Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York. Above all, I discovered that buried in the jumbled details of the case—deliberately jumbled, in certain aspects—was something simple and satisfying: a very good story.
A WORD FROM THE CAPTAIN
Turner now revealed to the audience that earlier in the evening the ship had received a wireless warning of fresh submarine activity off the Irish coast. Unmistakable and untouchable, a floating village in steel, the Lusitania glided through the night like a giant black shadow cast over the sea.
BLOODY MONKEYS”
LUSITANIA
THE OLD SAILORMAN
Anyone looking up from the dock saw nothing but beauty, on a monumental scale, while on the far side of the ship men turned black with dust as they dumped coal - 5,690 tonnes in all - into the ship through openings in the hull called "side pockets". .” The ship was burning coal all the time. Fifty years earlier, exploding boilers had caused America's worst maritime disaster—the destruction of the Mississippi River steamer Sultana at a cost of 1,800 lives.
WASHINGTON
THE LONELY PLACE
The first of the great battles mentioned were fought that autumn and winter: the Borders, Bergen, Marne and the First Battle of Ypres. At the start of the war, the submarine barely played a role in the strategic planning of either side.
SUCKING TUBES AND THACKERAY
Three of the men were found "after a thorough search of the neighborhood by police officers, hospital staff and small boys," the Times said. Alarmed by this, one of the lawyers asked Turner, "Didn't you learn anything from that accident?".
U-20 THE HAPPIEST U-BOAT
This was usually done for junior officers and crew members, and was called a "U-boat baptism". The smell of diesel permeated every corner of the boat, making every cup of cocoa and piece of bread taste like oil. Keep the exact depth.” The boat continued on at "periscope depth," 11 meters below the surface, about 36 feet, deep enough that only the top of the periscope was visible.
MENAGERIE
He noted "the awkward way the men usually handled the lifeboats." The passengers noticed it too. Piper,” the only medium believed to be authentic by William James, the pioneering Harvard psychologist and sometime psychic investigator.
THE MYSTERY”
From November 1914 until the end of the war, according to William Clark of the group, "no major movement of the German fleet could take place without the Admiralty knowing it some time in advance." The information was detailed, down to the movements of individual ships and submarines. In a classified internal memorandum, Admiral Oliver wrote that "the risk of compromising the codes should only be accepted when the result is worth it."
A CAVALCADE OF PASSENGERS
In the words of Cunard's officer's handbook, he was to "offer satisfaction to all classes of passengers." For her parents, attuned to the high society mores of the time, Theodate was no doubt a chore.
BLINKER’S RUSE
ON SATURDAY May 1, citing the new sortie by U-20 and the other U-boats, the Admiralty postponed the departure of two warships scheduled to conduct gunnery practice in the open sea. The ship's departure date and its expected arrival in Liverpool a week later were now at the forefront of public awareness.
LOST
One soldier in the Ypres Salient in Messines, Belgium, wrote of the frustration of being stuck in a trench. Things can't go on like this forever." The author was a German infantryman of Austrian descent, Adolf Hitler.
UNDER WAY
Why it is the best joke I have heard in many days, this talk of the torpedoing of the Lusitania.”. The ship's bridge now passes, at camera level, and there is Turner, in frame 289.
U-20 TOWARD FAIR ISLE
Some of the gas entered the bow compartment, but the boat's air cleaning system prevented it from reaching lethal concentrations. He wrote: "The scratches on the steel walls, the torn nails of the corpses, the bloodstains on their clothes and on the walls, gave very terrible evidence."
RENDEZVOUS
She was traveling in second class and noticed how crowded it was because of the extra passengers from Cameronia - so crowded that breakfast was split in two. Turner and Anderson stepped onto the left wing of the bridge and waved to the officers on the Caronia Bridge.
CADENCE
JUMP ROPE AND CAVIAR
THE BLIND MOMENT”
Now came the "blind moment," as the commanders called it, that excruciatingly long interval just before the periscope broke the surface. Everyone listened carefully to the sounds of ships transmitted through the hull - the rush of water past a sail, the sound of propellers.
A SUNDAY AT SEA
SECOND CLASS PASSENGER William Uno Meriheina, a twenty-six-year-old racing car driver from New York traveling to South Africa as a "special agent" for the General Motors Export Company, got up early and took a nice salt water. bath." The baths on board were supplied with heated sea water. A lot of seasickness on board," he noted in a long day-by-day letter he wrote to his wife, Esther, "but I feel great." .
ROOM 40; QUEENSTOWN; LONDON PROTECTING ORION
In fact, Wilson had lost faith in Page by now, though the ambassador didn't seem to know it yet. Blowing up a liner carrying American passengers may be the foreplay,” the ambassador wrote.
U-20 A PERILOUS LINE
In his diary, Schwieger described it as "a huge neutral steamer, its name illuminated." He estimated that it was a Danish passenger ship sailing from Copenhagen to Montreal. The ship was too far ahead and moving too fast; he estimated its speed to be at least 12 knots.
HALIBUT
Gilman claimed that Mitchell's regimen drove her "to the brink of insanity." She wrote the story, she said, to warn future patients about the dangers of this doctor. He kept us in good spirits by telling us about various experiences he had during his travels and he was very kind to everyone," she wrote.
THE TROUBLE WITH TORPEDOES
The men in the seaplane 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 captain maneuvered the boat so he could make another shot, this time from the bow.
SUNSHINE AND HAPPINESS
THE ORION SAILS
On the morning of Sunday 2 May, a French ship, the Europe, was torpedoed and sunk off the Scillies. Early in the morning of Tuesday 4 May, an observer reported seeing a submarine on the surface north west of Frenchman's Rock in the Scillies.
U-20 FRUSTRATION
LONDON; BERLIN; WASHINGTON COMFORT DENIED
Oh, you cannot love me,' she said, 'because you don't really know me; and it's been less than a year since your wife died. I am a woman - and the thought of you needing me - is sweet!' she wrote.
THE MANIFEST
Here were muskrat skins, nuts, beeswax, bacon, salt rock, dental goods, cases of lard, and casks of cattle tongues; machinery of the Otis Elevator Company;. Churchill wrote: "The army in France was firing off shells at a rate which no military administration was ever asked to maintain.").
U-20 AT LAST
As there was no danger to our boat from the approach," he wrote, "we made for the stern of the sailer." After the shot I turned hard and ran away to avoid the danger of being fired upon," he wrote .
SIGHTING
SCHWIEGER REVEALED
FIRST came A REPORT OF GUN SHOT in the Fog, SENT Wednesday evening, May 5, from a station located on the Old Head of Kinsale, a promontory jutting out into the Celtic Sea near Queenstown, Ireland. After noting that Germany's U-boat campaign had greatly reduced traffic from America, Churchill told Runciman: “For our part, we want traffic—the more the better; and if some of them get into trouble, even better.”
HELPFUL YOUNG LADIES
Sailor Morton was ordered to touch up the paint on the hull of one of the lifeboats. The Allans traveled with two maids, who lodged in a tiny room sandwiched between one of the ship's funnels and the dome of the first-class dining room.
U-20 SPECTACLE
Schwieger's men continued to fire until the ship's bow rose out of the water and the stern began to sink. Schwieger ordered full speed and set a course that he predicted would bring U-20 ahead of the ship and in position to fire a torpedo.
LIFE AFTER DEATH
There were passages which illustrated so wonderfully some of the ordinary difficulties in communication," wrote Theodate—and by communication she meant contact with the dead. AMONG the younger crowd, life on the ship took on a new intensity with the end of the voyage so near.
U-20 CHANGE OF PLAN
Liverpool, at the entrance to another passage - the Bristol Channel - through which ships traveled to reach the English ports of Swansea, Cardiff and Bristol, "since the chances of favorable attacks are better here and enemy defensive measures less than in the Irish Sea at Liverpool.” Although he had only one torpedo available for immediate use, apart from the two in reserve, he had plenty of shells.
MESSAGES
While the concert was in progress, a team of officers conducted a night inspection of the ship, another measure prompted by the submarine threat. Captain Turner approved the idea, Mitchell said, provided "that no suggestion would be made to the passengers that the use of the conservators was in any way imminent."
LONDON; WASHINGTON; BERLIN TENSION
There was a fear,” she wrote, “that some might think I loved him for that; then inevitably came the dreaded thought of publicity; and the feeling that I was not trained for the responsibilities that come with such a life.” On the other hand, she felt a deep affection for the man. This fact is inevitably connected not only with changing our good relations with neutral countries, but also with causing the worst complications and ultimately throwing these countries into the enemy's camp." The situation in the Empire was already "tense" enough, he wrote and warned: " I cannot accept responsibility for the deterioration of our relations with neutral countries, which the continuation of the submarine war in its present form will certainly lead to. .”.
U-20 FOG
DEAD WAKE
THE IRISH SEA
ENGINES ABOVE
The view was magnificent,' said MacFarquhar, 'the sun shining, the water smooth and land visible on either side. A more beautiful day is not imaginable - the air was warm, no wind, bright sun, smooth sea.
LONDON; WASHINGTON
THE KING’S QUESTION
AT THE White House, with a crisp spring Friday just around the corner, Wilson wrote to Edith again. In this fresh morning air, - he wrote, - the world seems less in the way, it seems less standing between us.
FUNNELS ON THE HORIZON
First class passengers had only one seat, in the dining room in the center of the ship under the large dome. MEDICAL STUDENT Preston Prichard and his roommate Arthur Gadsden were well aware of the ship's entry into the danger zone.
BEAUTY
To Morton, in the "eyes" of the ship, the starboard view to the open sea was crisp and clear. At about 1:30 a.m., Quartermaster Johnston, who was no longer at the wheel, was sent down to give Turner a message that the old head of Kinsale was now "10 points on the port bow and 20 miles away." The ship's course gradually brought it closer to shore.
