A Notice in the Newspapers

The Cunard liner steamed westward into an Atlantic that had carried passengers safely for generations. That confidence had been built over a century of steam navigation, underwritten by the Royal Navy’s domination of the seas, and reinforced by the comfortable regularity of the North Atlantic passage. But even as the great liner made her way toward New York, a different kind of calculation was taking shape in offices three thousand miles away—a calculation that would make the passengers’ assumption of safety look less like common sense and more like a gamble.

On the morning of 1 May 1915, readers of the New York Times who turned to the shipping pages found a juxtaposition that should have stopped them. There, in a narrow column, ran the Cunard Line’s advertisement for the Lusitania, scheduled to sail that afternoon for Liverpool via Queenstown. The advertisement promised speed, comfort, and the reliable service of the world’s fastest passenger liner.

Beside it, in a box bordered with heavy lines, stood a notice that made no promises at all. Travellers intending to embark for an Atlantic voyage were reminded that a state of war existed between Germany and Great Britain, and that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, were liable to destruction in those waters.

The notice ended with a sentence that placed responsibility squarely on the traveler: those who sailed on British ships in the war zone did so at their own risk.

The advertisement and the warning sat side by side, separated by a quarter inch of newsprint. Anyone booking passage that morning would have seen both. The Cunard advertisement represented one order of reality—the familiar world of commercial shipping, where passengers paid for safe conveyance and the worst expected mishap was a day’s delay. The German notice represented another order entirely, one in which the rules of commerce no longer applied and the passenger himself became a target. The two statements could not be reconciled. They could only be chosen between.

The notice had not appeared by accident. It was the product of a chain of command stretching from Berlin to Washington, and it represented a deliberate escalation in the war at sea. To understand why it ran on 1 May, and why it ran beside the Lusitania advertisement, requires following that chain back to its source—to the naval officers and diplomats who had spent months arguing over what submarine warfare should become.

On 4 February 1915, the German government, under Admiral Hugo von Pohl, issued a proclamation that declared the seas around Great Britain and Ireland to be a war zone. Beginning 18 February, the proclamation stated, Allied merchant vessels in those waters would be sunk without warning. This was not wholly unrestricted submarine warfare as it would later be understood; German U-boat commanders were still to take efforts to avoid sinking neutral ships. But the proclamation marked a departure from established practice. For centuries, belligerents had stopped merchant vessels, verified their cargo, and ensured the safety of passengers and crew before sinking them. The German declaration announced a new doctrine: submarines would attack without surfacing, without warning, and without guaranteeing the survival of those aboard.

The British response was immediate and predictable. The Foreign Office denounced the declaration as illegal, a violation of the principles governing war at sea. The Admiralty, for its part, began tracking German submarine movements with whatever means it had. But the most consequential British response was quieter: the government simply did not believe the Germans would follow through. Submarine warfare was still new. The technology was unreliable. Torpedoes missed. And the diplomatic consequences of sinking passenger liners—especially those carrying American citizens—would be severe. British officials calculated that Germany would not risk alienating the United States for the sake of a few thousand tons of shipping.

That calculation proved wrong. By early 1915, German U-boats had begun to attack merchant vessels, achieving only occasional success but demonstrating that the threat was real. The submarines of this era were fragile, cramped, and limited in range. A typical U-boat carried perhaps a dozen torpedoes and had to surface frequently to recharge its batteries. Attacks were difficult; the target had to be identified, tracked, and hit with a weapon that ran straight and true, which torpedoes often did not.

But when they worked, the results were spectacular. The new weapon introduced an element of terror that surface raiders could not match: the submarine struck from below, unseen, and its victims often had no chance to abandon ship. When submarines failed to sink many ships, the German authorities loosened U-boat rules of engagement in April, creating what one historian termed “an operational twilight zone” in which mistakes would be more easily made.

The German naval officers who advocated for unrestricted submarine warfare believed it could win the war quickly. By strangling British trade, they argued, Germany could force Britain out of the conflict within months. The British Isles imported the majority of their food and a substantial portion of their raw materials; cut off those imports, and the British war effort would collapse. Senior naval figures had been making this argument since 1914, and by early 1915 they had won enough support to begin implementing it, albeit cautiously. In April, Admiral Gustav Bachmann, head of the German Admiralty Staff, argued to the Kaiser that the submarine war could only be effective if U-boats were completely unrestricted.

The caution came from Berlin, not from the naval staff. Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg and his foreign ministry officials worried about the diplomatic consequences. The United States was neutral, and its government had already protested the German submarine campaign. American public opinion mattered to Germany, not because Germany needed American support, but because Germany needed to keep the United States out of the war. If a German submarine sank an American passenger, the pressure on Washington to intervene would be immense. The chancellor and his advisors argued that the military benefits of unrestricted submarine warfare did not outweigh the diplomatic risks.

The result was a compromise—one of those wartime decisions that satisfied no one and left everyone uncertain. The submarine campaign would proceed, but with restrictions. Neutral shipping would be spared, at least in theory. Passenger liners would not be targeted, at least not deliberately. And the German embassy in Washington would issue warnings, making clear to American citizens that they sailed on British ships at their own risk. The warnings would serve a dual purpose: they would deter travel, reducing the number of American passengers on British vessels, and they would provide legal cover if something went wrong. If a passenger liner were sunk, Germany could point to the warnings and claim that the passengers had been informed.

This was the context in which Ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff found himself in mid-April 1915. Bernstorff had been Germany’s representative in Washington since 1908. He was a professional diplomat, sophisticated, well-connected, and deeply skeptical of the submarine campaign. He understood American politics better than most of his colleagues in Berlin, and he knew that the American public would not tolerate the deaths of its citizens on the high seas. He had long had concerns about the legality of the February submarine declaration, and he believed the Americans were underestimating the dangers. But he was also a servant of his government, and when Berlin ordered him to place warnings in American newspapers, he had no choice but to comply.

The order reached Bernstorff in mid-April. He was to place advertisements in fifty newspapers, warning potential passengers of the dangers of sailing on British vessels in the war zone. The advertisements were to appear on or shortly before the scheduled departures of major passenger liners. The timing was not accidental. Berlin wanted the warnings to be seen by people actually contemplating travel, not by the general public in a vague, abstract way. The goal was deterrence: to make passengers think twice before booking passage.

Bernstorff consulted with representatives of other German agencies in the United States, seeking advice on how to proceed. The group discussed the wording of the notice, the newspapers in which it should appear, and the timing of its placement. They all understood that the advertisement would be provocative. Some newspapers might refuse to run it. Others might demand payment well above the standard advertising rate. Still others might use the notice as an occasion for editorial attacks on Germany. But Bernstorff had his orders, and he carried them out.

The notice that appeared in the New York Times on 1 May was the result. It ran not on the front page but in the shipping section, where readers looking for sailings would find it. The placement was deliberate. Berlin did not want a general proclamation to the American public; it wanted a targeted warning to potential travelers. The audience for the shipping pages was small but specific: people who were actually going somewhere.

What those readers made of the notice is harder to determine. The New York Times itself had commented on the German submarine campaign in its editorial pages, dismissing it as a paper blockade that could not be enforced. The British and Cunard officials in New York took a similar line. The Lusitania was too fast to be caught by a submarine, they argued. Her speed was her best defense; no U-boat of this era could match her on the surface, and a submerged submarine was even slower. The Admiralty had assured Cunard that the ship would receive whatever protection could be provided. And in any case, the Germans were bluffing. They would not dare sink a passenger liner carrying American citizens.

Some passengers believed these assurances. Others did not. The passenger list for the Lusitania’s 1 May sailing included a mix of seasoned travelers, wartime commuters, and people who simply needed to get to Europe. Among them was Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, one of the wealthiest men in America. Vanderbilt had received an anonymous telegram warning him not to sail, but he dismissed it as a prank. He had crossed the Atlantic many times; he knew the risks of travel, and he considered them negligible. Other passengers made similar calculations. The war had been going on for nine months, and the worst had not happened. Why would this crossing be any different?

But the warning in the newspaper was not a prank. It was a statement of policy, issued by a government that had already demonstrated its willingness to attack merchant shipping. The notice represented a new kind of warfare—one in which civilians were not collateral damage but deliberate targets. The German submarine campaign did not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in the war zone. Anyone on a British ship was fair game. This was the meaning of the phrase about sailing at one’s own risk. It meant that the German government accepted no responsibility for what might happen. The risk belonged entirely to the passenger.

The concept was new, and it was terrifying. For centuries, the laws of war had protected civilians on the high seas. A belligerent could stop a merchant vessel and seize its cargo, but the passengers and crew were to be taken to safety before the ship was destroyed. Submarine warfare made this impossible. A U-boat could not surface, board a merchant vessel, and take off its passengers. The submarine was too small, too vulnerable, and too exposed to attack from shore batteries or escort vessels. If the U-boat commander followed the old rules, he would give away his position and risk destruction. The only safe way to attack was from below, without warning.

The German government knew this. The British government knew it too. But the British did not want to acknowledge the change publicly, because acknowledging it would mean admitting that passenger travel was no longer safe. That admission would disrupt trade, damage morale, and give Germany a victory without firing a shot. So British officials continued to insist that the submarine threat was manageable, that the Lusitania and other fast liners could outrun any submarine, and that the Royal Navy would provide protection where possible.

The protection was limited. The Admiralty had no ships to spare for convoy duty in the Western Approaches. The best it could offer were instructions: stay out of known submarine patrol areas, maintain speed, zigzag if possible, and make for the nearest port if attacked. These instructions were not particularly helpful. A fast liner like the Lusitania could not zigzag without burning extra coal and losing time. Staying out of known submarine areas was difficult when the submarines moved. And making for the nearest port assumed that the ship would remain afloat long enough to reach it.

The Admiralty had other information that might have been more useful. Through Room 40, its cryptographic unit, the Admiralty was intercepting and decoding German naval communications. The British had broken the German naval codes early in the war, and by early 1915 they were reading a substantial portion of German wireless traffic. Room 40 knew when German submarines left port, where they were headed, and what orders they carried. As the liner steamed across the ocean, the Admiralty had been tracking the movements of U-20, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger, through wireless intercepts. The problem was that this intelligence was highly classified. Sharing it with merchant shipping would reveal to the Germans that their codes had been broken, and the Admiralty was not willing to take that risk. So the intelligence stayed within the naval establishment, and the merchant ships sailed without it.

This was the system in which the Lusitania operated. The ship was a British-registered vessel, flying the British flag, carrying British subjects and other passengers through waters that Germany had declared a war zone. The German government had announced its intention to sink British shipping without warning. The British government had announced its intention to keep the seas open and protect its trade. The passengers were caught in between, trusting in speed and naval supremacy, hoping that the worst would not happen.

The notice in the New York Times was, in this sense, an ambiguous protocol—a rule or warning that could be interpreted in multiple ways. The German notice warned passengers that they sailed at their own risk. But what did that mean? Did it mean that Germany would deliberately target passenger liners? Or did it mean simply that the war zone was dangerous, and that passengers should be aware of the general risk? The notice did not say. It left the interpretation to the reader.

For Cunard officials, the notice was a problem to be managed. They could not prevent the newspaper from running it, and they could not stop passengers from seeing it. But they could reassure potential customers, emphasize the Lusitania’s speed and safety record, and point to the Admiralty’s assurances. The shipping line had a business to run, and fear was bad for business. So Cunard downplayed the threat. The advertisement ran as scheduled, and the Lusitania prepared to sail.

For Ambassador Bernstorff, the notice was a burden he had to carry out. He did not believe in the submarine campaign, and he feared its consequences for German-American relations. But he was a diplomat, not a policymaker. His job was to execute Berlin’s orders, not to debate them. He placed the advertisements, paid the fees, and waited to see what would happen.

For the passengers, the notice was something to be weighed. Some would have dismissed it as German propaganda, a scare tactic designed to disrupt British shipping. Others might have felt a flicker of doubt, quickly suppressed. Still others might have reconsidered their plans and chosen a different vessel, or a different route, or no travel at all. The Lusitania carried 1, 959 people on her 1 May sailing—1, 265 passengers and 694 crew. This was fewer than her capacity, but still a substantial number. Whatever they made of the warning, they chose to sail.

The ship departed that afternoon, clearing New York Harbor and heading into the Atlantic. On board, life settled into the familiar rhythms of a transatlantic crossing. The passengers dined, walked the decks, played cards, and wrote letters. The crew stood watch, stoked the boilers, and performed the thousand tasks that kept a liner running. The captain, William Thomas Turner, followed his orders and maintained his course. He knew about the submarine threat. Every British merchant officer knew about it by now. But knowing about it and being able to do something were different things.

Turner had received instructions from the Admiralty, transmitted through Cunard. The ship was to proceed to Liverpool unescorted. She was ordered not to fly any flags in the war zone—a precaution against making her an easy target for identification. But there was no hope of disguising her identity in any case. Her profile was too well known. The four funnels, the distinctive silhouette, the sheer size of her—all marked her as the Lusitania from miles away. The British made no attempt to paint out the ship’s name or otherwise conceal who she was. The logic seemed to be that concealment was pointless, and that speed would serve as her protection.

That logic had its limits. The Lusitania was fast, but she was not invulnerable. A single torpedo could sink her, if it hit in the right place. And a submarine that found itself in the right position could put a torpedo into her before she had time to react. The question was whether any German submarine would be in that position, and whether any German commander would give the order to fire.

The German government had provided its answer in the newspaper notice. British shipping was liable to destruction. The warning had been given. What happened next was, in the German view, the responsibility of the passengers and the British government. Berlin had done its part.

The British government saw matters differently. The submarine campaign was illegal, a violation of international law and the norms of civilized warfare. The Royal Navy would do what it could to protect shipping, but the seas were large and the submarines were hard to find. The best defense was speed, and the Lusitania had plenty of that.

The passengers were left to choose between these two interpretations. They could believe the German warning and stay ashore. Or they could believe the British assurances and board the ship. Most chose the latter. The Lusitania had crossed the Atlantic safely many times since the war began. There was no reason to think this crossing would be different.

But there was a reason, and it was printed in the newspaper. The warning was not a bluff. It was a statement of intent, issued by a government that had already decided to attack British shipping without warning. The passengers might dismiss it, but the German submarine commanders would not. When they found a target, they would act.

The chain of command that produced the warning ran from Berlin to Washington to New York, but it did not stop there. The order to attack, when it came, would run from Berlin to the submarine commanders at sea. One of those commanders was Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger, in charge of U-20, then operating in the waters around the British Isles. Schwieger had his orders, and he would carry them out. U-20’s mission was to torpedo warships and liners in the Lusitania’s area of operation.

The Lusitania sailed into the Atlantic with the warning a published fact. The passengers had been told, in print, that they traveled at their own risk. The German government had made its position clear. The British government had made its position clear. Now the ship and the submarine moved toward each other across two thousand miles of ocean, each following orders, each carrying out its assigned role in a drama that neither fully controlled.