The Submarine’s Patrol…d learned to live with warnings of this kind. The RMS Lusitania, then three days out of New York, received the warning by wireless. Captain William Turner acknowledged the message. His course remained unchanged. His speed remained steady. The extraordinary precautions that might have been warr…
The Crossing…, its war diary open for its next entry, the RMS Lusitania encountered a wall of fog on the afternoon of 2 May 1915. On the bridge, Captain William Turner ordered the speed reduced from twenty-one to fifteen knots. The deck log recorded the change. It was a weather call, the kind of decision a…
The Roar from Within…inundated, her steam pressure gone, her power failing, her deck tilted at an angle that made the lifeboats useless. On the bridge, Captain William Turner was about to give the only orders left to give.
A Notice in the Newspapers…rs 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…
Captain Turner’s Orders…through the water, running on batteries, carrying her complement of torpedoes, under the command of a thirty-year-old Kapitänleutnant named Walther Schwieger. The two men did not know each other. They had never met, would never meet. One was a British merchant captain with forty years of experien…
The Submarine’s PatrolThe submarine surfaced at half past six in the evening, and Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger climbed through the conning tower hatch into the last light of 4 May 1915. The North Sea lay behind him. Ahead, the Atlantic opened toward…
Captain Turner’s Orders…ts and the ambiguous nature of these instructions. The directives told Turner to avoid headlands. The Irish coast was lined with them — the Old Head of Kinsale, Hook Head, Tuskar Rock — prominent points of land where ships naturally converged on familiar courses, where a submarine could lie in wait…
The Submarine’s Patrol…eet them. Schwieger made his calculation. He ordered the helmsman to steer west-southwest, toward the shipping lanes that converged off the Old Head of Kinsale. The diesel engines pushed the submarine forward at twelve knots. The sea stretched flat and grey in every direction. The war diary noted t…
The Crossing…ay how many. They did not say that one of them was U-20, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger, and that it was positioned off the Old Head of Kinsale, on the route the Lusitania was following. Schwieger’s patrol, unknown to Turner, was entering its final phase. U-20 had sunk two ships in…
The Doors That Would Not Close…e of the Cunard Company since 1883. He had occupied the position of Commander since 1903 and held an Extra Master’s Certificate since 1907. Lord Mersey, who presided over the wreck inquiry two months later, would note that Turner gave his evidence truthfully and well. He was not a man given…
The Woman in the Water…This is also what would later be set against all that happened on deck: while survivors clung to wreckage and described their ordeal before Lord Mersey’s inquiry; while newspapers printed illustrations of hulls listing into cold water; while diplomats drafted notes and counter-notes about b…
The Sheds at Queenstown…over every subsequent inquiry like a weight that could not be lifted. The Mersey inquiry, presided over by Wreck Commissioner John Bigham, Lord Mersey, would convene in June 1915 in London. Testimony would come from survivors, from Cunard officers, from naval witnesses, and from government…
The First Cables to Washington…nt where the press had already established the terms of the debate. The President himself occupied an ambiguous position in this landscape. Woodrow Wilson had been informed of the sinking on the evening of 7 May, while Page’s first cables were still crossing the Atlantic. His initial response,…
The First Note from Washington…ing since the day of the sinking that the United States must demand an explanation from Berlin. The second revision had come from President Woodrow Wilson himself, who had taken Lansing’s draft and sharpened its language, giving it the force of a moral argument rather than a legal brief. The t…
The German Reply…e eastward. Arriving at the State Department in late June 1915, it was decoded, translated, and placed before Secretary Bryan and President Woodrow Wilson. Bryan had weakened during the drafting of the second note. Softer language had been his proposal. He had suggested that the United States…
Captain Turner’s Orders…that the record preserves. Charles Lauriat, the Boston bookseller and publisher, traveling with business papers and a collection of prints. Alfred Vanderbilt, the American railway heir, traveling without his valet, who had missed the sailing. Theodate Pope, the Connecticut architect and philanthr…
The Names on the Pier…relentless and it was public. A reader opening a newspaper in London or New York on 11 or 12 May 1915 would find, side by side, the name of Alfred Vanderbilt and the name of a stewardess from Liverpool, the name of a theatrical producer and the name of a child from Illinois. The lists did not dis…
The Queen of the AtlanticThe Liverpool landing stage held the Lusitania on the afternoon of 25 July 1914, and the river Mersey ran thick with small craft come to see her off. Whistles sounded from tugs and ferri…
A Notice in the Newspapers…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…
Captain Turner’s Orders…nd miles of ocean, each following orders, each carrying out an assigned role in a drama that neither fully understood. On the bridge of the Lusitania, berthed at Pier 54 on the North River, a man in a new bowler hat was reading through the season’s sailing orders one final time. William T…
A Notice in the Newspapers…ere 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.…
Captain Turner’s Orders…f and begin the 202nd crossing of her service, the crossing that would take her past the Old Head of Kinsale and into the patrol zone where U-20 was even now moving through the water, running on batteries, carrying her complement of torpedoes, under the command of a thirty-year-old K…
The Submarine’s Patrol…of thirty-four men went about their work in the confined space below. Schwieger had cleared the minefields and the patrols. He had brought U-20 through the most dangerous passage in the world. Now he faced a choice. The submarine carried seven torpedoes. She had left Emden on 30 Apr…
The Queen of the Atlantic…; structural supports were there. The summer of 1914 found the Lusitania on her regular route between Liverpool and New York, with stops at Queenstown in Ireland to pick up additional passengers and mail. The political situation in Europe had grown tense. Austria-Hungary and Serbia were in…
A Notice in the Newspapers…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 w…
Aboard the Lusitania…the wireless signal “Questor.” She replied “Westrona.” This exchange has been interpreted by some as a coded message diverting the ship to Queenstown. It was not. According to the Merchant Vessel codebook, it was a routine query to confirm the Lusitania had the correct edition of the code…
The Queen of the Atlantic…urious ships, and their vessels had taken the Blue Riband, the unofficial prize for the fastest Atlantic crossing, away from British lines. Cunard responded with a pair of ships designed to reclaim that honor and hold it. The Lusitania and her sister Mauretania would be the largest pas…
A Notice in the NewspapersThe Cunard liner steamed westward into an Atlantic that had carried passengers safely for generations. That confidence had been built over a century o…
Captain Turner’s Orders…set, with a broad weathered face and the deliberate movements of a man who had spent forty years learning the sea’s patience. He had joined Cunard in 1878 as fourth officer, left to gain broader experience, returned in 1889, and had held command since 1903. He carried an Extra Master’s…
The Queen of the Atlantic…y millions of people over decades. The Admiralty knew things that the passengers did not. The naval intelligence division, operating out of Room 40 in the Old Admiralty Building, had begun to intercept and decode German wireless transmissions. The German Navy used radio to communicate w…
A Notice in the Newspapers…ed 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 c…
Captain Turner’s Orders…uring the crossing. The Admiralty knew more than Turner. That was the architecture of the situation, and it was structural, not accidental. Room 40, the naval intelligence unit operating from the Old Building in Whitehall, was intercepting and decrypting German naval wireless traffic. T…