Lusitania Quotes

“A century beneath the Irish Sea has played havoc with Lusitania: her decks and superstructure long ago slid onto the ocean bed “as if a tall house of cards had collapsed.”(94) Here and there, a piece of colorful decorative tile, a window filigree, a stretch of decking, the ghostly outline of her name—these images loom out of the ghostly, perpetual darkness, haunting reminders of her former glory. But the grand lady is rapidly fading, rusting away into her eternal maritime grave. Soon, the once proud Lusitania will crumble to unrecognizable oblivion.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“He ran his ship at a lower speed, close to land, and in a straight line, despite instructions from the Admiralty. His negligence was astonishing. Schwieger fired the lethal torpedo; the Admiralty created the tragic conditions that made the disaster inevitable; but Turner, obstinate, convinced of his own judgment, and unwilling to adjust to changing circumstances, helped weave the terrible threads into an ultimately lethal tapestry.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“The Edwardian Era’s mythology painted Edward Smith and his crew aboard Titanic as heroic figures. The captain went down with his ship, his death atoning for whatever navigational mistakes contributed to the disaster. And Smith’s crew had lingered below in the sinking ship, stoking furnaces to keep the lights burning, aware that they would likely not escape. The contrast between the behavior of the crews of Titanic and Lusitania is stunning. Perhaps the war heightened sensitivities to looming death; then, too, Lusitania’s crew were largely a poorly trained, haphazardly drawn bunch with no loyalty to Cunard, the ship, or her captain. Refusing to give away their lifebelts to help passengers and, in at least one instance, actually turning an ax on a terrified passenger, these seamen revealed that their foremost thought was their own preservation.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“The sinking of Lusitania underlined the brutality of war in a previously unthinkable way. For the first time in the conflict, a large number of civilians were sacrificed as if they were nameless soldiers: brutally and without consideration, underscoring the terrible tragedy of the war itself. And the sinking played out in an unexpected way. Life aboard Lusitania was still largely stratified by social class and financial worth, yet what happened in those pivotal eighteen minutes destroyed any illusions about privilege. A few passengers, like Alfred Vanderbilt, rigidly clung to traditional notions of a gentlemen’s code; in doing so, he perished, just as the brightest generation of British and European young men, standing by similar conceptions of tradition, did in trenches across the continent. Death and survival were random: passengers assuming their lives would continue on as normal saw their world turned upside down. Those fortunate enough to get into lifeboats were hurled into the sea and killed; people who remained on deck survived. Lady Allan’s two daughters perished; her two maids survived. The utter randomness of the disaster mocked expectation.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“In 2004, she returned to Kinsale, standing on the bluff above the beach where many victims had washed ashore.(77) “I never blamed the sea,” Audrey once said of the Lusitania tragedy, “because it wasn’t the sea’s fault. It was the Germans’ fault.”(78) “I hope I’m living up to worth being saved,” Audrey commented in her last years.(79) On January 11, 2011, Audrey Lawson-Johnston died at the age of ninety-five, the last of those who had been aboard Lusitania on her final, fatal voyage.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“For the next forty years, Rita mingled with politicians and aristocrats, fully enjoying her privileged life.(52) She died in Nice in 1971 after attempting to prove her vigor by dancing a jig. “Oh well,” Trixie commented of her sister-in-law’s death, “she would go like that.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Angela Papadopoulos felt that her experience on Lusitania “destroyed forever my poor nerves,” writing, “I believe I will never be able to erase those moments from my memory.” She kept in regular contact with several other survivors, including Lady Allan. She lost two of her children to the great influenza epidemic, and eventually moved to Paris, where in 1924 she married Russian émigré Count Alexander Bakeev; she died in 1936 at the age of fifty-three. “At my death, when and wherever it should be,” she wrote, “I want to be buried wearing the uniform of a sailor” who had given her his clothing when she was pulled from the water and which “I still jealously guard.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Once safely whisked away to a friend’s country house, Lauriat sat down and began to write a detailed account of his experiences, published later that year as The Lusitania’s Last Voyage. Lauriat cast a critical eye over everyone involved with the disaster. “I did not think any human being with a drop of red blood in his veins, called a man, could issue an order to sink a passenger steamer without at least giving the women and children a chance to get away,” he wrote.(3) Yet he also heaped scorn on Lusitania’s captain and crew, and on the efforts by the British government to absolve Turner and his men, as well as Cunard and the Admiralty, of any responsibility in the tragedy. Lauriat eventually returned to his family’s book business in Boston, and died in 1937.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Yet however legitimate Schwieger’s actions, it is undeniable that in torpedoing Lusitania he made a grave mistake, if not from a legal perspective than certainly from humanitarian, political, and diplomatic ones. The attendant outcry over Lusitania’s sinking offered the world a vivid exhibition of the very worst excesses of German warfare, painting the dreaded “Huns” as barbaric murderers of innocent women and children. In this sense, as historians Bailey and Ryan wrote, Germany gained a temporary victory that was “worse than a defeat.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“By law, Schwieger was expected to surface and fire a warning shot, demanding that Lusitania stop and allow her cargo to be searched. The commander knew that many British merchant vessels were armed with guns that could tear the hull of his submarine to pieces. Then there were the specific points under which Lusitania operated, which not only violated the Cruiser Rules but also made them obsolete that May 7. She was regularly transporting contraband, even by the British definition of the term; she operated under the sole control of the Admiralty; and she could also, should the need arise, be converted into an armed auxiliary cruiser to join the war. Lusitania was disguised, her funnels cloaked in gray, and she flew no flags. She was a non-neutral vessel in a declared war zone, with instructions to evade capture and even to ram a challenging submarine. Had Schwieger surfaced and fired a warning shot across Lusitania’s bow, does history really think that Captain Turner would have stopped the vessel and allowed a search, as demanded by the Cruiser Rules? The Admiralty’s steady erosion of the established rules of naval warfare all but ensured that, sooner or later, some unarmed passenger vessel would be torpedoed with devastating loss of life. In creating the very set of circumstances that led to Lusitania’s destruction, the Admiralty, too, must share a significant portion of the blame.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Schwieger was then given command of a larger boat, U-88. The following year, he received the ironically named Pour le Mérite in recognition of his gallantry and service in sinking nearly 200,000 tons of Allied shipping.(83) That fall, he took U-88 on a mission into the North Sea and, on September 5, 1917, Schwieger’s luck ran out when he struck a mine. There were no survivors: Schwieger was just thirty-two.(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“With the world in an uproar, Schwieger found himself summoned to Berlin. Despite public pronouncements that the sinking had been justified, authorities in Berlin were now on the defensive; there were rumors that Kaiser Wilhelm II personally berated him, while Admiral Tirpitz recalled that he was treated “very ungraciously” by military officials.(79) After the sinking, Schwieger seemed “so haggard and so silent and so different,” said his fiancée.(80) Yet soon he was back at sea aboard U-20, sinking more ships. In September, he torpedoed the Allan Line’s Hesperian off the Irish coast, again without warning. Thirty-two of the 1,100 aboard died when one of the lifeboats overturned during evacuation. Also aboard was a coffin holding the remains of Lusitania passenger Frances Stephens, who now fell victim to Schwieger a second time when the vessel sank the following day.(81) This time, Schwieger was ordered to apologize for having violated German assurances that no further passenger liners would be attacked without warning.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“The effect was lethal and catastrophic, resulting in the deaths of nearly 1,200 people; even Schwieger later professed shock at the destruction he had caused. The man who, recalled one of his friends, described the sinking of Lusitania as “the most terrible sight” he had ever witnessed, a scene “too horrible” for him to watch, only learned just how many had died when he arrived back in Germany. A friend said he was “appalled to discover the anger of outraged humanity that his act had aroused, and horrified at the thought that he was held up all over the world as an object of odium and loathing.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Lusitania herself hides her secrets: if a second torpedo struck her, the proof has long since been buried beneath the wreckage of collapsed decks and in an impenetrable hull whose starboard side has not been seen since May 7, 1915.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“If the diary was indeed altered, as historians have suggested, it would have been because Schwieger—and his superiors—had every reason to erase a second torpedo. After the fact, and in the face of universal condemnation, admission that Schwieger had fired a second torpedo would only have made him appear cold-blooded and bent on the deaths of all aboard. Covering up a second torpedo would also serve a dual purpose: to attribute the second explosion to illegal munitions aboard the ship and embarrass Great Britain in the ongoing propaganda war.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Historians have largely dismissed the idea of a second torpedo based on Schwieger’s war diary. This would indeed seemingly end the issue, yet the diary’s integrity is not above suspicion: the original was destroyed, and only a typed copy survives.(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Carl Foss saw a woman float up, holding her dead infant, as he helped her onto his collapsible boat. She stared at her child’s face for a long time, and finally said quietly, “Let me bury my baby.” She gently placed it in the water and watched as the tiny body sank beneath the waves.(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“After more than an hour of gripping lines at the side of the boat, Holbourn was exhausted, and asked if the officer in charge would hold on to his hand so that he would not sink. The officer refused, saying that holding another man’s hand would make him “uncomfortable.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Suction from Lusitania had separated Belle Naish from her husband, Theodore, and dragged her beneath the surface. “Why, this is like being on grandmother’s feather bed!” she thought as she floated beneath the water.(44) “I had never before realized how beautiful things were under the water. I could see the rays of the sun slanting through the water and the light was beautiful.” When she finally came to the surface, “the first thing I noticed was the beautiful blue of the sky, and how bright the sun was shining.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“As he roamed the decks, Lauriat spotted an elderly woman, her daughter, and three children—foreign passengers from Third Class—sitting calmly on a collapsible boat, awaiting instructions. They begged for his help in a language Lauriat took for Italian; Lauriat put two lifebelts on the women, and another on a child. It was, Lauriat said, “one of the most pathetic things I remember.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Even those passengers who managed to find lifebelts, Charles Lauriat saw, had often put them on incorrectly. Never having been shown how to use them, and with the crew offering no help, they had thrust heads through armholes, put them on upside down, or tried to wear them around their waists rather than their shoulders. Lauriat calmly tried to straighten out as many as he could.(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Precisely where the torpedo hit has always been a subject of some controversy. From Schwieger’s account, it seems to have struck Lusitania somewhere below the bridge, at a critical point where bulkheads separated Boiler Room No. 1 from a transverse forward cross bunker and a longitudinal bunker used for reserve coal along the ship’s starboard side. The sea rapidly flooded through the hull; bunkers meant to shield the ship’s machinery from possible damage now concentrated the flooding on the starboard side, causing an almost immediate list of some 15 degrees, a situation exacerbated by Lusitania’s great height. The sea streamed through open watertight doors, flooding into the forward bunker and cargo holds and pulling Lusitania down by the bow; it swept aft, almost immediately spilling into the forward boiler room. The ship’s continued progress through the sea forced even more water into the breach and added to the rapid flooding, as did numerous portholes that had been left open.(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“A flicker of sunlight” interrupted Bernard’s ruminations: at first, he thought it was a porpoise.(2) For a few seconds, he watched “spellbound” as the “long, white streak of foam” cut through the dark water toward the ship.(3) It wasn’t a porpoise: he instinctively knew what he had seen, and he closed his eyes in dread resignation. In a few seconds the torpedo struck. “The impact was terrific,” he recalled, “I could feel the ship reel, as if struck by a huge hammer.” Almost immediately, “a terrific explosion” threw “a great column of coal dust, water, and debris” over the deck. “It reminded me of the picture showing mine explosions in the trenches at the Front.”(4) Looking forward, he saw black smoke near the first funnel mingled with steam from the ship’s ventilators and coal “as if from a volcanic eruption.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Walther Schwieger now faced a momentous decision as he watched this approaching prize. Such liners could be converted to troop transports to help the Allied war effort; they regularly carried munitions through the war zone meant to kill German soldiers. Surfacing and firing a warning shot from his deck gun risked his submarine and the lives of his crew. Schwieger knew that British merchant vessels had been ordered to ram any U-boats; according to Churchill’s boasts in Parliament and various newspaper accounts, many of these vessels, including liners, were armed with large guns capable of destroying his submarine.(51) In the end, the Admiralty’s slow erosion of the Cruiser Rules left an efficient and loyal officer of the German Imperial Navy like Schwieger with only one option: to strike without warning.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Providing an escort for a merchant vessel or passenger liner immediately stripped the ship of its protected status under the Cruiser Rules. Any vessel accompanied by such an armed escort could be freely, and legally, attacked under international law.(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“As much as was possible, a submarine rode the waves rather than remain submerged. This allowed the batteries to recharge, and fresh air to permeate the vessel. The crew could walk the slick gray surface of the U-boat, and play with the vessel’s dogs, a pair of black dachshunds, one of whom had been rescued from a Portuguese ship the submarine had sunk. “A canine romance developed,” recalled a sailor, and soon the submarine was filled with the sound of four little puppies, tended to by a grizzled old salt. Eventually the men gave three of the dogs to other submarines, and kept three for themselves, snuggling with them in their bunks at night.(12)”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Second Class passengers tended to adhere to a more traditional segregation of the sexes than their counterparts in Saloon Class. The Writing Room was even known by the formal designation of the Ladies’ Drawing Room. This was a suitably refined, feminine space in the Louis XVI style of light gray paneled walls, with a leaded dome over comfortable groupings of satinwood furniture, and a piano atop the rose-colored Brussels carpet.(5) As in First Class, men congregated in the adjacent Smoking Room, lined with carved mahogany paneling and topped with a white plasterwork ceiling pierced by a stained glass, barrel-vaulted skylight. Wide, blue-tinted windows opened onto the deck; one wall featured an intricate mosaic of a river scene in Brittany.(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Emily Post warned travelers against overdressing on a liner. “People of position,” she wrote, “never put on formal evening dress on a steamer.” For a lady to wear a ball gown to dinner, she wrote, was a sure sign that she had “no other place” to show off her “finery.”(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“One particular group in Lusitania’s Lounge appreciated the nod to British tradition. All were from Montreal, where the rich, commented one historian, “enjoyed a prestige in that era that not even the rich deserved.”(7) They formed the city’s Anglo-Canadian elite, living along the southern base of Mount Royal in an area called the “Golden Square Mile.” Together, they controlled fully 70 percent of Canada’s wealth: most had grown up with each other, many had married into each other’s families, and they enjoyed the same dinners, balls, hunts, and winter carnivals that filled Montreal’s social season.(”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age

“Still, with its “enforced intimacy,” Lusitania was something of a social leveler.(27) In this artificial world, an otherwise peculiar blend of aristocrats and traditionalists rubbed shoulders with celebrities, industrialists, and entrepreneurs unlikely, under other circumstances, to find themselves gathered in the same social milieu. Vigorously ambitious Americans, in particular, could temporarily abandon their self-made origins and travel in all of the luxury and style their money afforded.”
― Greg King, Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age