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| Disaster |
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| Captain William Turner |
| Lusitania's propellers |
| Crew of the U-20 |
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| Walther Schwieger |
| Lusitania's boat deck |
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| On May 7th at 11:00, Lusitania broke through the fog into sunshine where she saw a smudge along the horizon. It was the coast of Ireland, the ship was nearly back in England. One thing that wasn�t visible though was a cruiser Juno, an escort for the Lusitania that Captain William Turner expected to meet to help them to England. Turner increased the ships speed to 18 knots and almost immidiatly afterwards, a wireless opperator came into the bridge. The message he handed the captain was just 12 words long, but in a code, and was addressed from Vice admiral Coke in Queenstown. Turner went down to his cabin to work on the message. He was awear of submarine activity already, but the only precausions he could take was to warn passengers about going outside and having all the lifeboats swung out. Just before 12:00, there was a knock at Turner�s door. Once again a wireless opperator came in and handed him a message. �Submarine activity in southern part of Irish Channel, last heard of 20 miles south of Conningbeg Light Vessel. Make sure Lusitania gets this�. This message gave Turner a problem. This message told him that there was submarine activity in the channel he was heading straight for. He now had to work out his position because of a deadly game of cat and mouse in the channel enterance he might have to play with the U-Boat. By 12:10, he had finished decyphering Coke�s earlier message and took it straight to the bridge where he altered the course by 20 degrees to port. The turn was so sharp that for a few seconds, people lost their footing and cutlery and crockery went crashing onto the floor. The German submarine U-20 surfaced. The fog which had worried Kapitan-Leutnant Walther Schwieger had cleared and he was now ready to take a bearing from the conning tower. He only had three torpedoes left, and he wanted to save two for his return voyage. Back on the Lusitania, Turner received another message at 12:40. �Submarine five miles south of Cape Clear, proceeding west when sighted at 10am.� Turner smiled a little bit. According to this message, the submarine was 5 mines astern of Lusy. As far as Turner knew, there were no U-Boats in the immediate vacinity. At 1:20pm, Schwieger, still up on the conning tower with two lookouts was eating his lunch. Suddenly, the starboard lookout spotted a puff of smoke on the horizon and Schwieger focussed his binoculars on it. He couldn�t believe his luck as he counted the funnels. Two, Three, Four! Only the biggest liners had four funnels. He estimated the distance to be 12 to 14 miles away. It was a long shot, but it was possible. The submarine sumberged and gave chase. At 1:40, Turner saw a familiar landmark. The Old Head of Kinsale was unmistakable with its white and black bands along the side of the lighthouse. He altered course for Queenstown. He wasn�t going back to Liverpool, not yet at least. The message sent by Coke ordered them into the Irish port. Following Lusitania, U-20 had only her periscope above the water. Schwieger was calling out intructions to the pilot. �Four funnels, schooner rig, upwards of 20,000 tons and making about 22 knots� he said. �Probably Lusitania or Mauritania� replied the pilot. �Both are armed cruisers used for trooping.� One G type torpedo was redied in a forward tube. Just as this was being done, he noticed the liner changing course. Schwieger couldn�t believe his luck. She was giving him a perfect chance. At about 650 feet away, Schwieger gave the deadly order. �Feure!� �Torpedo Los!� called back a man to Schwieger, indicating the torpedo had fired sucessfully. On the Lusitania, Turner had just come back to the bridge from the chart room. On the port bridge wing, a quartermaster was acting as a lookout with another of the starboard one. Suddenly, the telephone in the bridge rang. It was one of the lookouts. �Torpedo coming on the starboard bow!� he yelled. Seconds later, the torpedo slammed into Lusitania�s side with what Turner recalled as �a heavy door being slammed shut.� For others though, it was different. One peron recalls a �distant thud�, while another said it was a �horrifying concert of wrenching metal, breaking glass, snapping wood and raging flame.� Seconds after the torpedo hit it�s mark along the forward starboard sider of the ship, destroying boat 5 as it did, a second, more muffled but louder and more violent explosion occurred, literally blowing part of the side out of the ship. Schwieger marveled at the damage his single torpedo had done. He noted the second explosion in his war diary, and then dropped periscope and scuttled away. Immediately after the explosion, the fire/flood indicator went �berserk� and the ship took on a 15 degree list. The port watertight compartments remained dry, causing the ship to tild shaprly to starboard. Captain Turner looked along the port boat deck and saw all of the boats had swung inboard. That meant the starboard ones would still be outboard and could be launched, though with a little difficulty. The port ones however would be virtually impossible to launch. To launch the boats, the ship needed to be stopped, and Turner ran to the telegraphs in the bridge and ordered �Full Astern�. As the forward turbines were disengaged, Assistant Third Engineer George Little brought the reverse turbines online before the propellers and their shafts had stopped spinning. The turbines ground uselessly against each other, the excess pressure drove the reverse turbines the wrong way, building pressure up against the incoming steam. Steam lines burst open, valves erupted and the pressure dropped from 190 lbs per square inch to less than 50. Now with the ship ploughing relentlessly into the sea at 18 knots, Turner tried to turn her to the shallow waters of Ireland, but one of the burst steam pipes controlled the steering mechanism and the rudded locked. Only a minute after the explosion, a wireless message was sent out. �SOS, SOS, SOS. Come at once. Big list. 10 miles south of Old Kinsale. MFA.� The MFA was Lusitania�s Marconi code. Captain Turner was still on the open port bridge wing. He ordered Staff Captain John Anderson not to lower any boats until Lusitania had lost enough speed for it to be safe. In some cases, it meant getting the people out of the boats on the port side. On all of the lifeboats, there was a chain securing them to the decks. This �snubbing� chain had to have the pinhead knocked out otherwise the boat would remain lashed to the decks. At portside boat station 2, Junior Third Officer Bestic was in charge. Standing at the after davit, was was trying to tell the people already in the boat that because of the list, the boat couldn�t be launched. Suddenly, he heard the snubbing chain pin being knocked out, and before the word �NO!� left his lips, the five ton boat laden with over 50 people careered down the deck and slammed against the superstructure, crushing those caught behind it and those aboard. Unable to hold the boat, the men at the davits let go of the falls and boat 2 and the collapsible stored with it scittered down the deck with a grisly collection of injured people and jammed under the bridge wing below where Turner was standing. Bestic, determined to stop the same thing happening again jumped at boat 4 just as someone knocked out the pin. It crashed down the deck into the wreckage of the first boat. Panicing passengers now stormed boats 6, 8, 10 and 12, and followed them down the deck to join their companions. On the starboard side of the boat deck, crews were having trouble getting the boats away. Because of the extreem list and panicing passengers, very few boats got aay. One boat was split in two when a man jumped from the deck on to it. Others dangled from one end of the falls, spilling their contents of people into the water. Two familiar people of the time, millionaire sporting identity Charles Vandabilt and theatrical producer Chalres Froham, were seen as heroes in the eyes of many on the boat deck. Vandabilt gave his lifebelt away to a woman and helped many people into the lifeboats. Many said his complexion showed no fear, as if he was simply waiting for a train. Froham was standing with many first class passengers in a calm manner. He was heard to recite a line from his greatest theatrical sucess Peter Pan just before the water swalloed the group up. "Why fear death? It is the most beautiful experience life gives up." Water now began to flow over the bridge floor and Turner was washed away from the ship, as was Bestic. Because of the depth of the water, the bow slammed into the ocean bottom sending a huge quiver through the ship. Her bulkheads collapsed and boilers exploded, scuttling the ship. Finally, her funnels collapsed and she sank beneath the sea. It was 2:28pm, only 18 minutes after the torpedo attack. Only 6 boats were succesfully launched, numbers 1, 11, 13, 15, 19 and 21, all from the starboard side (hence the odd numbers). After Lusitania dissapeared, the water over her grave bubbled for a full minute, churning as all the air excaped from the now submerged hulk. She was gone, and along with her, the lives of 1198 innocent, civillian men, women and children. |
| "Feure!" |
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| "Torpedo coming on the starboard side!" |
| The Sinking |
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| Civillian Victims |