The Court in the Westminster Hotel

Seen from above, London in the first week of June 1915 appeared to be doing what it had done for ten months: enduring and adjusting, its institutions serving a conflict that had not yet found its final shape. The ordinary grain of the streets carried the war. Troop lorries ground westward along the Embankment, their canvas tilts darkened with rain that had not fallen since dawn. Whitehall moved its paper in wheelbarrows, while the railway termini at Victoria and Waterloo fed soldiers into the city and civilians out of it. The hotels around Buckingham Palace Road kept their dining rooms open late for men who had business with the government and nowhere else to conduct it.

Among those institutions stood the Westminster Palace Hotel on Buckingham Palace Road, a stolid Victorian pile built for the comfort of railway passengers and the convenience of Members of Parliament who wanted a bed near the House. In the second week of June, its public rooms were cleared of furniture and rearranged. Long tables were set in rows. A raised platform was constructed at one end of the largest chamber. Clerks brought ledgers, inkstands, and stacks of pre-printed forms bearing the Board of Trade seal. The hotel ceased to be a hotel. It became a courtroom.

The Wreck Commissioner’s inquiry into the loss of the RMS Lusitania opened on 15 June 1915. Lord Mersey—John Charles Bigham, first Viscount Mersey, a man of seventy-five who had already presided over inquiries into the Titanic and the Empress of Ireland—sat on the raised platform in his judicial robes. He was assisted by four assessors: Admiral Sir Frederick Inglefield, Lieutenant Commander Hearn and two merchant navy captains, D. Davies and J. Spedding. Below him, the rows of tables filled with counsel. The Attorney General, Sir Edward Carson, appeared for the Board of Trade, with Solicitor General F.E. Smith. Butler Aspinall represented Cunard. Survivors and witnesses sat on benches at the rear. The public filled the remaining chairs. Reporters from the London newspapers, the American wire services, and the continental press took notes in the gallery.

The arrangement of the room told its own story. The Admiralty’s counsel sat to Mersey’s right. Cunard’s counsel sat to his left. The witnesses sat below and in front of all of them, looking up. No one in the room represented the German side. No one had been appointed to test whether the Admiralty’s conduct before the sinking merited examination. The structure of the court, before a single word was spoken, had already established what the inquiry would find and what it would not.

The summons came, and Turner went. Captain William Thomas Turner, master of the Lusitania on her final voyage, had spent the weeks since the sinking in a state of private defense—first in Queenstown, where he had spoken to Cunard officials and given his initial account, and then in London, where he had waited for the formal proceedings to begin.

He was fifty-eight years old. He had been at sea since he was a boy, and he had held command in the Cunard fleet since 1903. He was not a man given to elaborate explanation. His private defense had been simple: he had followed his orders, he had navigated as the conditions required, and the ship had been struck by a torpedo in waters where submarines were known to be active.

Now he was to give that defense in public, under oath, before a court that had been assembled with a specific purpose. A total of 36 witnesses would be called, with Lord Mersey querying why more survivors were not giving evidence.

The Board of Trade had framed the inquiry’s terms of reference narrowly. The court was to examine the circumstances of the loss, the conduct of the ship’s officers and crew, and the adequacy of the lifeboat arrangements. The terms did not include an examination of the Admiralty’s intelligence operations. They did not include an examination of the cargo. They did not require the court to consider whether any party had possessed foreknowledge of the specific threat to the Lusitania or had failed to communicate that foreknowledge to the ship.

Lord Mersey opened the proceedings with the formal statement of the court’s purpose. The Attorney General, Sir Edward Carson, appeared as counsel for the Board of Trade. Sir Samuel Thomas Evans, President of the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division, had appointed Mersey. The machinery of the state was present in its full weight. The inquiry had the power to summon witnesses, to compel testimony, and to make findings of negligence or misconduct. It also had the power to choose what it would not examine.

The first day established the factual narrative. The Lusitania had departed New York on 1 May 1915. She carried 1, 959 people. She had been torpedoed by a German submarine at approximately ten minutes past two on the afternoon of 7 May, off the Old Head of Kinsale. She had sunk in approximately eighteen minutes. The death toll, as it was being refined in the days of the inquiry, stood at 1, 198 or thereabouts—the exact figure would continue to shift as bodies were recovered and the passenger lists were reconciled. These facts were not in dispute. They formed the bedrock of the proceeding. Everything that followed was built on them, and built selectively.

Turner took the witness stand on the inquiry’s second day. He wore his Cunard uniform. He answered questions put to him by the Attorney General and by Cunard’s counsel, Butler Aspinall. The questioning followed a line that had been prepared. Turner was asked about the ship’s speed, about his course, about the lookout, about the lifeboat drills, about the weather, about the visibility. He was asked whether he had received the Admiralty’s warnings about submarine activity in the Irish Sea. He said he had. He was asked what he had done in response. He described his course changes, his reduction of speed, his decision to come in close to the Old Head to take a bearing.

The testimony had the quality of a performance that had been rehearsed. Turner’s answers were measured, specific, and controlled. He did not volunteer information beyond what was asked. Whether the Admiralty’s warnings had been sufficient or specific was not raised. Whether the Admiralty had instructed him to maintain a speed that would make the ship vulnerable was not raised. Whether the Admiralty had diverted his naval escort, the cruiser Juno, away from the approaches to Queenstown on the morning of the sinking was not raised. These were not matters the court asked him to address.

The questioning turned to the lifeboats. The Lusitania had carried enough lifeboat capacity for the regulations then in force, but those regulations were based on tonnage, not on the number of souls aboard. The ship had carried twenty-two lifeboats. In the eighteen minutes the ship remained afloat, six had been launched successfully. Others had been smashed against the hull or had spilled their occupants into the sea. The court heard testimony from crew members about the difficulty of launching boats when the ship was listing heavily to starboard. Passengers described the chaos on the boat deck. The technical discussion was thorough, detailed, and directed toward a conclusion that the equipment had been adequate and the crew had done what was possible in the time available.

What the court did not hear was any testimony about the second explosion. Survivors had reported two distinct detonations: the first, the torpedo impact; the second, a larger, deeper, more violent blast that had torn through the ship’s interior and accelerated her sinking. No expert witnesses were called to examine whether the second explosion had been caused by the ship’s cargo, by a boiler, by coal dust, or by a second torpedo. The cargo manifest, which listed 4, 200 cases of rifle cartridges among other materials, was not entered into the proceedings as a subject of forensic analysis. The court treated the second explosion as a fact that had occurred and did not investigate its cause.

The absence was conspicuous. In any inquiry into the loss of a ship, the mechanism of the sinking is the central question. The Titanic inquiry had spent days on the metallurgy of the hull plates and the design of the watertight doors. The Empress of Ireland inquiry had examined the collision damage in minute detail. The Lusitania inquiry did not examine the second explosion because to examine it would have required examining what was in the hold. To examine what was in the hold would have required discussing the cargo. To discuss the cargo would have required acknowledging that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, which would have complicated the narrative of a defenseless passenger liner attacked without provocation. The court’s silence on the second explosion was not an oversight. It was a structural choice.

The same silence extended to the Admiralty’s intelligence. In the weeks and days before the sinking, Room 40—the Admiralty’s cryptographic unit—had been intercepting and decrypting German naval signals that indicated U-boat activity in the Irish Sea and the approaches to Liverpool. General warnings had been sent to the Lusitania by wireless. The specific intelligence that a submarine, later identified as U-20 under Walther Schwieger, was operating on the Lusitania’s approach course had not been forwarded. The Juno escort had been diverted. None of this was placed before the court.

The inquiry’s structure ensured that these omissions would not become visible during the proceedings. The Admiralty’s counsel controlled the questions put to naval witnesses. When naval officers were called, they were asked about the warnings that had been sent, not about the intelligence that had been received and not forwarded. When the question of the ship’s speed was raised, it was raised in terms of Turner’s navigational judgment, not in terms of any Admiralty instruction. When the question of the escort was raised, it was raised obliquely, and the answers were given in camera, away from the public and the press.

The public sessions were conducted in the atmosphere of a nation at war. The gallery was full. The newspapers reported each day’s testimony in detail. The German embassy’s warning, published in American newspapers before the Lusitania’s departure, was entered into the record as evidence of premeditation. The torpedoing was described as an act of piracy. The Attorney General’s questions were framed to lead the witnesses toward the conclusion that the sinking was the result of German criminality and that the ship’s officers had acted reasonably in the circumstances. The witnesses, for the most part, followed where the questions led.

Turner’s testimony occupied the center of the second day’s proceedings. He was asked about his course. He had been steaming on a heading that brought the Lusitania close to the Old Head of Kinsale, rather than following the mid-channel route that might have been expected. He explained that he had been ordered to keep a landfall in sight for navigational purposes. He was asked about his speed. The ship had been making approximately eighteen knots, reduced from her normal service speed of twenty-one. He explained that the reduction was in response to the submarine warnings. He was asked about the fog. He described the visibility on the morning of the sinking, which had been poor but had cleared by midday. He was asked about the torpedo. He described the impact, the listing, and the order to abandon ship.

The questions were precise. The answers were precise. The precision itself was a kind of construction. Each question and each answer built a wall around the events of 7 May, a wall that contained everything that had happened on the ship and nothing that had happened in the Admiralty’s offices in Whitehall. The court was building a record that would be complete in what it chose to include and airless in what it chose to exclude.

The cross-examination of Turner was brief. No party to the proceedings had an interest in pressing him hard. The Board of Trade’s counsel sought to establish that the ship had been properly navigated. Cunard’s counsel sought to establish that the company had operated the ship in accordance with regulations and Admiralty instructions. The representatives of the survivors and the bereaved, who had been granted limited standing, asked questions about the lifeboats and the speed of the sinking. Whether Turner had been given specific intelligence about U-20’s position was not asked. Whether he had been told that the Juno had been withdrawn was not asked. Whether he knew what was in the cargo hold was not asked.

Turner himself did not raise these matters. He was a witness in a proceeding that was being managed by the state, and he answered the questions he was asked. His private defense, which had been a statement of fact—he had followed his orders, he had been struck by a torpedo—became, in the public setting of the inquiry, something more. It became the testimony around which the official record would be constructed. The record would show that the captain had acted properly, that the crew had acted properly, and that the sinking was the fault of the German submarine commander.

The inquiry heard from other witnesses over the following days. Charles Lauriat, the American publisher and a survivor of the sinking, testified to the chaos on the boat deck and the difficulty of launching the lifeboats. He described the list, the panic, and the speed with which the ship had gone down. His testimony was vivid and detailed. It was also, in the context of the inquiry’s structure, a narrative of suffering that served to reinforce the image of German barbarity without raising questions about British responsibility.

Other survivors gave similar accounts. Theodate Pope, the American socialite, described her experience in the water. Crew members described the engine room, the wireless office, the bridge. Each testimony added detail to the picture of the sinking. None addressed the questions the court had chosen not to ask.

Technical discussions on lifeboats and speed occupied several sessions. The design of the Lusitania’s lifeboats came under examination, along with the capacity of the davits and the training of the crew in boat handling. Evidence was heard that the ship’s list had made it impossible to launch the port-side boats. The starboard-side boats had been launched with difficulty because the ship’s rail was already at the waterline. The ship had sunk so quickly that no more than six boats could be got away. All of this was true. All of it was also beside the larger point, which was that the ship had been in waters where submarines were known to be active, and the Admiralty had known more about those submarines than it had told the ship.

The speed discussion was equally controlled. The Lusitania had been making eighteen knots at the time of the attack. Her full speed was twenty-one knots or better. In the submarine threat environment, faster speed was generally considered a defense, because a submarine’s ability to track and intercept a fast target was limited. Testimony about the decision to reduce speed suggested that the reduction was a reasonable response to the warnings. Whether the Admiralty had considered the reduced speed to be a risk factor was not heard. Whether the Admiralty had instructed Turner to reduce speed or whether Turner had made the decision on his own was not heard.

The inquiry’s middle sessions established the pattern that would hold through to the end. Each line of questioning opened a window onto the events of 7 May. Each window was framed so that the view it offered was of the German torpedo and the ship’s response. The view never extended to the Admiralty’s intelligence picture, to the cargo, or to the second explosion. The court was conducting a dialogue in a vacuum of withheld intelligence. The facts that were known to the Admiralty and not known to the court—or, more precisely, not admitted into the court’s proceedings—were the facts that would have complicated the narrative.

The inquiry sat for four days at the Westminster Central Hall, from 15 to 18 June. Further sessions were scheduled for 1 July at the Westminster Palace Hotel and for 17 July at Caxton Hall. The proceedings moved between venues, but the structure remained constant. Mersey presided. The counsel presented their questions. The witnesses gave their answers. The public and the press observed.

The atmosphere in the courtroom was one of controlled gravity. Mersey was a patient and experienced commissioner. He allowed counsel to lead their witnesses. He intervened occasionally to clarify a point of evidence. He did not intervene to expand the scope of the inquiry beyond its terms of reference. The press reported the proceedings with reverence. The sinking was, in the public mind, a German atrocity. The inquiry was the mechanism by which that atrocity would be formally documented and its victims vindicated.

The German position, as articulated in the days following the sinking, was that the Lusitania had been a legitimate military target. The German Foreign Office had alleged that the ship was armed, that she was carrying troops, and that she was carrying munitions. The German government had cited the embassy’s warning, published in American newspapers before the ship’s departure, as evidence that passengers had been given notice of the risk. The inquiry did not engage with these claims in any sustained way. The German allegations were mentioned in passing. No evidence was taken on whether the ship was armed. No forensic examination was made of the cargo. The court treated the German position as a propaganda exercise and did not test its elements against the available evidence.

This was, in its own way, the most telling feature of the proceedings. The inquiry was convened to establish the facts of the sinking. It established some of the facts and omitted others. The omissions were not random. They were the omissions that would have been most damaging to the Admiralty and most useful to the German case. By excluding the Room 40 intercepts, the court ensured that no one would ask why the specific intelligence about U-20’s patrol had not been forwarded to the ship. By excluding the cargo from forensic examination, the court ensured that no one would ask whether the second explosion had been caused by the detonation of munitions. By excluding the question of the escort’s withdrawal, the court ensured that no one would ask why the Juno had been diverted.

The inquiry was not a search for truth. It was the construction of a record. The record would serve purposes that extended beyond the courtroom. It would be published. It would be cited in the diplomatic correspondence between London and Washington. It would be used to demonstrate that the British government had conducted itself properly and that the German government had acted barbarously. The record was a diplomatic weapon, and its manufacture was the inquiry’s true function.

The survivors who attended the proceedings sat in the courtroom and listened to the testimony. Some had lost family members. Some had been pulled from the water. Some had been in the lifeboats that got away. They heard the questions and the answers. They heard the technical discussions about lifeboats and speed. They did not hear the questions that were not asked. They did not know, unless they had been told, that the Admiralty had been intercepting German naval signals and had not forwarded the relevant intelligence to the ship. They did not know that the cargo manifest included items that, if they had detonated, could have produced the second explosion. They sat in a courtroom that was designed to produce a specific verdict, and they did not know what was being withheld.

The bereaved families who had lost relatives on the Lusitania had been granted limited representation at the inquiry. Their counsel was permitted to ask questions about the lifeboats, the speed, and the conduct of the crew. Their counsel was not permitted to ask about the Admiralty’s intelligence operations. The terms of the inquiry’s reference, as drafted by the Board of Trade, had been written to prevent those questions from being raised. The families’ counsel worked within the constraints that had been imposed. The constraints were invisible to the public, but they shaped every answer the court received.

Turner completed his testimony and stepped down from the witness stand. He had performed as the Admiralty and Cunard required. He had answered the questions he was asked. He had not volunteered what he may or may not have known. He had been a witness in a proceeding that was designed to clear him of blame, and the proceeding had done its work. He would not be found negligent. He would not be held responsible. The court would find that the sinking was caused by the German torpedo and that the ship’s officers had acted properly. The finding was, in a sense, accurate. It was also, in a more important sense, incomplete.

The inquiry’s remaining sessions, scheduled for July, would hear further technical evidence and closing arguments. The formal verdict would be delivered by Lord Mersey in due course. But the shape of the verdict was already visible in the shape of the proceedings. The court had been convened to produce a finding of German criminality and British blamelessness. The evidence had been arranged to support that finding. The evidence that would have complicated that finding had been excluded. The machinery of justice had been used to manufacture a record that would serve the state’s purposes in the diplomatic confrontation that was already taking shape.

Captain William Thomas Turner was a British merchant captain, born on 23 October 1856, who would die on 23 June 1933. He is best known as the captain of RMS Lusitania when she was sunk by a German torpedo in May 1915. The inquiry that examined his conduct would clear him. The clearing was necessary, not because he was innocent or guilty, but because the state required a captain who had been vindicated, not one who had been condemned. A condemned captain would have invited questions about the Admiralty’s role. A vindicated captain closed those questions before they could be asked.

The inquiry proceedings at the Westminster Central Hall and the Westminster Palace Hotel were conducted in public. The sessions that dealt with naval intelligence were conducted in camera. The public record, as published, would contain the transcripts of the public sessions. The private sessions would not be published. The distinction between the two was the distinction between what the state was willing to show and what it was not. The published record would be the version of events that the Admiralty and the Board of Trade had constructed for consumption by the press, the public, and the foreign governments that would receive it as an official account.

According to one account, Lord Mersey later told his children privately, ‘The Lusitania case was a damned, dirty business!’ While a public report was presented to Parliament, some would later suggest the existence of a fuller, secret report, which has since proved untraceable.

The court in the Westminster Hotel sat, heard its witnesses, and produced its record. The record was clean. The record was incomplete. The record was a weapon, and it was about to be deployed.