Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

by Erik Larson

  Now began the complex choreography that would determine whether he could add this ship to his personal tally of sunk tonnage. Men ran back and forth under the direction of the ship’s chief engineer, to help keep the boat level, as the helmsmen adjusted the horizontal and vertical planes. Schwieger raised and lowered the periscope at brief intervals to keep the steamer in sight but minimize the amount of time the periscope and its wake were visible on the surface.

  With his rangefinder, Schwieger gauged the ship’s distance and speed. Another indicator of velocity was the height to which water rose on the target’s bow. The higher and whiter, the faster. If this had been a French battleship, Schwieger would have had to watch especially closely, for the French navy painted false wakes on the bows of its warships, in an effort to confuse the calculations of U-boat commanders.

  Schwieger had two kinds of torpedoes aboard—an old bronze model and the newest G6 torpedoes. The G6, or “gyro,” torpedo was bigger and more reliable, but Schwieger selected one of the bronze models, presumably in order to conserve the better torpedoes for more important targets, like the troop transports he would be hunting in Liverpool Bay. The crew armed it and flooded its launching tube, one of the two tubes in U-20’s bow. The boat had two others in its stern.

  The men at the hydroplanes worked to keep the boat as steady and level as possible, lest the conning tower rise too high and betray the submarine’s presence, or the periscope sink below the surface and make aiming impossible.

  The freighter approached, clearly unaware that U-20 was ahead. Schwieger positioned his boat at a right angle to the ship’s course and advanced slowly to maintain “steerage,” just enough forward motion to keep the hydroplanes and rudder engaged. The submarine was, in effect, a gun barrel and had to be pointed in the right direction at the time the torpedo was launched.

  From the bow a crewman called, “Torpedo ready.”

  TORPEDOES WERE weapons of great power—when they worked. Schwieger distrusted them, and with good reason. According to a German tally 60 percent of attempted torpedo firings resulted in failure. Torpedoes veered off course. They traveled too deep and passed under their targets. Their triggers broke; their warheads failed to explode.

  Aiming them was an art. Through the restricted view afforded by the periscope, a captain had to estimate the forward speed of the target, its course, and its distance away. He aimed not at the target itself but at a point well ahead, as if shooting skeet.

  Stories of torpedo mishaps were rife among crews. One U-boat experienced three torpedo failures in twenty-four hours. In the third of these, the torpedo turned unexpectedly and traveled in a circle back toward the boat, and nearly hit it. Another submarine, UB-109, of a class used primarily for coastal patrols, tried launching an attack while surfaced. The first torpedo, fired from its stern, left the tube and immediately sank. The captain maneuvered the boat so that he could take another shot, this time from the bow. But, according to a British intelligence report, “This torpedo broke surface 5 or 6 times, described a complete circle, and also missed the target.”

  Torpedoes were expensive, and heavy. Each cost up to $5,000—over $100,000 today—and weighed over three thousand pounds, twice the weight of a Ford Model T. Schwieger’s boat had room only for seven, two of which were to be held in reserve for the homeward voyage.

  If the performance measured by the German navy were to hold true for Schwieger on this patrol, it would mean that if he fired all seven of his torpedoes, only three would succeed in striking a ship and exploding.

  SCHWIEGER’S TARGET—the presumed British ship, flying Danish colors—continued its approach. It was 300 meters away, the U-boat equivalent of point-blank range, when Schwieger gave the order to fire. The command was repeated throughout the boat.

  What should have come next was a whoosh and a tremor as the torpedo left its tube, followed by a sudden, perceptible rise of the bow due to the lost weight, this immediately suppressed by the men at the hydroplanes.

  But Schwieger heard nothing and felt nothing. There was only silence.

  The torpedo never left the tube. A misfire—a locking mechanism had failed to release.

  The target continued on its way into the safe, deep waters of the North Atlantic, its crew apparently unaware of how close they had come to disaster.

  LUSITANIA

  SUNSHINE AND HAPPINESS

  WILLIAM MERIHEINA, OF GENERAL MOTORS: “TUESDAY—Resumption of games on deck today. Dandy sunshine weather.”

  NELLIE HUSTON, thirty-one, second class, heading home to England: “Tuesday: I didn’t write a letter each day you will notice. On Saturday night after I’d written to you I went to bed and had a fine night. I’ve got the top bunk and really I don’t know if I was supposed to be able to spring right into it but I tried and couldn’t so had to ring for the steward to bring me some steps. They seem to be short of everything so I had to wait quite a while. He tried to persuade me to jump in but I’m too heavy behind.”

  JANE MACFARQUHAR, of Stratford, Connecticut, traveling with her daughter, Grace, sixteen; second class: “I think a happier company of passengers would be impossible to find. They were of all ages: a large number of babies in their mothers’ arms, children of various ages and men and women up to the age of seventy.

  “Games were heartily enjoyed on the decks during the daytime and concerts were enjoyed in the evenings—sunshine and happiness making thoughts of danger almost impossible.”

  CHARLES LAURIAT: “As the days passed the passengers seemed to enjoy them more and more, and formed those acquaintances such as one does on an ocean crossing.”

  DOROTHY CONNER, twenty-five, of Medford, Oregon, in first class: “I’d never seen a more uneventful or stupid voyage.”

  ROOM 40

  THE ORION SAILS

  ON TUESDAY, MAY 4, THE ADMIRALTY DECIDED IT could no longer hold the HMS Orion at Devonport but took precautions to make sure the superdreadnought made it safely to the fleet’s base at Scapa Flow.

  Admiral Oliver ordered the ship to depart that night, under cover of darkness, and gave strict instructions that it sail 50 miles west past the Scilly Islands before turning north and then keep at least 100 miles out to sea for the remainder of the voyage up the Irish coast. He also assigned four destroyers—HMS Laertes, Moorsom, Myngs, and Boyne—to provide an escort until the Orion reached deep ocean.

  A succession of reports to the Admiralty provided a step-by-step account of the Orion’s progress, including changes in speed. It was the most closely watched ship on the high seas.

  The Admiralty’s telegraphic records show no reference made at all to the Lusitania, by now four days into its voyage and halfway across the Atlantic.

  IN LONDON, at the Admiralty’s War Room, messages arrived reporting fresh submarine sightings and new attacks. On the morning of Sunday, May 2, a French ship, the Europe, was torpedoed and sunk off the Scillies. A lighthouse keeper elsewhere reported spotting a “steamer chased by submarine.” An Admiralty collier, the Fulgent, was torpedoed off the Skelling Rocks west of Ireland; nine members of its crew were rescued and landed at Galway on Monday evening. Early on the morning of Tuesday, May 4, an observer reported spotting a submarine on the surface northwest of Frenchman’s Rock in the Scillies. He watched it move east, then dive. That same morning, at 3:15 A.M., a coast watcher reported a “large sheet of flame” rising from the sea off County Mayo.

  But in Room 40, Commander Hope and his code breakers heard nothing new from Kptlt. Walther Schwieger. The submarine was too far from Germany to attempt wireless communication. Room 40 could only presume that Schwieger was still on his way to his patrol zone in the Irish Sea.

  It was a curious moment in the history of naval warfare. Room 40 knew a U-boat was heading south to Liverpool—knew the boat’s history; knew that it was now somewhere in the North Atlantic under orders to sink troop transports and any other British vessel it encountered; and knew as well that the submarine was armed with enough shells and torped
oes to sink a dozen ships. It was like knowing that a particular killer was loose on the streets of London, armed with a particular weapon, and certain to strike in a particular neighborhood within the next few days, the only unknown being exactly when.

  The quiet meant nothing. At some point U-20 would make its presence known.

  U-20

  FRUSTRATION

  AT 7:40 P.M., TUESDAY, SCHWIEGER AT LAST SIGHTED the coast of Ireland. A lighthouse lay on the horizon, barely visible in the rising mist.

  The day had been a disappointment. Strong swells had made the going uncomfortable for the crew below, and Schwieger had found no targets worthy of attack. An armed trawler briefly had come into view, but he realized its draft was so shallow that a torpedo would likely run underneath its keel. Visibility had been poor for most of the day, though by evening it improved to the point where he could see distant objects. The gathering haze, however, foretold a night of fog.

  Fifteen minutes later, a steamship appeared, heading in U-20’s direction. It was still far off but looked to be a vessel of significant tonnage. Schwieger ordered a dive to periscope depth and prepared his attack. He placed U-20 at a 90-degree angle to the ship’s course, to set up what he called a “clean bow shot,” and once again selected a bronze torpedo.

  As the ship approached, however, it seemed to shrink in size. Something about the fading light and mist had produced an optical illusion that made the vessel at first look large, but the closer it got, the smaller it got. Schwieger estimated its tonnage at a mere 1,500 tons. Still, it was something. He maneuvered so that when the ship’s course intersected his, he would be just 300 meters away. The target was still a mile off.

  And then, as he watched through the periscope, the ship sheered from its course. At that distance, there was no chance for him to catch up.

  Even in the spare prose of his log, Schwieger’s frustration was evident. “It was impossible that the steamer could have seen us,” he wrote. He identified the ship as a Swedish vessel, the Hibernia, “with neutral signs, without flag.”

  Schwieger brought U-20 back to the surface, and continued south, through a night he described as being exceptionally dark.

  LONDON; BERLIN; WASHINGTON

  COMFORT DENIED

  ON THAT WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, BRITAIN’S TOP NAVAL official, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, left London for Paris. He could do so with relative safety because a combination of protective measures—sea mines and submarine nets at the eastern end of the English Channel and heavy patrols along its length—had made the channel too dangerous for submarines to traverse on a routine basis. Although Churchill traveled incognito and checked into his hotel under a false name, there was little mystery about his visit. He was to meet with Italian and French officials to determine how the Italian navy should be used in the Mediterranean Sea, now that Italy—on April 26—had joined the war on the side of Britain, France, and Russia. Afterward, as he had done on previous occasions, Churchill planned to travel to the front to spend time with Field Marshal Sir John French—Sir John Denton Pinkstone French—commander of the British Expeditionary Force in France.

  With Churchill absent, the Admiralty became a much quieter place. Ordinarily, he kept a very close hand on naval matters, including details of day-to-day operations that, at least in theory, were supposed to be left to the number two Admiralty official, the First Sea Lord. This put the forty-year-old Churchill in direct conflict with the seventy-four-year-old occupant of that post, Adm. Jacky Fisher.

  If Churchill resembled a bulldog, Fisher was a large bulb-eyed toad, dead ringer for a future actor named László Löwenstein, better known by the stage name Peter Lorre. Like Churchill, Fisher was strong-willed and tended to consume himself with the minute details of naval operations. When both men were present, tension was the order of the day. One naval official wrote to his wife, “The situation is curious—two very strong and clever men, one old, wily and of vast experience, one young, self-assertive, with a great self-satisfaction but unstable. They cannot work together, they cannot both run the show.” Churchill seemed bent on usurping Fisher’s role. Churchill’s “energy and capacity for work were almost frightening,” wrote intelligence chief Blinker Hall. “Notes and memoranda on every conceivable subject would stream forth from his room at all hours of the day and night. What was worse, he would demand information which would ordinarily and properly have gone only to the First Sea Lord or Chief of Staff, a fact which more than once led to some confusion and an unmerited word of rebuke.”

  What made their relationship still more turbulent was the fact that Fisher seemed to be tottering on the verge of madness. Wrote Hall, “Gradually we in the Admiralty could not help becoming aware that the Fisher we had known was no longer with us. In his place was a sorely harassed and disillusioned man who was overtaxing his strength in the attempt to carry on. He might still on occasion show the old flashes of brilliance, but, beneath the surface, all was far from being well.… At any moment, we felt, the breaking-point would come.” Admiral Jellicoe, commander of the Grand Fleet, likewise grew concerned. “The state of affairs at Head Quarters,” he wrote, in an April 26 letter to a fellow officer, “is as bad or worse than I feared. It is lamentable that things should be as they are, and there is no doubt whatever that the Fleet is rapidly losing confidence in the administration.”

  Churchill acknowledged Fisher’s energy and prior genius. “But he was seventy-four years old,” Churchill wrote, in an oblique evisceration. “As in a great castle which has long contended with time, the mighty central mass of the donjon towered up intact and seemingly everlasting. But the outworks and the battlements had fallen away, and its imperious ruler dwelt only in the special apartments and corridors with which he had a lifelong familiarity.” This, however, was exactly what Churchill had hoped for in bringing Fisher back as First Sea Lord. “I took him because I knew he was old and weak, and that I should be able to keep things in my own hands.”

  By May 1915, Churchill wrote, Fisher was suffering from “great nervous exhaustion.” With Churchill gone to Paris, Fisher was in charge and seemed barely up to the task. “He had evinced unconcealed distress and anxiety at being left alone in sole charge of the admiralty,” Churchill wrote. “There is no doubt that the old Admiral was worried almost out of his wits by the immense pressure of the times and by the course events had taken.”

  In Churchill’s absence, an incident took place that seemed to reinforce his concerns about Fisher’s sanity. Before leaving for France, Churchill had told his wife, Clementine, “Just look after ‘the old boy’ for me,” and so Clementine invited Fisher to come to lunch. She neither liked nor trusted Fisher and doubted he could withstand the stress of having to run the Admiralty in her husband’s absence. The lunch went well, however, and Fisher departed. Or so Clementine thought.

  Soon afterward, she too left the sitting room, and found that Fisher was still in the house, “lurking in the passage,” according to an account by the Churchills’ daughter Mary. Clementine was startled, Mary recalled. “She asked him what he wanted, whereupon, in a brusque and somewhat incoherent manner he told her that, while she no doubt was under the impression that Winston was conferring with Sir John French, he was in fact frolicking with a mistress in Paris!”

  To Clementine, this was a ludicrous charge. She snapped, “Be quiet, you silly old man, and get out.”

  With Churchill in Paris, the torrent of notes and telegrams he generated daily—“the constant bombardment of memoranda and minutes on every conceivable subject, technical or otherwise,” as Fisher’s assistant described it—abruptly subsided. Relative to the turmoil that ordinarily existed in its halls, the Admiralty now became quiescent, if not to say inattentive.

  AT THE U.S. EMBASSY in Berlin, Ambassador James W. Gerard received a curt, two-paragraph note from the German Foreign Office. The message, dated Wednesday, May 5, cited the fact that in preceding weeks “it has repeatedly occurred” that neutral ships had been sunk
by German submarines in the designated war zone. In one case, the note said, a U-boat sank a neutral ship “on account of the inadequate illumination of its neutral markings in the darkness.”

  The note urged Gerard to convey these facts to Washington and to recommend that the United States “again warn American shipping circles against traversing the war zone without taking due precautions.” Ships, the note said, should be sure to make their neutral markings “as plain as possible and especially to have them illuminated promptly at nightfall and throughout the night.”

  Gerard relayed this to the State Department the next day.

  IN WASHINGTON, President Wilson found himself in emotional turmoil, for reasons unrelated to ships and war.

  By now he had fallen ever more deeply in love with Edith Galt, and with the prospect of no longer being alone. On the evening of Tuesday, May 4, Wilson sent his Pierce-Arrow to pick up Edith and bring her to the White House for dinner. She wore a white satin gown with “creamy lace, and just a touch of emerald-green velvet at the edge of the deep square neck, and green slippers to match,” she recalled. Afterward, Wilson led her out onto the South Portico, where they sat by themselves, without chaperone. The evening was warm, the air fragrant with the rich perfume of a Washington spring. He told her he loved her.

  She was stunned. “Oh, you can’t love me,” she said, “for you don’t really know me; and it is less than a year since your wife died.”

  Wilson, unfazed, said, “I was afraid, knowing you, that I would shock you,” he said, “but I would be less than a gentleman if I continued to make opportunities to see you without telling you what I have told my daughters and Helen: that I want you to be my wife.”