Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
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9 When on patrol: According to Hans Koerver, by May 1915 Germany had only an average of fifteen U-boats available for long-range service each day. At any one time, typically only two patrolled the British Isles. Koerver, German Submarine Warfare, xxi, xxiii.
10 “on the fastest possible route”: Bailey, “Sinking,” 54.
11 The submarine as a weapon: Compton-Hall, Submarine Boats, 14, 21, 36, 38–39, 99, 102, 109; Fontenoy, Submarines, 8, 10.
12 Schwieger’s boat was 210 feet long: Rössler, U-Boat, 14; von Trapp, To the Last Salute, 32–33; Neureuther and Bergen, U-Boat Stories, 173.
13 “More dials and gauges”: Thomas, Raiders, 82.
14 Even his superiors seemed surprised: Ledger: U-20, Feb. 6, 1915, Ministry of Defence Papers, DEFE/69/270, National Archives UK.
15 “She was a jolly boat”: Thomas, Raiders, 81, 91.
16 “He was a wonderful man”: Edgar von Spiegel interview, Lusitania, Catalog No. 4232, Imperial War Museum, London.
17 “Apparently the enemy was at home”: Thomas, Raiders, 83.
18 It was the one time: Spiegel, Adventures, 12.
19 “And now,” Schwieger said: For details about this Christmas scene, see Thomas, Raiders, 83–85.
20 at least one dog aboard: Hoehling and Hoehling, Last Voyage, 4; Thomas, Raiders, 90–91. Supposedly one commander once transported a juvenile camel.
21 That Schwieger was able to conjure: Forstner, Journal, 56–57; Neureuther and Bergen, U-Boat Stories, 189; Thomas, Raiders, 86.
22 “And now,” said Zentner: Thomas, Raiders, 86.
23 “U-boat sweat”: Spiegel, Adventures, 15.
24 “You can have no conception”: Koenig, Voyage, 116.
25 “The first breath of fresh air”: Niemöller, From U-Boat to Pulpit, 1.
26 It was early in the war: Zentner tells this story in Thomas’s Raiders, 87–89.
The literature on U-boats is full of stories that can only make you wonder why on earth any young man would ever join Germany’s submarine service. Case in point: One boat, U-18, attempted an attack on Britain’s main fleet based in Scapa Flow, off northern Scotland, but was spotted and rammed by a patrol vessel, a trawler. The collision damaged the boat’s periscope and the horizontal rudders—the hydroplanes—that controlled its ascent and descent. The captain ordered an emergency dive, but the boat plunged to the bottom, then shot back up to the surface, out of control. There it was rammed a second time, now by a destroyer. The U-boat sank but struggled back to the surface, where it drifted, disabled. The captain signaled surrender. The destroyer managed to rescue all but one member of the crew.
On another U-boat, during a practice dive, the commander dashed from the conning tower at the last minute and slammed the hatch behind him. It didn’t close. As the boat went below the surface, water surged in and quickly began flooding the interior. The boat sank 90 feet. The water rose so quickly that for some crew it was soon at neck level. It was then that one crewman, himself nearly submerged, thought to engage the boat’s compressed-air apparatus, which blew water from its diving tanks. The boat shot to the surface. The crew engaged its internal pumps, and the water quickly disappeared. “But suddenly,” recalled Leading Seaman Karl Stoltz, “the whole interior was filled with a greenish choking vapor—chlorine gas from the water that had flooded the electric battery.” The captain ordered all the men out on deck, except for an engine-room mechanic and the helmsman. Fresh air flowing through the hatch thinned the gas.
The cause was a simple error by the captain. The hatch, once closed, was supposed to be sealed in place using a wheel that operated a series of clamps, but before the dive the captain had mistakenly turned the wheel the wrong way, setting the clamps in their sealed position, thus blocking the hatch from closing. Stoltz estimated that the crew had been just seconds away from being drowned.
Even the stealth of U-boats, their main asset, could work against them. On January 21, a U-boat of the same class as Schwieger’s U-20 was on patrol off the coast of Holland when its crew spotted another submarine. Presuming at first that this was another German boat, they tried twice to hail it but got no answer. The U-boat’s captain, Bruno Hoppe, now decided the other submarine must be British and launched an attack. He sank it with one torpedo, then moved close to attempt to rescue survivors. There was only one, who now informed him the boat he had just destroyed was in fact the German navy’s own U-7, under the command of Hoppe’s closest friend. “The two men had been inseparable for years,” according to U-boat captain Baron von Spiegel, who knew them both.
For these and other stories, see Gibson and Prendergast, German Submarine War, 17–18, 20; Neureuther and Bergen, U-Boat Stories, 154–57; Thomas, Raiders, 171–72.
27 Depth charges did not yet exist: Depth charges were first deployed in January 1916 but initially were not very effective. They would not become a significant threat to U-boat commanders for another year. Sonar—the source of the iconic “ping” in submarine movies—would not be introduced until after World War I. Breemer, Defeating the U-Boat, 34; Marder, From the Dreadnought, 350.
28 This was a strenuous maneuver: Forstner, Journal, 14–15.
29 oil-laced water: Neureuther and Bergen, U-Boat Stories, 25.
30 Throughout Friday: Schwieger, War Log.
LUSITANIA: MENAGERIE
1 That Friday, Charles Lauriat: Lauriat, Claim.
2 At Pier 54, on Friday morning: Letter, Albert E. Laslett to Principal Officer, Liverpool District, June 8, 1915, Ministry of Transport Papers, MT 9/1326, National Archives UK. That this drill did take place is documented by various references in the Admiralty Papers at the National Archives UK. For example, see “ ‘Lusitania’—American Proceedings,” Admiralty Papers, ADM 1/8451/56, National Archives UK.
3 Taken together: Answers of Petitioner to Interrogatories Propounded by Hunt, Hill & Betts, Petition of the Cunard Steamship Company, April 15, 1918, U.S. National Archives–New York.
4 For the Friday drill: Testimony, Andrew Chalmers, April 18, 1918, Petition of the Cunard Steamship Company, April 15, 1918, U.S. National Archives–New York, 20.
5 It was Turner’s belief: Deposition, William Thomas Turner, April 30, 1915, Petition of the Oceanic Steam Navigation Co. Limited, for Limitation of Its Liability as Owner of the S.S. Titanic, U.S. National Archives–NY.
6 What made raising a crew even harder: “Cunard Liner,” 939.
7 He noted “the awkward way”: Walker, Four Thousand Lives Lost, 169.
8 Baker idled away: Baker Papers.
9 “The old-fashioned able seaman”: New York Times, Nov. 21, 1915.
10 “They are competent enough”: Testimony, William Thomas Turner, June 15, 1915, “Investigation,” 7.
11 He also had two tattoos: These details were listed in Morton’s “Ordinary Apprentice’s Indenture,” a four-year contract that obligated Morton to obey the commands of his captain and the captain’s associates “and keep his and their secrets.” It stipulated further that the apprentice could not “frequent Taverns or Alehouses … nor play at unlawful games.” Above all, each apprentice agreed not to “absent himself … without leave.” In return, apprentices received an annual salary of £5 in the first year, which increased to slightly more than £10 in the last year. They were also guaranteed room and board and “Medicine and Medical and Surgical Assistance.” Each got ten shillings to do his wash. “Ordinary Apprentice’s Indenture,” Morton Papers, DX/2313, Merseyside; “Continuous Certificate of Discharge,” Morton Papers, DX/2313, Merseyside.
12 “We were still looking upon war”: Morton, Long Wake, 97.
13 “What a sight”: Ibid., 98.
14 “What are you boys looking at?”: Ibid., 99.
15 Malone was said to be a dead ringer: Bailey and Ryan, Lusitania Disaster, 108.
16 For German spies and saboteurs:
Some British officials even had concerns about the loyalty of the men employed by Cunard in its New York office, which was run by Charles
P. Sumner, manager of all the company’s operations in America. Cunard’s own Captain Dow was said to distrust Sumner “on the score of intimacy with Germans,” according to a telegram from Britain’s consul general in New York, Sir Courtenay Bennett. Sir Courtenay too was convinced the office was under the sway of Germany. He saw proof of this in the number of employees with German-sounding last names, such as Fecke, Falck, Buiswitz, Reichhold, Brauer, Breitenbach, and Muller. Sir Courtenay’s countryman Sir Arthur Herbert, a former diplomat, believed likewise. Their repeated inquiries made these already tense times all the more trying for Sumner, a skilled manager who kept Cunard’s ships sailing on schedule and had the full confidence, verging on friendship, of Cunard’s chairman, Alfred A. Booth.
Sir Arthur was so convinced that something sinister was afoot within Cunard’s New York operations that he hired a private detective to investigate without telling Sumner. The detective lacked subtlety and behaved in a manner that caused Cunard’s employees to suspect that he might be a spy. As Sumner recalled, “This man excited my suspicions so much that I put our Dock Detective on to the work of watching Sir Arthur Herbert’s detective.” Sumner sent a report to Sir Arthur about the private eye’s odd behavior, thinking he would be interested. “Instead of being pleased at what I had done,” Sumner wrote, “he [Sir Arthur] flew into a terrible passion and said that he had never been so insulted in his life.” Sir Arthur went so far as to accuse Sumner of spying on him and seemed so distressed that Sumner began to wonder if the ex-diplomat might in fact be harboring secrets of his own. Sumner wrote, “It really excited some suspicions in my mind that something might be disclosed by watching his movements.”
“Confidentially,” Sumner wrote, “I think I may safely express the opinion that Sir Arthur Herbert is a little ‘peculiar.’ ”
On that point at least, even Sumner’s other antagonist, Sir Courtenay Bennett, seemed to agree. On one occasion Sir Arthur paid a call on Sir Courtenay. An altercation arose, Sumner wrote, during which Sir Courtenay told his visitor to “ ‘go home and teach his mother how to suck eggs.’ ”
Sumner wrote, “While I cannot help thinking this was a somewhat undignified procedure … it affords the only funny incident that I have experienced in all my dealings with the two men.”
Telegram, C. Bennett to Alfred Booth, Nov. 30, 1914, D42/C1/1/66, Part 2 of 4, Cunard Archives; “Salaries of New York Office Staff,” D42/C1/1/66, Part 3 of 4, Cunard Archives; letter, Charles P. Sumner to D. Mearns, Dec. 29, 1914, D42/C1/2/44, Cunard Archives; letter,
Charles P. Sumner to Alfred A. Booth, Aug. 4, 1915, D42/C1/1/66, Part 3 of 4, Cunard Archives; telegram, Richard Webb to Cecil Spring-Rice, May 11, 1915, “Lusitania Various Papers,” Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/1058, National Archives UK.
17 “The crew of the Lusitania”: Telegram, April 27, 1915, Box 2, Bailey/Ryan Collection.
18 “You’re not going to get back”: Francis Burrows, interview, Lusitania, BBC Written Archives Centre.
19 “began doing something we shouldn’t”: Robert James Clark, interview, Lusitania, BBC Written Archives Centre.
20 In fact, exactly one year earlier: Memorandum, May 7, 1914, D42/PR13/3/14-17, Cunard Archives.
21 He made his way to Broadway: Preston, Lusitania, 110; Ramsay, Lusitania, 51; New York Times, March 30, 1915.
22 He went to Lüchow’s: Preston, Lusitania, 110.
23 That evening, back at his sister’s apartment: Lauriat, Claim.
24 Elsewhere in the city: See the website Lusitania Resource, www.RMSLusitania.info, which presents an easily searchable database about the ship and its passengers.
ROOM 40: “THE MYSTERY”
1 In London, two blocks from the Thames: My description of Room 40 and its operations is derived from documents held by the Churchill Archives, Churchill College, Cambridge, and the National Archives of the United Kingdom, at Kew, in its Admiralty Papers. For further reading, see Beesly, Room 40; Gannon, Inside Room 40; Adm. William James, Code Breakers; and Ramsay, “Blinker” Hall.
2 By far the most important: I cannot tell you how delighted I was when during one of my visits to the National Archives of the United Kingdom I was able to examine the actual codebook. It came to me like a gift, wrapped in paper with a cloth tie, in a large box. Touching it, and opening it, and turning its pages—gently—gave me one of those moments where the past comes briefly, physically alive. This very book had been on a German destroyer, sunk by the Russians in the early days of World War I. Signalbuch der Kaiserlichen Marine, Berlin, 1913, Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4156, National Archives UK; see also Beesly, Room 40, 4–5, 22–23; Halpern, Naval History, 36; Adm. William James, Code Breakers, 29; Grant, U-Boat Intelligence, 10.
3 The Russians in fact recovered three copies: For varying accounts of the recovery of the codebook, see Churchill, World Crisis, 255; Halpern, Naval History, 36–37; and Tuchman, Zimmermann Telegram, 14–15.
4 “chiefly remarkable for his spats”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
5 “It was the best of jobs”: Ibid.
6 said to be obsessed: Halpern, Naval History, 37; Beesly, Room 40, 310–11.
7 “I shall never meet another man like him”: Adm. William James, Code Breakers, xvii.
Even before the war, while then in command of a cruiser, the HMS Cornwall, Hall distinguished himself with an intelligence coup. The year was 1909, and his ship was to be among other British vessels paying a ceremonial visit to Kiel, Germany, home of the German fleet. The Admiralty asked Hall for help in gathering precise information about the configuration of ship-construction slips in the harbor, which were kept from view by a cordon of patrol vessels.
An idea came to Hall. The Duke of Westminster was present for the regatta and had brought along his speedboat, the Ursula, to show off. German sailors loved the boat and cheered every time they saw it. Hall asked the duke if he could borrow it for a couple of hours. The next day, two of Hall’s men went aboard the Ursula disguised as civilian engine-room hands. The boat then put on a display of speed, racing out to sea and tearing back through the harbor. The yacht roared through the line of patrol boats, drawing cheers from their crews. But then, something unfortunate happened. The Ursula’s engines broke down, right in front of the Germany navy’s shipbuilding facilities. As the boat’s crew made a show of trying to start the engines, Hall’s men took photograph after photograph of the shipyard. One of the patrol vessels ended up towing the boat back to its moorage. “The Germans were delighted to get such a close view of her,” Hall wrote, “but they were hardly less delighted than I was, for one of the ‘engineers’ had secured the most perfect photographs of the slips and obtained all the information we wanted.” “The Nature of Intelligence Work,” Hall 3/1, Hall Papers.
8 The Machiavelli side: Adm. William James, Code Breakers, 202.
9 the empire’s first defeat: Gilbert, First World War, 102.
10 British warships nearby: Gibson and Prendergast, German Submarine War, 19; Gilbert, First World War, 124.
11 And then came April 22: Clark, Donkeys, 74; Gilbert, First World War, 144–45; Keegan, First World War, 198–99.
12 “I saw some hundred poor fellows”: Clark, Donkeys, 74.
13 The Admiralty also harbored: Frothingham, Naval History, 66, 75.
14 “no major movement”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
15 “the risk of compromising the codes”: Memorandum, Henry Francis Oliver, CLKE 1, Clarke Papers.
16 “Had we been called upon”: History of Room 40, “Narrative of Capt. Hope,” CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
17 “shook the nerve”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
18 “soul-destroying … object of hatred”: Ibid.
19 “Watch this carefully”: Beesly, Room 40, 92.
20 “Any messages which were not according to routine”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
21 “The final note”: Memorandum, Herbert Hope to Director of Operations Division,
April 18, 1915, “Captain Hope’s Memos to Operations Division,” Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4689, National Archives UK.
22 “Whenever any of their vessels”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers.
23 a sense of the flesh-and-blood men: Reports derived from interrogations of captured U-boat officers and crew yield a sense of U-boat life far richer than that provided by any other published memoir or book. Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4126, National Archives UK. Specifically, see interrogations involving crew from U-48, U-103, UC-65, U-64, and UB-109; see also Grant, U-Boat Intelligence, 21.
24 They used their wireless systems incessantly: Beesly, Room 40, 30.
25 “extreme garrulity”: History of Room 40, CLKE 3, Clarke Papers; Beesly, Room 40, 30.
26 “I fooled ’em that time”: New York Times, May 8, 1915.
27 Room 40 had long followed: “Capt. Hope’s Diary,” Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4169, National Archives UK.
28 Addressed to all German warships: Record of Telegrams, March 3, 1915, Norddeich Naval Intelligence Center, Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/4177, National Archives UK.
29 “Four submarines sailed”: Intercepted telegrams, April 28 and 29, 1915, Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/3956, National Archives UK. Anyone examining these files will note, to his or her pleasure, that these are the actual handwritten decodes.
30 “that of mystifying and misleading the enemy”: “A Little Information for the Enemy,” Hall 3/4, Hall Papers.
Hall loved the surprise of intelligence work and loved knowing the real stories behind events reported in the news, which often were censored. For example, Room 40 learned the real fate of a German submarine, U-28, that had attacked a ship carrying trucks on its main deck. One shell fired by the U-boat’s gun crew blew up a load of high explosives stored in the ship, and suddenly “the air was full of motor-lorries describing unusual parabolas,” Hall wrote. Officially, the U-boat was lost because of explosion. But Hall and Room 40 knew the truth: one of the flying trucks had landed on the submarine’s foredeck, penetrating its hull and sinking it instantly. “In point of actual fact,” wrote Hall, “U-28 was sunk by a motor-lorry!”