Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

by Erik Larson

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?”

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.”

Undersecretary of State Robert Lansing, number two man in the State Department, tried to put this phenomenon into words in a private memorandum. “It is difficult, if not impossible, for us here in the United States to appreciate in all its fullness the great European War,” he wrote. “We have come to read almost with indifference of vast military operations, of battle lines extending for hundreds of miles, of the thousands of dying men, of the millions suffering all manner of privation, of the wide-spread waste and destruction.” The nation had become inured to it all, he wrote. “The slaughter of a thousand men between the trenches in northern France or of another thousand on a foundering cruiser has become commonplace. We read the headlines in the newspapers and let it go at that. The details have lost their interest.”

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.” Though no one said it explicitly, Britain hoped the United States would at some point feel moved to join the Allies, and in so doing tip the balance irrevocably in their favor. After noting that Germany’s submarine campaign had sharply reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: “For our part, we want the traffic—the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.”

The two men discussed the submarine war. “We spoke of the probability of an ocean liner being sunk,” House wrote, “and I told him if this were done, a flame of indignation would sweep across America, which would in itself probably carry us into war.”

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.”

Schwieger’s log indicates that he only now learned the ship’s true identity, but this seems implausible. The ship’s profile—its size, its lines, its four funnels—made it one of the most distinctive vessels afloat.

OF 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.

The “important” bodies, meaning those in first class, were embalmed at U.S. expense.

The unimportant bodies were sealed inside lead coffins, “so that they could be returned to America whenever desired.”

WHY THE ADMIRALTY would seek to assign fault to Turner defies ready explanation, given that isolating Germany as the sole offender would do far more to engender global sympathy for Britain and cement animosity toward Germany. By blaming Turner, however, the Admiralty hoped to divert attention from its own failure to safeguard the Lusitania. (Questioned on the matter in the House of Commons on May 10, 1915, Churchill had replied, rather coolly, “Merchant traffic must look after itself.”) But there were other secrets to protect, not just from domestic scrutiny, but also from German watchers—namely the fact that the Admiralty, through Room 40, had known so much about U-20’s travels leading up to the attack. One way to defend those secrets was to draw attention elsewhere.

How could a single torpedo sink a ship the size of the Lusitania? And if there was no second torpedo, what exactly, caused the second explosion? They recognized, also, that Schwieger’s message had to be kept secret at all costs, for it was precisely this kind of special knowledge that could tip Germany to the existence of Room 40.

At no time during the secret portions of the proceeding did the Admiralty ever reveal what it knew about the travels of U-20. Nor did it disclose the measures taken to protect HMS Orion and other military vessels. Moreover, the Admiralty made no effort to correct Lord Mersey’s finding that the Lusitania had been struck by two torpedoes—this

Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty’s past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40’s intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of HMS Orion; given that U-20 had sunk three vessels in the Lusitania’s path; given Cunard chairman Booth’s panicked Friday morning visit to the navy’s Queenstown office; given that the new and safer North Channel route was available; and given that passengers and crew alike had expected to be convoyed to Liverpool by the Royal Navy—the question remains, why was the ship left on its own, with a proven killer of men and ships dead ahead in its path?

The question perplexed at least one prominent naval historian, the late Patrick Beesly, who, during World War II, was himself an officer in British naval intelligence. Britain’s secrecy laws prevented him from writing about the subject until the 1970s and 1980s, when he published several books, including one about Room 40, said to be a quasi-official account.

However, in a later interview, housed in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, London, Beesly was less judicious. “As an Englishman and a lover of the Royal Navy,” he said, “I would prefer to attribute this failure to negligence, even gross negligence, rather [than] to a conspiracy deliberately to endanger the ship.” But, he said, “on the basis of the considerable volume of information which is now available, 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.”

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?”

There were destroyers at Queenstown and no explanation has been given as to why there was no convoy except Mr. Winston Churchill’s statement that it was impossible for the Admiralty to convoy Merchant ships.” The memo left unsaid the fact that the Admiralty earlier in the year had in fact made provision to escort merchant ships.

Third Officer Albert Bestic wrote, later, that in light of the German warning in New York and the Admiralty’s awareness of new submarine activity, some sort of protective force should have been dispatched.

What most likely caused the second event was the rupture of a main steam line, carrying steam under extreme pressure.

The fracture could have been caused by the direct force of the initial explosion, or by cold seawater entering Boiler Room No. 1 and coming into contact with the superheated pipe or its surrounding fixtures, causing a potentially explosive condition known as thermal shock.

Wilson said, “I suppose you think I am cold and indifferent and little less than human, but my dear fellow, you are mistaken, for I have spent many sleepless hours thinking about this tragedy. It has hung over me like a terrible nightmare. In God’s name, how could any nation calling itself civilized purpose so horrible a thing.”

In fact, apart from a noisy pro-war faction led by former president Teddy Roosevelt, much of America seemed to share Wilson’s reluctance. There was anger, yes, but no clear call to war,

Wilson’s protest—the so-called First Lusitania Note—was the initial salvo in what would become a two-year war of paper, filled with U.S. protests and German replies, made against a backdrop of new attacks against neutral ships and revelations that German spies were at work in America. Wilson did all he could to keep America neutral in action and in spirit, but Secretary Bryan did not think he tried hard enough, and resigned on June 8, 1915.

That June, 1916, the Kaiser issued an order forbidding attacks against all large passenger ships, even those that were obviously British. He went on to order so many restrictions on how and when U-boat commanders could attack ships that the German navy, in protest, suspended all operations against merchant vessels in British waters.

A German admiral, Henning von Holtzendorff, came up with a plan so irresistible it succeeded in bringing agreement between supporters and opponents of unrestricted warfare. By turning Germany’s U-boats loose, and allowing their captains to sink every vessel that entered the “war zone,” Holtzendorff proposed to end the war in six months.

Holtzendorff bragged, “I guarantee upon my word as a naval officer that no American will set foot on the Continent!”

Germany’s top civilian and military leaders converged on Kaiser Wilhelm’s castle at Pless on January 8, 1917, to consider the plan, and the next evening Wilhelm, in his role as supreme military commander, signed an order to put it into action, a decision that would prove one of the most fateful of the war. On January 16, the German Foreign Office sent an announcement of the new campaign to Ambassador Bernstorff in Washington, with instructions that he deliver it to Secretary Lansing on January 31, the day before the new campaign was to begin. The timing was an affront to Wilson: it left no opportunity for protest or negotiation and came even as Bernstorff was promoting the idea that Germany really did want peace.

Wilson was outraged but chose not to see the declaration itself as sufficient...

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.

Secretary Lansing was elated. “The American people are at last ready to make war on Germany, thank God,” he wrote in a personal memorandum, in which he revealed a certain bloodlust. “It may take two or three years,” Lansing wrote. “It may even take five years. It may cost a million Americans; it may cost five million. However long it may take, however many men it costs we must go through with it. I hope and believe that the President will see it in this light.”

“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”

Wilson signed the resolution at 1:18 P.M. on April 6, 1917.

To Winston Churchill, it was long overdue. In his memoir-like history The World Crisis, 1916–1918, he said of Wilson, “What he did in April, 1917, could have been done in May, 1915. And if done then what abridgment of the slaughter; what sparing of the agony; what ruin, what catastrophes would have been prevented; in how many million homes would an empty chair be occupied today; how different would be the shattered world in which victors and vanquished alike are condemned to live!”

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.

Just ten days later, the U.S. Navy dispatched a squadron of destroyers. They set off from Boston on April 24. Not many of them. Just six. But the significance of their departure was lost on no one.

On May 8, the destroyers began their first patrols, just a day beyond the two-year anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania.

A new war came, and on September 16, 1941, a Nazi U-boat torpedoed and sank a British ship, the Jedmoor, off the Outer Hebrides, killing thirty-one of its thirty-six crew. Among the lost was a fifty-five-year-old able seaman named Percy Wilfred Turner—Captain Turner’s youngest son.

“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.”

she believed the disaster had made her a better person. She had a new confidence. “If anyone had asked me whether I should behave as I ought in a shipwreck I should have had the gravest doubts,” she wrote. “And here I had got through this test without disgracing myself.” She also found, to her surprise, that the experience had eliminated a deep horror of death that she had harbored since childhood.