lusitania was one of the most famous vessels in the world. She was the former Blue Riband holder. She was a passenger ship. The log does not record whether Schwieger recognized her specifically.

It records that he saw a large liner and fired. The distinction between recognizing the Lusitania and recognizing a large passenger vessel is important. If he knew it was the Lusitania, the decision to fire was a decision to sink a known passenger liner. If he saw only a large liner, the decision was to sink a vessel in a category that included passenger liners. Either way, the doctrine permitted the shot. Either way, the log records the result without distinction.

The log also records Schwieger’s decision to withdraw. After the ship sank, U-20 turned away from the site. The submarine had been at periscope depth during the attack. Schwieger had observed the sinking through the periscope. Once the vessel had gone, there was no military reason to remain. Fuel was low. Torpedoes were nearly spent. Patrol orders did not include rescue operations. The doctrine under which he operated did not require him to assist survivors. Under the rules of cruiser warfare, which preceded unrestricted submarine warfare, a warship that sank a vessel was obligated to assist survivors. The new doctrine had eliminated this obligation. The submarine was too vulnerable to surface. The survivors were not the submarine’s concern.

Schwieger turned U-20 away. A course was set. The submarine left the site. Behind it, the sea still held the people the log did not mention. The cold water was still killing them. The deck chairs were still supporting the few who had reached them. The lifeboats that had been launched were still drifting. The Old Head of Kinsale was still visible. The distance between the submarine and the survivors was growing.

The withdrawal is the final entry in the log’s account of 7 May. A course change appears. A speed appears. A position appears. The act is that of a submarine leaving the scene of a successful engagement. The act is also that of a submarine leaving the scene of a disaster. The log records the first. It does not record the second. The second was not in the doctrine.

The log’s silence on the human cost is not unique to Schwieger. It is characteristic of the system that produced him. The German declaration of 4 February did not mention passengers. It mentioned vessels. The embassy warning in New York did not mention passengers. It mentioned ships under the British flag. The patrol orders did not mention passengers. They mentioned targets. The entire apparatus of unrestricted submarine warfare was constructed to make the sinking of vessels a military operation rather than a humanitarian catastrophe. The log is the apparatus in operation. It works. The vessel is sunk. The report is filed. The people are not in the report.

This is the mechanism the chapter must expose. The log is not a record of evil. It is a record of procedure. The procedure is what makes the act possible. The procedure reduces a ship with 1, 264 passengers, three stowaways, and a crew of 693 to a target. The target is engaged. The target is destroyed. The procedure is complete. The people who died in the cold water are not in the procedure. They are in the water.

The irony of the log is that its very precision makes the absence visible. If Schwieger had written nothing, there would be no record. But he wrote. He recorded the time, the range, the torpedo, the explosion, the sinking. He recorded the details that make the attack verifiable. He created a document that allows the reader to see exactly what he saw and exactly what he did not see. The precision of the log is its own indictment. Every detail it records is a detail of a military operation. Every detail it omits is a detail of a human catastrophe. The gap between the two is the gap in the doctrine.

The log would later be cited in the German investigation of the sinking. It would be cited in the Mersey inquiry. It would be cited in the diplomatic correspondence between Washington and Berlin. In each of these contexts, the log would be read differently. The German investigation would read it as a report of a legitimate military operation. The British inquiry would read it as evidence of a war crime. The American diplomatic notes would read it as the basis for a demand that Germany abandon unrestricted submarine warfare. The log itself would not change. It would remain what it was: a commander’s record of a patrol, an engagement, and a withdrawal.

What the log records, in the end, is the moment when the doctrine of unrestricted submarine warfare met the reality of a passenger liner. The meeting was catastrophic. The doctrine was designed for vessels. The vessel carried people. The people died. The log does not record their deaths because the doctrine did not require their deaths to be recorded. It required the vessel’s destruction to be recorded. The vessel was destroyed. The log is complete.

The submarine moved away from the site. Schwieger had set his course. The periscope was lowered. The sea closed over the place where the Lusitania had been. Behind U-20, the water still held the living and the dead. The living were calling out. The dead were silent. The submarine could not hear either. It was moving away. Its fuel was low. Its mission was complete. The log entry was finished. The next entry would be for the following day. The war would continue.

The people in the water could not continue. They were dying. The cold was killing them. The current was carrying them. The shore was visible and unreachable. The boats that had been launched were overcrowded and drifting. The boats that had not been launched were at the bottom of the sea. The people who had reached the water were alone. The submarine that had put them there was gone.

U-20 turned northeast, away from the Old Head, away from the debris field and the bodies and the overturned lifeboats, leaving behind a scene that Schwieger’s log had already closed the book on. His course was set. His periscope was down. Behind him, the first fishing boats from Queenstown were already pulling out of the harbor, their skippers not yet knowing what they would find.