The Lusitania Sinking

Eyewitness Accounts from Survivors

Anthony Richards

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781459743502
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Erster Weltkrieg

Uncertain of their son's fate, his family leaped into action. The sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania was a maritime disaster that may have changed the course of history by making American involvement in World War I almost inevitable. This part of the story has been told before but here, for the first time, The Lusitania Sinking has a far more personal tale to tell, of a family looking for information on their son's death. On 1 May 1915 Preston Prichard, a 29-year-old student, embarked as a second-class passenger on the Lusitania, bound from New York for Liverpool. Just after 2 p.m. on 7 May, a single torpedo, fired by the German submarine U-20, caused a massive explosion in the Lusitania 's hold, and the ship began sinking rapidly. Within 20 minutes she disappeared and 1, 198 men, women and children, including Preston, died. Preston's mother wrote hundreds of letters to survivors to find out more about what might have happened in his last moments. The replies she received included an extensive selection of moving and evocative survivors' accounts. Although this was not Mrs Prichard's intention, she thus assembled an outstanding collection of vivid first-hand recollections. The Lusitania Sinking tells the story of this tragedy using this previously unseen historical treasure trove.

Chapter 1

Setting the Scene

June 7th 1906 was a perfect summer’s day as thousands of visitors streamed into the famous shipyard of John Brown and Company Limited. Anticipation among the crowd was high on that Thursday morning. Situated on the north bank of the River Clyde in Scotland, the shipyard had been a hive of activity for the last two years. Thousands of men had been employed on building a single ship which, as the crowd amassing for today’s launch would witness, was about to take its place as one of the most technologically advanced passenger liners in history, boasting the very best in design and comfort. Christened Lusitania, after the ancient Roman province on the Iberian peninsula, she held the distinction of being the largest ship in the world. The local press were in their element.

The launch was a magnificent sight, a sight to stir the imagination and press home as seldom before the greatness of mind over matter. Seeing this huge leviathan on the stocks, 790 feet long, 88 feet broad, weighing 16,000 tons, one could scarce credit the fact that a hundred years ago the very idea of iron ships was laughed to scorn. It just shows how civilisation is rushing forward at motor car speed. The huge vessel mounted on the ways was the dominant feature of the landscape … as impressive as the Pyramids, only instead of rising from the desert the graceful hull surrounded one of the busiest hives of industry in the three kingdoms. High above all surrounding buildings it rose, its lines as graceful as those of a giant yacht. Without actually seeing it, it is difficult to realise the dimensions of this latest monster of the deep.

The day was glorious. People sweltered in the heat, and all the elite of Glasgow travelled in finest of summer attire to witness the launch. It was a great day for Glasgow, a great day indeed for the whole of the shipbuilding world. All roads seemed to lead to Clydebank. 23,000 people, all ticket-holders, crowded into Messrs Brown’s yard, 30,000 more lined the opposite bank of the Clyde, heedless of the danger of a huge wave rising and washing them off when the titanic vessel struck the water. It was soon after noon that a continuous thunderous roll told that the hammering away of much of the shoring had commenced.

Gradually the noise of hammering ceased. Then through the silence two electric bells sharply rang, and simultaneously a long ribbon, stretching taut from the vessel’s hull, and to which a bottle of wine was affixed, was severed by Lady Mary Inverclyde, widow of Lord Inverclyde, who was chairman of the Cunard Company when the decision was arrived at to build the vessel and her sister the Mauretania. The bottle crashed abruptly at the vessel’s side, and down plunged the dark liquid. Then a great wrenching and crunching of breaking timber was heard, and to the accompaniment of a perfect hurricane of cheering the huge vessel slowly and gracefully glided along the tallow pathway, stern foremost, into the Clyde, raising a cloud of spray which for a moment half hid her from sight. Then this passed, and she was seen floating in the river as gracefully as a swan, thunderous cheers greeting the successful christening of the vessel.¹

Lusitania was the new jewel in the Cunard Steamship Company’s crown. Once fitted out, she would carry 552 first class passengers, 460 in second class and 1,186 in third, although the accommodation on offer at each level was far more comfortable than in other liners.

The first-class dining saloon, upper saloon, and dome are features which for magnificence have never been surpassed. The lower saloon is 86 ft long and the full breadth of the ship, so that it is practically square; the upper saloon is 62 ft long and 65 ft broad; the dome, which is elliptical on plan, has a height of 30 ft. The entrance halls, vestibules and corridors are spacious, and finished in keeping with the main apartments. Rubber tiling affords a safe and kindly foothold in the more open parts, and thick yielding carpets and runners provide for silence and easy progress from end to end of the passenger quarters. Lofty head-room, large windows, liberal berth space, and a thousand and one things, including wide staircases and luxurious electric lifts, contribute to the pleasurable hallucination that one is sojourning in the grandest of hotels on land, and that the general surroundings are those of ‘no mean city’! In proper degree the same remarks are true of the accommodation for other classes of passengers, the second-class in fact being more than equal to the first-class on board the large majority of ocean mail and passenger steamships.²

The ship’s construction, along with that of her sister vessel Mauretania which was due to launch a few months later, had been a direct consequence of international rivalry developing over the last few decades.

Cunard had pioneered a regular transatlantic service in May 1840, with steamships establishing themselves as the most efficient way to cross the Atlantic. British colonialism and emigration to the New World meant that the nation’s shipping dominated the ports and sea lanes at this time, facilitating strong and regular trade. Yet Cunard’s monopoly on transatlantic passenger trade would last only briefly. By the 1850s American-owned services began to operate, while Germany was also developing as a rival colonial power, its fleet starting to swell in size from the 1870s due to increases in industrialisation and foreign trade. Fierce competition erupted between Cunard and these foreign companies, who despite often running superior ships, struggled to compete with Cunard’s more efficient service and their impressive reputation for having never lost a single passenger.

The key moment in this ongoing competition had occurred in 1902, when the Liverpool-based Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (better known as the White Star Line) was acquired by International Mercantile Marine (IMM), an American syndicate bankrolled by the American financier J. P. Morgan. This massive company boasted profit-sharing schemes with several German shipping lines, and represented a very serious threat to the British-owned Cunard and the nation’s maritime dominance of the North Atlantic. The British Government expressed concern over the IMM monopoly in transatlantic trade and feared that if Cunard were to join this conglomerate, the country’s maritime fleet would be almost completely controlled by foreign hands. With the particular rise of Germany as a maritime competitor, this started warning bells ringing in the Whitehall corridors of power. There was also a large body of opinion which demanded that Britain should win back the Blue Riband award for the fastest transatlantic crossing, held exclusively by a succession of German ships since 1897.

Negotiations between the British Admiralty and Cunard therefore began and by July 1903 an agreement was reached. It was announced that in return for a government loan of £2,600,000 at a competitive rate of interest, Cunard would arrange for the construction of two new ships capable of steaming at 24–25 knots, more than fast enough to beat any competitors. In addition, the Admiralty would make annual payments to Cunard of £150,000 as a guarantee that, in the event of war being declared, the ships could be requisitioned and easily converted into armed merchant cruisers. A penalty was to be exacted if the average ocean speed of the new ships fell below 24.5 knots over the first year of operation, in which case £10,000 was to be deducted from the Admiralty’s annual payment for every 0.1 knot below the target. For Britain, Cunard therefore became in effect the national shipping line, with at least two world-class liners ready for war service in the event of a national emergency. We can therefore better appreciate the level of excitement and praise heaped upon Lusitania when she was revealed to the world in 1907. Here was a symbol of Great British engineering which put the country at the forefront of maritime construction, while re-establishing Britain (and Cunard) as masters of the Atlantic.

Lusitania would embark on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York on 7 September 1907. For those passengers fortunate enough to sail on the already-famous luxury liner, the voyage would be full of excitement. The representative from the New York Times confirmed as much in his breathless account of the crossing.

Looking around on the crowded decks fore and aft it was easy to realize that we were on the largest ship in the world, with a floating population of 3,000, including the crew, men and women gathered from all parts of Europe, all bound for the land of the West.

One of the features of the daily life on shipboard was furnished by the two elevators amidships, which carried the passengers up and down to the various decks, six in all … Two boys in gold-laced uniforms were in charge, and were kept busy day and night, especially at dinner time, when the ladies appeared in gorgeous toilettes, escorted by their husbands in solemn evening dress. Sitting in the splendid dining room, decorated in white and gold, with its lofty balcony, and listening to the orchestra, it was difficult to believe one’s self at sea.

The telephones, which are connected with every cabin, afforded great amusement to the passengers at first, but later were found of great convenience in asking one’s friends if they were coming to dinner or for a promenade on deck. The ship was so large that it was not always possible to locate your friends without the aid of the telephones and the central offices on each deck. Following the London custom the passengers all said, ‘Are you there?’ instead of the American ‘Hello!’ After dinner on fine evenings we sat out on the spacious verandas of the promenade deck and listened to music.

One of the busiest men on the ship was the Marconi operator, who was besieged at all hours by passengers anxious to receive news and by those who wanted to send dispatches to their friends on other steamers that were crossing the ocean. One man’s wife had got aboard the Lucania through some mix-up at Queenstown and the things she flashed to him by wireless made even the operator wince. About 1,000 words were received and dispatched daily, and the record was made yesterday, when over 2,000 words were dispatched.³

Despite being hampered by fog, Lusitania steamed into New York on the morning of Friday 13 September, the journey having taken five days and fifty-four minutes in total. While beating the British record by around six and a half hours, Lusitania’s time was still thirty minutes outside the German record. Yet this did not prevent the American press from celebrating the successful maiden voyage and impressive journey time.

Seldom has a vessel arriving at this port been welcomed as was the new turbine liner. As she came to at the Quarantine station bedlam broke loose and every skipper within sight promptly pulled open his whistle valve and kept it open. The joyous crowd on cutter, steamboat, and tug supplemented this welcome with a long-sustained vocal salute. The hoarse whistle of the Lusitania was repeatedly sounding the return salute and every deck was a-flutter with handkerchiefs and flags.

Within a few minutes a port was opened and customs men and newspaper men were scrambling on board across a narrow plank. Then the Lusitania moved on up the bay to her new pier at the foot of West Thirteenth Street. The small craft convoy clustered about her, and from every passing craft, and there were many of them, she received salutes from whistle and flag. Thousands of persons crowded the sea wall at the Battery, and it is safe to say that work in every office where the windows commanded a view of the North River was stopped until the liner passed. From the tall tower of the still uncompleted Singer Building the American flag was broken out as the boat came into view, a salute from the tallest building to the biggest steamship. In passing the Battery the big red house flag on the roof of the Cunard office building was lowered three times in salute, and the Lusitania’s flag was lowered in acknowledgment.⁴

Everybody knew that it was only a matter of time before Lusitania took the Blue Riband from its German rival, and this she did on her second westbound voyage, reaching the Sandy Hook Lightship at 1.17 a.m. on Friday 11 October, having made the crossing in four days and just under twenty hours. On her return voyage, she would win the record for the eastbound crossing too. Britain had begun to regain her maritime supremacy. For the next few years, Lusitania and Mauretania would trade the Blue Riband between them on a regular basis, and from Lusitania’s record-breaking trip in 1907 onwards, Cunard ships flew the flag for British interests. Cunard’s rivals were unable to beat their ships for speed, but instead chose to compete by building larger and more luxurious vessels. The White Star Line responded by ordering three massive new liners – Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. Only the first of these, launched into service in October 1910, proved profitable for the company. Her sister-ships failed to live up to expectations, with Titanic famously sinking after hitting an iceberg during her maiden voyage in April 1912, and Britannic requisitioned on the outbreak of war in 1914 for use as a hospital ship. Germany’s Imperator, launched just a month after the Titanic disaster, became the largest passenger ship in the world at 906 feet in length. To shipbuilders, it seems, size did indeed mean everything.

This international rivalry would only worsen after conflict broke out between Britain and Germany on 4 August 1914. What began as a patriotic desire for each country to attain the greatest maritime achievements would turn into a desperate struggle for mastery over the seas, and one which would lead to considerable bloodshed. Europe had been a smouldering tinderbox of military alliances and discontent for quite some time and, on 28 June 1914, the assassination of the heir-apparent to the Austro-Hungarian throne proved to be the spark which led to an escalating series of recriminations and military mobilisation. Despite a common belief that the conflict would remain a short and localised one, the main land war which concentrated on the Western Front of France and Belgium resulted in deadlock. Armies from both sides dug in and their trench lines would fail to move significantly for the next four years, despite regular attempts to break the stalemate. Much of the war would therefore be devoted to each side trying to break the impasse, either through the adoption of largely unsuccessful ‘sideshow’ campaigns in locations as diverse as Macedonia, Mesopotamia or Gallipoli, or through control of the seas.

Britain instituted a naval blockade of Germany immediately on the outbreak of war. Both Germany and Britain relied heavily on imported food and raw materials. By controlling sea trade around its shores, including crucially those resources being shipped across the Atlantic, Britain could not only ensure its own continued supply of food and vital war materials but in so doing restrict those being received by Germany and her allies. The aim would be, quite literally, to starve them into submission. The British Admiralty’s original plan to requisition Lusitania and Mauretania as armed auxiliary cruisers was not followed through, since the need for auxiliary vessels was not as great as had originally been expected. With the Royal Navy believing that they were protecting the relevant sea lanes, Cunard’s liners would therefore prove most valuable if they remained as merchant ships. The vessels were, at any rate, now considered too large and vulnerable to attack to act as anything else, as well as very expensive to run.

Britain declared her coastal waters a war zone, with any shipping using this route doing so at its own risk. Access to the North Sea and English Channel was restricted and enforced by the Northern Patrol and Dover Patrol respectively. Food was classed as contraband of war and neutral shipping now voluntarily submitted to inspections looking for ‘illegal’ cargo, in return for a British escort through the country’s defensive minefields. Neutral powers who continued to use the shipping lanes for maritime trade, most notably the United States, frequently protested against the detrimental effect that the blockade was having on their economy. However, regular trade with Britain continued and the increasing demand for American munitions helped to soften the blow. Although the United States remained neutral, their public sympathy tended to rest with Britain.

While her sister-ships Mauretania and Aquitania would stay in dock at Liverpool, Lusitania remained in commercial service during the war. Despite public demand having dropped since the outbreak of hostilities, there were still more than enough bookings to justify the operating costs of a transatlantic service. The demands of war required a certain amount of economising to be introduced by Cunard, however, due to the costs of coal and reduced manpower availability, and this was reflected in their decision to shut down the ship’s Boiler Room No. 4. This meant that operating speeds would now be cut from an average of 25 knots to 21 knots; the usual five-day transatlantic voyage would now take seven days to complete. But Lusitania remained by far the fastest passenger ship in service for those needing to cross the Atlantic. For passengers fearful of a wartime transatlantic crossing, Lusitania’s speed would add a degree of assurance. It would certainly prove a major factor in the case of Preston Prichard’s decision to book passage on the ship. For the greatest threat to sea travellers throughout the war remained German submarines.

Before the war Germany was the second-largest trading nation in the world, with only Britain ahead in the game, yet its Imperial Navy remained relatively small by comparison. In the years immediately prior to the outbreak of the First World War, the Kaiser had sought to remedy this by building nine new battleships, five light cruisers and thirty-three destroyers. A crucial element of this enlarged German naval power would be the submarine, and by August 1914, Germany could boast an impressive fleet of twenty-six U-boats. Remarkably, their entire development and construction had covered less than a decade, yet the German undersea technology was leading the field despite their fleet ranking only fifth in size in the world (France led with an enormous fleet of 123 submarines, followed by Britain’s 72). While the...