Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

by Erik Larson

When the Lusitania was under way, its appetite for coal was enormous. Its 300 stokers, trimmers, and firemen, working 100 per shift, would shovel 1,000 tons of coal a day into its 192 furnaces to heat its 25 boilers and generate enough superheated steam to spin the immense turbines of its engines. The men were called “the black gang,” a reference not to their race but to the coal dust that coated their bodies.

The disaster had an important secondary effect: because two of the cruisers had stopped to help survivors of the initial attack and thus made themselves easy targets, the Admiralty issued orders forbidding large British warships from going to the aid of U-boat victims.

What Germany never acknowledged was that Britain merely confiscated cargoes, whereas U-boats sank ships and killed men. German commanders seemed blind to the distinction. Germany’s Admiral Scheer wrote, “Does it really make any difference, purely from the humane point of view, whether those thousands of men who drown wear naval uniforms or belong to a merchant ship bringing food and munitions to the enemy, thus prolonging the war and augmenting the number of women and children who suffer during the war?”

Both men feared that Germany’s undersea war could only lead to disaster by driving America to shed its neutrality and side with Britain.

Wilson’s protest, however, did not impress Germany’s submarine zealots. They argued that if anything Germany should intensify its campaign and destroy all shipping in the war zone. They promised to bring Britain to heel well before America could mobilize an army and transport it to the battlefield.

The most important effect of all this was to leave the determination as to which ships were to be spared, which to be sunk, to the discretion of individual U-boat commanders. Thus a lone submarine captain, typically a young man in his twenties or thirties, ambitious, driven to accumulate as much sunk tonnage as possible, far from his base and unable to make wireless contact with superiors, his vision limited to the small and distant view afforded by a periscope, now held the power to make a mistake that could change the outcome of the entire war. As Chancellor Bethmann would later put it, “Unhappily, it depends upon the attitude of a single submarine commander whether America will or will not declare war.”

U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.

Schwieger’s boat was 210 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 27 feet tall. Viewed head-on, it might have seemed to offer its crew a comfortable amount of living space, but in fact the portion occupied by the men was only a cylinder down the center. Much of the boat’s apparent bulk consisted of giant tanks on both sides of the hull, to be filled with seawater when diving and to be emptied when surfacing. The space in between was crammed with berths for three dozen men, a kitchen, a mess room, a cubicle for the wireless operator, a central control room, two 850-horsepower diesel engines, tanks for 76 tons of diesel fuel, two 600-horsepower electric engines and the massive array of batteries that powered them, plus storage for 250 shells for the U-boat’s sole deck gun and space for storing and handling seven torpedoes, known formally as “automobile torpedoes.” The boat had two torpedo tubes in the bow, two in the stern. Linking all this apparatus was an array of pipes and cables as densely packed as the tendons in a human leg. “More dials and gauges than one might ordinarily see in a lifetime,” one crew member said. Schwieger had his own tiny

cabin, with an electric light over his bed.

On February 1, he fired a torpedo at a large ship painted white and marked with large red crosses, the hospital ship Asturias. He missed. But the attempt was considered a new low in German callousness. Even his superiors seemed surprised.

Despicable

Baron von Spiegel, Schwieger’s friend, said of him, “He was a wonderful man. He couldn’t kill a fly.”

Just passenger ships with infants on board

These fish and their residual odors, however, could only have worsened the single most unpleasant aspect of U-boat life: the air within the boat. First there was the basal reek of three dozen men who never bathed, wore leather clothes that did not breathe, and shared one small lavatory. The toilet from time to time imparted to the boat the scent of a cholera hospital and could be flushed only when the U-boat was on the surface or at shallow depths, lest the undersea pressure blow material back into the vessel. This tended to happen to novice officers and crew, and was called a “U-boat baptism.” The odor of diesel fuel infiltrated all corners of the boat, ensuring that every cup of cocoa and piece of bread tasted of oil. Then came the fragrances that emanated from the kitchen long after meals were cooked, most notably that close cousin to male body odor, day-old fried onions.

As the boat descended through ever colder waters, the contrast between the warm interior and cold exterior caused condensation, which soaked clothing and bred colonies of mold. Submarine crews called it “U-boat sweat.” It drew oil from the atmosphere and deposited it in coffee and soup, leaving a miniature oil slick. The longer the boat stayed submerged, the worse conditions became. Temperatures within could rise to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. “You can have no conception of the atmosphere that is evolved by degrees under these circumstances,” wrote one commander, Paul Koenig, “nor of the hellish temperature which brews within the shell of steel.” The men lived for the moment the boat ascended to the surface and the hatch in the conning tower was opened. “The first breath of fresh air, the open conning-tower hatch and the springing into life of the Diesels, after fifteen hours on the bottom, is an experience to be lived through,” said another commander, Martin Niemöller. “Everything comes to life and not a soul thinks of sleep. All hands seek a breath of air and a cigarette under shelter of the bridge screen.” All these discomforts were borne, moreover, against a backdrop of always present danger, with everyone aware they faced the worst kind of death imaginable: slow suffocation in a darkened steel tube at the bottom of the sea. On one of U-20’s patrols, this prospect came to seem all too real. IT WAS EARLY in the war, when U-boat commanders and British defenders alike we...

report from the German naval attaché in New York, dated April 27, 1915, four days before the Lusitania’s departure, stated, “The crew of the Lusitania is in a very depressed mood and hopes this will be the last Atlantic crossing during the war.”

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.”

Off the southeast tip of Italy a young Austrian U-boat commander named Georg von Trapp, later to gain eternal renown when played by Christopher Plummer in the film The Sound of Music, fired two torpedoes into a large French cruiser, the Leon Gambetta. The ship sank in nine minutes, killing 684 sailors. “So that’s what war looks like!” von Trapp wrote in a later memoir. He told his chief officer, “We are like highway men, sneaking up on an unsuspecting ship in such a cowardly fashion.” Fighting in a trench or aboard a torpedo boat would have been better, he said. “There you hear shooting, hear your comrades fall, you hear the wounded groaning—you become filled with rage and can shoot men in self defense or fear; at an assault you can even yell! But we! Simply cold-blooded to drown a mass of men in an ambush!”

von Trapp had it right .. a fav part of the musical for me is when he rips down the swastika from his house

Canadian physician caring for the wounded at a nearby aid station in Boezinge, in West Flanders, Belgium, would later write the most famous poem to arise from the war: “In Flanders fields the poppies blow / Between the crosses, row on row.…” By the end of the month, the British would regain their lost ground and advance another thousand yards, at a cost of sixteen thousand dead and wounded, or sixteen men per yard gained. The Germans lost five thousand.

One soldier in the Ypres Salient, at Messines, Belgium, wrote of the frustration of the trench stalemate. “We are still in our old positions, and keep annoying the English and French. The weather is miserable and we often spend days on end knee-deep in water and, what is more, under heavy fire. We are greatly looking forward to a brief respite. Let’s hope that soon afterwards the whole front will start moving forward. Things can’t go on like this for ever.” The author was a German infantryman of Austrian descent named Adolf Hitler.

“German naval policy is one of wanton and indiscriminate destruction of vessels regardless of nationality,” he wrote to Secretary Bryan, on Saturday, May 1.

“It was not thought in official quarters that any serious issue would be raised, because it is accepted that the bombs were not dropped deliberately, but under the impression that a hostile vessel was being attacked.” This was a generous appraisal: at the time, the Cushing was flying an American flag, and its owners had painted the ship’s name on its hull in six-foot letters.

The boats were prone to accident. They were packed with complicated mechanical systems for steering, diving, ascending, and regulating pressure. Amid all this were wedged torpedoes, grenades, and artillery shells. Along the bottom of the hull lay the boat’s array of batteries, filled with sulfuric acid, which upon contact with seawater produced deadly chlorine gas. In this environment, simple errors could, and did, lead to catastrophe.

In this day before sonar, a submarine traveled utterly blind, trusting entirely in the accuracy of sea charts. One great fear of all U-boat men was that a half-sunk derelict or an uncharted rock might lie in their path.

“The reference to the Lusitania was obvious enough,” he recalled later, “but personally it never entered my mind for a moment that the Germans would actually perpetrate an attack upon her. The culpability of such an act seemed too blatant and raw for an intelligent people to take upon themselves.”

“The blowing up of a liner with American passengers may be the prelude,” the ambassador wrote. “I almost expect such a thing.” He added, “If a British liner full of Americans be blown up, what will Uncle Sam do? What’s going to happen?”

Though it’s clear Schwieger considered the Danish ship a potential target, he made no attempt to attack. The ship was too far ahead and moving too fast; he estimated its speed to be at least 12 knots. “An attack on this ship impossible,” he wrote in his log. This entry revealed much about Schwieger. It showed that he would have been more than willing to attack if circumstances had been better, even though he recognized the ship was neutral—and not just neutral but heading away from Britain and thus unlikely to be carrying any contraband for Germany’s enemies. The entry revealed as well that he had no misgivings about torpedoing a liner full of civilians.

He was a killer not a war hero

“But what is worrying everybody is the accumulation of evidence that Germany is either looking for trouble with the United States or that her authorities are reckless of the possibilities of incurring trouble.”

That Wednesday, he cabled his friend Colonel House, still in London, to ask his advice on what kind of response to send to Germany. House recommended “a sharp note” but added, “I am afraid a more serious breach may at any time occur, for they seem to have no regard for consequences.”

The absence of any protective measures may simply have been the result of a lapse of attention, with Churchill off in France and Fisher consumed by other matters and seemingly drifting toward madness. It would take on a more sinister cast, however, in light of a letter that Churchill had sent earlier in the year to the head of England’s Board of Trade, Walter Runciman, in which Churchill wrote that it was “most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.”

“For our part, we want the traffic—the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.”

Passenger ships left unprotected and unwarned are particularly helpful, right?

The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a “dead wake.”

THE LUSITANIA’S 1,959 PASSENGERS AND CREW, only 764 survived; the total of deaths was 1,195. The 3 German stowaways brought the total to 1,198. Of 33 infants aboard, only 6 survived. Over 600 passengers were never found. Among the dead were 123 Americans.

Of the 791 passengers designated by Cunard as missing, only 173 bodies, or about 22 percent, were eventually recovered, leaving 618 souls unaccounted for. The percentage for the crew was even more dismal, owing no doubt to the many deaths in the luggage room when the torpedo exploded.

On Monday, May 10, the coroner’s jury issued its finding: that the submarine’s officers and crew and the emperor of Germany had committed “willful and wholesale murder.”

!!!

Half an hour later a message arrived from the Admiralty, ordering Horgan to block Turner from testifying. Horgan wrote, “That august body were however as belated on this occasion as they had been in protecting the Lusitania against attack.”

In all, Lord Mersey heard testimony from thirty-six witnesses, including passengers, crew, and outside experts. At the conclusion of the inquiry, he defied the Admiralty and absolved Turner of any responsibility for the loss of the Lusitania. In his report, Mersey wrote that Turner “exercised his judgment for the best. It was the judgment of a skilled and experienced man, and although others might have acted differently and perhaps more successfully he ought not, in my opinion, to be blamed.” Mersey found Cunard’s closure of the ship’s fourth boiler room to be irrelevant. The resulting reduction in speed, he wrote, “still left the Lusitania a considerably faster ship than any other steamer plying across the Atlantic.” Mersey laid blame entirely on the U-boat commander.

the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?

I am reluctantly compelled to state that on balance, the most likely explanation is that there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war.” So much was done for the Orion and other warships, he wrote, but nothing for the Lusitania. He struggled with this. No matter how he arranged the evidence, he came back to conspiracy. He said, “If that’s unacceptable, will someone tell me another explanation to these very very curious circumstances?”

I agree

Had Captain Turner not had to wait the extra two hours for the transfer of passengers from the Cameronia, he likely would have passed Schwieger in the fog, when U-20 was submerged and on its way home. For that matter, even the brief delay caused by the last-minute disembarkation of Turner’s niece could have placed the ship in harm’s way. More importantly, had Turner not been compelled to shut down the fourth boiler room to save money, he could have sped across the Atlantic at 25 knots, covering an additional 110 miles a day, and been safely to Liverpool before Schwieger even entered the Celtic Sea.

In God’s name, how could any nation calling itself civilized purpose so horrible a thing.”

The telegram was from Germany’s foreign secretary, Arthur Zimmermann, written in a new code that was unfamiliar to Room 40. The process of rendering its text in coherent English was slow and difficult, but gradually the essential elements of the message came into view, like a photograph in a darkroom bath. It instructed Germany’s ambassador in Mexico to offer Mexican president Venustiano Carranza an alliance, to take effect if the new submarine campaign drew America into the war. “Make war together,” Zimmermann proposed. “Make peace together.” In return, Germany would take measures to help Mexico seize previously held lands—“lost territory”—in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Hall had no doubt as to the telegram’s importance. “This may be a very big thing,” he told de Grey, “possibly the biggest thing of the war. For the present not a soul outside this room is to be told anything at all.” And that included even Hall’s superiors in the Admiralty.

As historian Barbara Tuchman put it: “All these papers had been ardently neutral until Zimmermann shot an arrow in the air and brought down neutrality like a dead duck.”

“The world,” he said, “must be made safe for democracy.”

German U-boats were sinking ships at such a high rate that Admiralty officials secretly predicted Britain would be forced to capitulate by November 1, 1917. During the worst month, April, any ship leaving Britain had a one-in-four chance of being sunk. In Queenstown, U.S. consul Frost saw striking corroboration of the new campaign’s effect: in a single twenty-four-hour period, the crews of six torpedoed ships came ashore. Admiral Sims reported to Washington, “Briefly stated, I consider that at the present moment we are losing the war.”

The final humiliation for Turner came later, with publication of Winston Churchill’s book, in which Churchill persisted in blaming Turner for the disaster and, despite possessing clear knowledge to the contrary, reasserted that the ship had been hit by two torpedoes.

Winston’s sinister side

Hall believed that new trouble was indeed soon to come in Europe. He visited Germany and Austria in 1934. Ever the intelligence man, he reported his observations about the National Socialist movement to the government. He also described his experience to a friend in America. “All the young are in the net,” he wrote, “anyone who tried to keep out of being a Nazi is hazed till they change their mind; a form of mass cruelty which exists only in such a country.” He added, “It will, some time soon, be the duty of HUMAN BEINGS to deal with a mad dog; when that time comes your people will have to take their share.”