The Lusitania Sinking Eyewitness Accounts From Survivors

The Lusitania sinking was a significant event during World War I. The Lusitania was a British ocean liner that was torpedoed by a German U-boat, U-20, on May 7, 1915. The ship was en route from New York City to Liverpool, England, when it was attacked off the southern coast of Ireland. The attack led to the deaths of 1 198 of the 1 959 people on board, including 128 Americans. The sinking of the Lusitania played a crucial role in shifting public opinion in the United States against Germany, contributing to the U. S. eventually entering the war in 1917. The Germans justified the attack by arguing that the Lusitania was carrying military supplies, which it was, though it was primarily a passenger vessel.

The incident sparked outrage and was used by the Allied powers as propaganda to gain support for the war effort. The Lusitania’s sinking remains a poignant symbol of the dangers of unrestricted submarine warfare and the broader human cost of World War I.

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.

Final Voyage

It was just after 12.20 p.m. on 1 May that Lusitania backed into the Hudson River, a moment caught on film by the newsreel cameraman. Passengers waved handkerchiefs and flags as the huge ship was nudged into position by tugs and steamed off towards the open sea. Archie Donald stood on deck and observed proceedings.

We passed down the Hudson in the afternoon and gazed at the wonderful sky line of New York City, passing the Statue of Liberty about 2 o’clock. We were soon out to sea and at the 3 mile limit were stopped by the cruiser Caronia, which took off their mail and papers. In the distance we saw the cruiser Essex and the battleship [sic] Bristol.

Mr Donald would not have been aware that HMS Caronia, previously a Cunard liner but now converted into an armed merchant cruiser, received a more interesting delivery than just mail. A camera, accompanied by an explanatory report written hastily by Captain Turner, was also handed over. This related to three German stowaways who had been found on Lusitania shortly after her departure. It is likely that the men were attempting to find and photograph evidence of the ship being armed, yet had been caught in the act. The three Germans remained on board Lusitania but were kept locked up in a cabin, the intention being that they would be properly interrogated after arrival on British soil.

As for the ship’s legitimate paying passengers, they now had the opportunity to stroll around the decks and make the acquaintance of their fellow travellers. Popular places to frequent were the dining rooms and saloons of the ship, while regular entertainments were arranged by both crew and fellow passengers in order to ensure that the voyage would be as carefree and comfortable as possible, as Archie Donald could attest.

The voyage was the most wonderful and most pleasant I have had, each day was fine with the sun shining, and I never missed a meal, or the time never seemed to hang heavily on our hands. We did not read our New York papers until the afternoon of the first day, and in it we saw the warnings of the German Embassy in large type; however, it was too late to read the warnings when on board ship, and the confidence we had in the speed and carefulness of the Cunard Company allayed any feelings of un-safety.

On board I made the acquaintance of a Mr Thornton Jackson of Heswell, and we found many mutual acquaintances. He was one of the nicest men I have met in recent times, being an acute businessman and a thorough gentleman. Wilson and Jackson played against Mr Gwyer and myself at Auction Bridge, and every morning about 10 o’clock we used to meet in the top lounge and while away the morning. In the afternoon we wrote letters or went and spent the time amongst the ladies, and also in the evening we resumed our games at Bridge. The company was most pleasant and the time sped quicker than ever I have found it to do so at sea.

Stewardess May Bird had been serving on Lusitania since the ship’s maiden voyage, and was therefore already more than familiar with the ship’s opulent facilities. The size of the vessel and the number of passengers milling about meant that it almost resembled a small town.

The Lusitania, that was my first ship. She was in those days the biggest ship in England. The accommodation, of course, was wonderful. I’d never seen anything like it before. There were:

• big;
• airy;
• well-ventilated;
• well-heated;
• beautifully furnished and big rooms and little rooms;
• both kinds.

And it took a long, long time to walk from one end of the ship to the other, I should say nearly 20 minutes.

Children had the finest times of their lives, there were all sorts of deck games, Quoits, they had fancy dress parades for them, and if a child happened to be on board and it had a birthday, there was always a birthday cake made with their name on and they used to give them a little private party. They had the time of their lives and the run of the ship.

Of course, I thought there was a sporting chance that we might not get to Liverpool, but one must take chances nowadays. However, I was astounded to find the ship full of rank, fashion and wealth, and big crowds in the second and third. From the very first the ship’s people asserted that we ran no danger, that we should run right away from any submarine, or ram her, and so on, so that the idea came to be regarded as a mild joke for lunch and dinner tables. There was a lot of money on the ship, in the saloon as well as in the hold. The pool on the ship’s run used to average £105, and on our last night on the ship there was a brilliant gathering (seems ghastly to think of it now) at a concert when £123 were collected for the Liverpool Seamen’s Orphanage.

The weather during the next few days at sea caused a small amount of seasickness among some passengers, but the vast majority soon made themselves at home. Passengers played cards or read books in the various lounges, composed letters home, or took afternoon tea in the garden-like cafe filled with shrubs and hanging baskets of flowers. One of the most common pastimes was to sit in a deck chair, wrapped in a warm rug, and watch the Atlantic as it swept past. The other chief interest for passengers was food and drink, with a massive variety of high-quality food available. First-class passengers in particular experienced a world-class dining experience, while the amount of alcohol and tobacco on board was plentiful to say the least. It was not uncommon for wealthy businessmen to spend the majority of the voyage in the ship’s first-class smoking room.

The second-class cabin allocated to Preston Prichard was D90, situated on the port side towards the stern of the vessel. His cabin was a short walk from the Second Cabin dining saloon and adjacent to the ship’s barber shop. Every time that he left or entered his room over the next few days, Preston would greet the barber, Jonathan Denton, and they would often share a chat. Denton himself had only joined the ship’s crew at the last minute, taking the place of another man who happened to have fallen ill.

As the voyage progressed, Preston participated in many of the activities arranged in order to keep the ship’s passengers entertained, frequenting the music room and being particularly active in organising whist drives and betting pools. Thomas Sumner, the fellow amateur photographer whom he met shortly before the ship left New York, described Preston as … such another fellow as myself. As we were both travelling alone we met practically every day … He always seemed very pleasant and enjoyed himself in a very quiet manner – you will understand what I mean, he didn’t go about in a rowdy fashion like lots of fellows do when having a time. He took part in the sports, I remember him in the obstacle race and the tug o’war.

Fellow passenger Olive North was returning home to Yorkshire after having spent time visiting her married sister in Canada. She recalled seeing Preston many times on deck, and on one particular occasion he took advantage of his experience on the Canadian ranches in order to entertain his fellow passengers.

A party of us used to have a game of skipping every day. One of the boys tried to lasso me […] but did not manage to do it very well, so this young gentleman had been watching us, came forward and said, «I will show you how to do it». He seemed to be an expert on lassoing and caught quite a few in the rope. When he handed me the rope back he remarked that he had lassoed before.

On the second day out from New York, third-class passenger George Hook also encountered Preston. Hook’s wife had passed away some eighteen months before, and George had decided to take his family, consisting of daughter Elsie and son Frank, to relocate to a new life back in his native England.

I had took my daughter up on to the second class deck and she went to sleep there and [Preston] came along and said, «Your little girl looks very ill», and asked if I had a rug to put over her as she ought to be covered up. I told him mine was at the other end of the ship, so he went and fetched his and wrote on an envelope his name and number of his cabin so as I could take it to his cabin when I had finished with it. I can remember what a job I had to find his cabin when I took it back.

During each day of the voyage Captain Turner ordered fire drills and tests of the ship’s watertight bulkhead doors. In addition, every passenger was allocated their own lifejacket, usually stored in their cabin. All passengers were expected to attend a lifeboat drill, in which the ship’s crew demonstrated the procedures to follow in case of an emergency but, as Jane Lewis recalled, such drills were rudimentary to say the least and only really intended to reassure the passengers. They were certainly of little value as a training exercise for the crew. But such things proved an amusing diversion to pass the time.

Oh yes, we had to go through a practice, put lifebelts on, that’s all – stand all on the deck so many at a time. That’s how we got to know how to put [the lifejackets] on. Oh yes, they were all put out just after we left [New York]. It was well looked after, that was, very well looked after.

Stewardess May Bird had already experienced submarine scares during earlier voyages in Lusitania.

On the way home from New York [on a previous trip] we were stopped just outside Queenstown. Rumours got around all about why we were stopped, and so forth. The war was on. And eventually we were taken into Queenstown and not allowed home or [to] write letters and we were under strict orders. We were kept there for a week. And the reason was that at that time they had torpedoed a pilot boat off the bar and the pilots were drowned, and they were there waiting for us. And that’s why they didn’t let us go up to Liverpool, they turned us into Queenstown.

For this particular voyage, an added precaution was put into operation.

The only difference from any other voyage was that we had to be very particular, no lights shown on deck. Not even a match struck. And all the windows, port holes and everything had to be covered, which of course was done. We’d had the normal lifeboat drill, but we always did have that, so that wasn’t special, that’s the usual thing – everybody on board knew which was their lifeboat. The number and which side of the deck they had to go to.

The attitude of many people towards the possibility of a submarine attack was perhaps best summed-up by Ambrose Cross, whose pragmatic attitude would stand him in good stead in the days to come: «I had formulated no plan of campaign except a vague notion that if anything happened I would go right out and not wait to pick up anything; this I did, and it probably saved my life».

Lusitania was full to capacity with second-class passengers and Preston Prichard shared his cabin with three other men, including Arthur Gadsden, a British civil engineer from Northamptonshire who had been living in Chicago. The subject of the war, and in particular German submarines and the inherent dangers present during their voyage, often came up as a topic for discussion.

I can assure you he was most anxious to be home again and was counting the time when he would arrive … [Preston] was quite aware we were in the danger zone because we were talking about submarines and wondering if we should see one at all, never having the least fear but that we should get away from them.

Preston also befriended the ship’s wireless operator, Robert Leith.

We had several long conversations during the trip, and [I] found him very interesting indeed. If I remember correctly our topic was that of the war, and once or twice of submarine attacks. […] His health at that time as far as I could perceive was excellent, and in high spirits (no doubt at the thought of returning home).

Unknown to those on board Lusitania, events were already in motion which would lead to a fateful encounter. The German submarine U-20 had sailed on Friday 30 April from the naval base at Wilhelmshaven, captained by the 29-year-old Walther Schwieger. Having joined the Imperial German Navy in 1903, Schwieger had served in U-boats since 1911 and by 1915 was therefore something of an experienced submariner. His orders on departure were to follow a route north around Scotland before reaching his target patrol area in the Irish Sea around Liverpool. He was to look out for:

• British troop transports;
• merchant vessels and warships;
• holding his position for as long as fuel and supplies permitted.

Instead of following the fastest route, which would have taken U-20 along the Scottish coast and then down towards the Irish Sea, Schwieger chose to sail around the west coast of Ireland, this being the safer course. The U-boat dodged patrolling British destroyers, while an attempt to sink a steamer on 3 May was thwarted due to the torpedo remaining wedged in its tube. A further attack the following evening was abandoned when Schwieger was able to identify his potential target as the Swedish cargo ship Hibernia, displaying neutral markings.

As U-20 had progressed around the northern coasts of Scotland and Ireland, no fewer than fourteen separate transmissions had been intercepted by the Admiralty’s Room 40, in which Schwieger established his position. By the Wednesday morning the submarine was therefore identified as heading south along the western coast of Ireland, towards Fastnet, the most southerly point of land. Also present off Fastnet was the cruiser HMS Juno, intended as the escort ship to Lusitania, which was expected in two days’ time. The obvious threat of a U-boat attack on a lone ship led the Admiralty to recall the cruiser to Queenstown immediately. Crucially, no message was sent to Lusitania, either to warn the crew of the submarine approaching the danger zone through which they were scheduled to sail or to inform them that their escort was no longer available.

Arriving off the south-west coast of Ireland on the afternoon of Wednesday 5 May, U-20 sighted a new potential target, as described in Captain Schwieger’s log.

16.50 hrs: I head for a sailing vessel which appears to be of large size. On approaching I find that it is only a small three-master. As there is no danger of any kind to U-20 I bear away aft of the sailing vessel. The crew consisting of five men are ordered to abandon ship and to come alongside in order to hand over the flag and the ship’s papers. The vessel is the Earl of Latham. It was on a voyage from Liverpool to Limerick carrying a cargo of stone. We sink it by means of twelve shells from the rapid-fire cannon. The crew ply their oars in the direction of the coast despite the fact that there is a fishing boat in the vicinity.

This occurred just off the Old Head of Kinsale, a notable headland in County Cork which was the first and last landmark traditionally seen by transatlantic ships. U-20 then proceeded eastwards along the coast, and towards midnight attacked the British steamer Cayo Romano off Queenstown.

20.10 hrs: I attack a steamer of around 3 000 tons with a bronze torpedo. The steamer stops, alters course and continues at full steam ahead as soon as it sees the air bubbles of the torpedo wake. The torpedo grazes him aft. I was really under the impression that towards the end the torpedo became maladjusted and was no longer advancing. The steamer does not stop zigzagging in order to escape from a second torpedo and I desist from making a further attack.

Once news of both attacks reached the Admiralty, they ordered a signal to be sent to all ships warning «Submarines active off south coast of Ireland». This signal was surprisingly vague, considering that the attempt on Cayo Romano had given them a specific location only a few hours out of date.

By the next morning, that of Thursday 6 May, Schwieger had reached the vicinity of the Coningbeg Lightship which marked the entrance to St George’s Channel and the final approach to Liverpool. There, U-20 encountered the British steamer Candidate.

07.40 hrs: Intermittent thick fog. Emptied the water ballasts in view of brighter weather and continue course on surface. A large steamer reported ahead to starboard. I run in for a surface attack. No danger to us of being rammed or fired on in poor visibility conditions such as these. The steamer puts about after sighting U-20. To continue on the surface does not appear to me to be dangerous in this fog. I maintain the helm dead on the steamer and attack with cannon fire. The steamer flees at full speed. After having been hit twice it disappears in the fog for some time. When the target again becomes visible I resume my cannon fire. The steamer does not cease pointing its stern towards us in order not to be torpedoed. Not until having been hit several times (once by a full hit on the bridge) does he stop and lower his boats to the water. One of the boats fills with water and sinks as soon as it is released by the tackle. The three others depart heavily overloaded.

10.00 hrs: The three lifeboats turn away slowly from the steamer. I fire from the forward tube (bronze torpedo set for two and a half metres) at a range of 500 m. The torpedo strikes at the height of the engines without great effectiveness. The steamer sinks a little at the stern but stays afloat. Seeing this I approach and give the order for fire to be opened onto the load water line with the rapid fire cannon. The name painted on the stern and covered by a layer of paint is Candidate of Liverpool. The steamer is of 5 000 gross tons. It had no flag hoisted.

10.25 hrs: It dips lower and lower and then sinks whilst see-sawing with the stern largely above the water line.

Only ten minutes later, the White Star Line passenger ship Arabic was sighted and U-20 dived and raced into a position for firing. Unfortunately for Schwieger, the liner was moving at full speed and still too far away for him to target a torpedo properly. He therefore let the ship get away, no doubt frustrated that such a large and impressive vessel had escaped him. However, barely an hour later, U-20 sighted another potential target and intercepted Candidate’s sister-ship, Centurion. Acting cautiously on the fair assumption that the merchant vessel was armed in the same manner as her sister, Schwieger fired two torpedoes and sank her. U-20 could now boast three definite victories, but their fuel was running low and they had yet to reach the intended target zone off Liverpool. By the Thursday afternoon, Schwieger had therefore decided on a revised course of action.

14.15 hrs: Thick fog. Submerge to 24 m and follow course 240 degrees in order to keep to the open sea. I forgo approaching Liverpool any nearer – despite the fact that the landfalls here are indicated to be operational bases – for the following reasons:

• Because of the fog which has been in evidence throughout these two days of calm and because the barometer reading does not permit me to predict an early brightening up.
• Because during the time of fog it is impossible to make out in time the numerous enemy surveillance ships in the St George’s Channel and the Irish Sea, i. e. trawlers and destroyers. In these circumstances and having to navigate submerged all the time.

It would be out of the question during nights with little visibility to await the passage of convoys coming out from Liverpool for it would be impossible to find out whether they are or are not escorted by destroyers. Moreover it is to be expected that they are always escorted, particularly at night.

In the course of the outward-bound voyage from Emden to the St George’s Channel the consumption of fuel has already been so great that a return journey from Liverpool doubling the south of Ireland would no longer be feasible, and I want to avoid at all cost a return journey through the North Channel because of the well established surveillance at the height of the Firth of Clyde, the effectiveness of which U-20 has already had the opportunity of experiencing on an earlier cruise.

And finally, I have only three torpedoes left at my disposal. Of these I want to keep two for the journey home.

Therefore I have taken the decision to cruise to the south of the Bristol Channel and there to attack steamers until two-fifths of my fuel supply is used up. In that area there will be no lack of opportunities for carrying out attacks and there will be less danger of reprisals.

Meanwhile, Lusitania was sailing on towards her destination. Throughout the voyage the war had manifested itself in various ways, some unexpectedly so. A concert held on 3 May had led to some controversy when passengers complained in a very public manner about the choice of «unpatriotic» music by Johann Strauss. Captain Turner had also had to deal with some disquiet among passengers who were expressing concern over the brevity of lifejacket and lifeboat drills, leading him to address such criticisms directly via a question and answer session in the first class dining saloon. By this time, on the evening of Thursday 6 May, the ship was nearing the danger zone. As the liner approached the waters off the southern coast of Ireland where U-boats might be lurking, Archie Donald recalled how the ship’s crew implemented additional safety procedures.

On the Thursday night we ran into a bank of fog and our log showed we were approximately 200 miles from the coast of Ireland; the fog horn went all night, and I believe a boat drill was given to the men who swung out the lifeboats on the «A» deck. However, they did not tear off the cover of canvas on the collapsible boats, which were piled on the aft saloon decks in groups of three, there being four groups or twelve of these collapsible rafts in all. In the morning when we got up we noticed the boats were out but thought it was just a precaution, and no fear was felt.

Alice Lines also remembered how the Thursday evening saw safety measures instigated. This may have been a direct result of Captain Turner responding to the signal sent by the Admiralty, warning in general terms about submarines being active, or could equally have been just a sensible precaution in time of war.

That evening before, they did come and close the port holes. The steward came and said that he’d had his orders to close them. Until then I mean there was no thought of war or anything. As far as I, a young girl, I was enjoying myself. I was going to the dancing, I’ll be quite honest I was having a good time. War was … well, you don’t understand it until you get into it.

Shortly after midnight, Lusitania received a further Admiralty message, addressed to all British ships: «Take Liverpool Pilot at bar and avoid headlands. Pass harbours at full speed. Steer mid-channel course. Submarines off Fastnet». To Captain Turner, this meant that he was allowed to take Lusitania straight into Liverpool without having to wait outside for a pilot, which would have left his ship in a dangerous, predictable position. The best time to arrive at Liverpool would be 4.00 a.m. on the morning of Saturday 8 May, as this would be high tide while coinciding with his schedule of making port at dawn. A new course was therefore set, avoiding the danger zone off Fastnet by at least 20 miles while sailing in complete darkness.

The next morning, the Friday, passengers on board Lusitania awoke to find the ship surrounded by a bank of dense fog. Visibility was reduced to 30 yards. While this was good news for Captain Turner, since any U-boat would struggle to find a target in such conditions, it also posed a problem – he was supposed to meet up with his escort cruiser HMS Juno, yet the fog made this very difficult indeed. Turner was still unaware that Juno had been recalled to Queenstown. He therefore ordered that their speed was to be reduced to 15 knots and the foghorn sounded regularly. Meanwhile, as its log attests, U-20 was lurking outside Queenstown.

09.00 hrs: As the fog has not lifted I decide to start on the home journey with the purpose of engaging myself in good time in the North Channel.

10.00 hrs: Bright spell. A trawler (patrol boat?) sailing towards me from the direction of the land. He is still far away.

10.05 hrs: Have submerged to 11 m and observed steamer. Suddenly visibility excellent. Steamer’s speed is low. Nevertheless I submerge to 24 m and bear off from him. I shall rise again to 11 m towards 1 300 hrs in order to examine the vicinity.

11.50 hrs: Visibility very good. A ship with very powerful engines passes above us. When I rise to 11 m again I establish that the ship which passed above us ten minutes earlier is none other than a British man-of-war, an old small cruiser (of the Pelorus class) with two masts and two funnels.

This was in fact Lusitania’s escort, HMS Juno, following her orders to return to port.

12.15 hrs: I chase the destroyer in order to try to attack her when she alters course. But she does not cease zigzagging in every kind of way and at all speeds and, finally, disappears in the direction of Queenstown.

12.45 hrs: Visibility very good; very fine weather. Therefore I have emptied my water-ballasts and have continued on my course. It seems useless to be waiting in the offing of Queenstown.

As the submarine rose to the surface and headed west on its journey back around the Irish coast, Lusitania was nearing the same location. Once the fog had cleared just before 11.00 a.m., the liner had increased her cruising speed to a steady 18 knots so as to arrive at Liverpool at the expected time, while Turner ordered that the ship’s steam pressure should be kept high in case he required an extra burst of speed in the event of sighting a submarine. To port, the coast of Ireland could be seen in the hazy distance.

Unknown to those aboard the Lusitania, the loss of the two steamers Candidate and Centurion was giving those on land particular cause for worry. Just as Lusitania cleared the fog bank, a signal was received which warned that there was a «Submarine active in southern part of Irish Channel, last heard of twenty miles south of Coningbeg Light Vessel. Make certain Lusitania gets this». This signal is likely to have been the direct result of a plea from Alfred Booth, the Chairman of Cunard, who rushed to the naval authorities on the Friday morning in order to ask them to send a particular warning to Lusitania, alerting her of U-boats operating on her intended course.

Rather than helping Lusitania, this message simply raised questions in the mind of Captain Turner. The previous message he had received advised him to «steer mid-channel course», yet this new warning indicated that the submarine threat was exactly in that position, in the middle of St George’s Channel. He therefore decided on a new plan of action – he would enter the narrowest northerly portion of the Channel, albeit contravening Admiralty instructions, yet ensuring that he avoided the spot where submarines were reported to be waiting. A new course needed to be set. At about 1.30 p.m Turner altered Lusitania’s heading by 20 degrees to port, in a manner so sudden that some passengers lost their balance, and headed towards land. His intention was to establish the ship’s exact position by sighting landmarks, and ten minutes later the Old Head of Kinsale could be seen in the distance. Now that he had his bearings, a safe course could be plotted through the minefields to avoid the submarine danger zone. What Captain Turner had no way of knowing was that U-20 was actually heading west towards him on a direct course, only twenty minutes away.

For Lusitania’s passengers, lunchtime on that Friday was like any other. Preston Prichard had proved an entertaining dinner companion throughout the voyage, with his good humour and handsome features attracting a number of young ladies including the shy 25-year-old Alice Middleton who sat near him every day in the Dining Saloon («if I happened to be looking that way, he would nod to me, but we never got a chance to speak somehow»). There was also Grace French, with whom Preston appears to have struck up a definite friendship. He shared a table with her at mealtimes and as such saw her regularly, at least three times each day. Grace, originally from Scotland, had spent the last four years staying with her brother in New York City.

I can see his face so clearly in my mind, so sunburned and full of life and ambition. He kept us in good spirits relating different experiences he had during his travels and was very nice to everybody. I appreciated his efforts as I was very sick during the whole journey and [he] was especially nice to me.

Grace and Preston would share a final encounter together at the first lunch sitting on 7 May. With the coastline of Ireland just emerging into view, the end of their voyage was fast approaching. For both passengers, lunch together would prove to be the last touch of normality on board the ship before chaos erupted.

Sinking

Braced against the conning tower of U-20 where he was likely appreciating the novelty of fresh air and sunshine, Captain Schwieger would have been close enough to see the Irish coast as his submarine sped on its course. Suddenly a potential target appeared on the horizon.

13.00 hrs: Dead ahead there appear four funnels and two masts of a steamer on a course perpendicular to ours (he had been coming from the south-south-west and heading for Galley Head). Ship is made out to be a large passenger liner.

13.05 hrs: I submerge to 11 m and make full speed in order to cut off the steamer’s route in the hope that he would cast to starboard with the intention of hugging the Irish coast.

13.07 hrs: The steamer turns to starboard and takes a course heading for Queenstown which makes my attack feasible. I was forced to make great speed up to 1 400 hrs so as to reach a propitious position right ahead of him.

14.10 hrs: Fire from tube at range of 700 m (G torpedo adjusted to 3 m). Angle of incidence 90 degrees. Probable speed 22 knots.

On board Lusitania, eighteen-year-old Leslie Morton was on duty as a lookout. Leslie had worked at sea since the age of thirteen but now, keen to serve his country in the war, had decided to return home to Britain with his brother, Cliff. Both young men were working their passage home in Lusitania. Wartime precautions had led to the introduction of an increased watch when in danger zones, in order to give as much advance warning as possible of a potential attack. Morton had just begun one of these extra 2 hour shifts that afternoon, at 2.00.

My position was in the eyes of the ship. My particular section was the starboard bow, from right ahead to abeam. There were four of us on the lookout, altogether, covering the whole area. It was a beautiful day, the sea was like glass. And as we were going to be in Liverpool the next day everybody felt very happy. We hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to the threat to sink her because we didn’t think it was possible. The first ten minutes I walked up and down, keeping a keen lookout, and 10 past 2 I saw a disturbance in the water, obviously the air coming up from a torpedo tube, and I saw two torpedoes running towards the ship, fired diagonally across the course, and the Lucy was making about 16 knots at the time. I reported them to the bridge with a megaphone we had, to say «Torpedoes are coming on the starboard side». And by the time I’d had the time to turn round and have another look they hit her amidships between number 2 and 3 funnels. Unfortunately the torpedo, one of them, went through the luggage room where the whole of the starboard watch who’d left 15 minutes before were working, getting out luggage. So in that one foul swoop we lost the whole of the starboard watch of seamen for the necessary work that had to follow soon on the boat.

Leslie Morton remained certain that he had witnessed the wake of two torpedoes, but only one had actually been fired. This erroneous observation, shared by a number of others who witnessed events that day, was most likely influenced by the two explosions that subsequently occurred:

• one caused by the immediate impact of the torpedo;
• with a second explosion happening almost immediately afterwards.

Other crew witnessed the torpedo heading towards the liner and tried to raise the alarm. Steward Robert Chisholm happened to be on the starboard side of the ship’s «B» deck at 2.10 p.m.

I was looking over the side. I saw the wake of the torpedo as it approached the ship. The torpedo was about one hundred yards away when I first saw it. I immediately ran and told the Chief Steward that there was a torpedo coming. Just as I was telling him, the explosion took place. When the explosion occurred water was thrown up over the deck. «B» deck is about 30 feet over the water line.

As the 350 pounds of explosive detonated against the hull of Lusitania, Schwieger witnessed the effect of his attack through the periscope of U-20.

The torpedo hits on starboard side just aft of bridge. It produces an exceptionally strong detonation followed by a cloud of smoke (at great height above the first funnel). To the explosion of the torpedo there must have been added a second explosion (boiler, coal or powder?). The superstructure and the deck above the point hit are cut to bits. A fire breaks out. The upper bridge is encompassed with smoke. The ship stops immediately and lists strongly to starboard while settling dangerously in the bows. It looks quite as if in a state of capsizing at any moment.

At the time of the attack, the second sitting for lunch was just coming to an end. Many passengers had therefore just finished their meals and were strolling about on deck taking the air, or perhaps finishing their desserts down below in one of the large dining saloons. First-class passenger Wallace Phillips had just risen from the dining table.

I left the dining saloon about ten minutes past two, and should judge that at that time there were possibly one hundred people still at luncheon. Two or three children and one woman came rushing in the open doorway shouting «Torpedo!» and in possibly five to ten seconds it struck. The sound of the explosion, while loud, was not especially terrifying, but the shock was considerable. Almost instantly the boat took a decided list.

Alice Lines, the young nurse entrusted with the Pearl family children, was down below in her cabin when the torpedo hit. Up until this point, the voyage had been a calm and pleasant one for the Pearls and their two nurses, although the fog of earlier that morning had noticeably slowed the ship’s progress. At lunchtime, the twelve-week-old Audrey had been left in their cabin while Alice had taken the other children to the dining saloon. Following their meal, Alice returned down below to feed Audrey, accompanied by five-year-old Stuart. The remaining two children were left upstairs in the care of the other family nurse.

While I was feeding the baby there was a terrific bang. My instinct told me what it was. The boy was lying on the bunk bed and I just picked the shawl up, as she was lying on the shawl, wrapped her in it and tied the corners round her neck. I never thought but just did it. And I crossed over to Stuart and he was crying «I don’t want to be drowned, I don’t want to be drowned», he was just old enough to understand that there was something wrong. I said to him, «Now darling you are going to be alright. Do as I tell you. Hang on to me, never mind what happens. If I fall down, don’t let go». I said, «If you obey me, you won’t drown».

Jane Lewis was at lunch with her family in the second-class saloon on «D» deck, having chosen their table carefully. The saloon was 60 feet in length and ran the whole width of the ship. The tables, which were arranged facing forward and aft in a refectory style, were able to seat some 260 people at a time and at the moment when the initial explosion occurred the room would certainly have been full of the hustle and bustle of chatting diners and busy waiters.

We were just inside the dining room, just inside the door so we could get out quick, because we’d heard rumours something like that might happen. And then when the awful noise came we could just get round the door and on to the landing and down the staircase.

The most vivid scene was when it all first started, when the first explosion came. That was the most real, when people were natural. Everybody was frightened then and panicked. The people came pouring through the dining room from the other part of the ship. People fell down, people walked over them … you couldn’t do anything because the boat was going sideways. And we got out, luckily because we were near the door. Had we not been by that door we would never have got out, because the stream of people that came down the dining room – there were others following at the back – and the people were stepped on and walked on. That was the most terrible thing to me. It was a long time before I could get over that. They just couldn’t help themselves. The crowd was too strong. And I don’t know why we got that seat. Like as if it was fate, just fate. It had to be. Oh, to get out of that dining room was terrible. Well of course it was only a natural thing, wasn’t it, really. Every man for themselves.

Then we went down the stairs. Instead of going up they went down [because of the heavy list to the ship]. And I fell down. [Somebody fell] on top of me on the staircase, and I would never have got down it if my husband hadn’t got hold of me and he had the sense given to him to pull me out.

This sudden rush of passengers, intent on reaching the boat decks where the lifeboats were situated or their individual cabins in order to locate lifejackets, led to attempts by others to maintain order, as passenger Archie Donald recalled. He had just finished lunch in the second-class dining room.

Mr Gwyer, who is 6′ 4″ tall, touched me on the shoulder and said, «Let us quieten the people», so we both rushed up to the door and yelled at the top of our voices that everything would be all right, and that there would be no need of hurrying. The people filed out of that dining room like a regiment of soldiers; there was no trampling, everybody moved quickly, but nobody pushed or shoved. A woman in front of me fainted but luckily her husband was with her, so he took her head and I took her feet, and we managed to get her up the stairs.

Almost instantly after the initial bang, a second explosion had occurred, much larger and more noticeable than the first. Depending on their position within the ship, many passengers and crew found difficulty in distinguishing between the two explosions, with some hardly noticing the first impact of the torpedo. The American passenger Wallace Phillips had just experienced the first torpedo strike when … In a very short space of time … a second one [sic] hit the vessel. I have heard a number of persons say that it was possibly thirty seconds later, but it appeared to be considerably less. The shock of the second explosion was very great indeed, and possibly thirty seconds after it had occurred an immense column of water, carrying with it all kinds of debris, shot up from the side of the vessel.

Meanwhile, Alice Lines and her two charges had just emerged from their cabin when the second explosion happened.

We got up one flight of stairs and there was a terrific bang, the second torpedo [sic]. The nurse was up the top and she called down to me, «What shall I do?» and I said to her «Where is Bunny?» She said a stewardess had taken her to a lifeboat. Now I said, «Well we are all for ourselves, you look after Suzy and don’t worry about anything else – just save the child and yourself».

Following the second, larger explosion on her starboard side, Lusitania began to list dramatically in that direction. Still in motion, the ship was also dipping forward, making the list even more noticeable. Captain Turner immediately ordered the ship to be steered hard to starboard in order to turn them more definitely towards land, the Irish coast being clearly visible in the distance some 14 miles away. It was clear that Lusitania was going to sink and Turner therefore gave the order to abandon ship, yet he had every reason to believe that the liner would remain afloat for some time to allow her passengers and crew the opportunity to escape. In comparison, after striking an iceberg, Titanic had remained afloat for over two and a half hours and Captain Turner had no reason to think that the damage inflicted to his ship would be any worse than that. A minute after the torpedo had hit, Lusitania’s Marconi operator Robert Leith began transmitting an S.O.S. message: «Come at once. Big list. 10 miles south Old Kinsale».

James Baker, a director of the Oriental Carpet Manufacturers Company of Newgate Street in London, had been in his cabin on the starboard side of «B» deck at the time of the attack.

I heard a sharp report and cracking sound and the next moment black smoke poured in through the porthole, then a muffled report and very violent vibration, port to starboard, and a list which grew rapidly. I left my cabin, walked to the main staircase and on to the boat deck, port side. The deck was crowded with people and the boats were being got ready. I walked to the end of the deck, under the bridge, and saw that the ship had dipped very considerably and with a list of at least 15 degrees to starboard. I made up my mind that we were doomed, advised people to get life belts and went down for mine. On my return I helped people to put them on.

Within a short space of time, passengers began to assemble on deck and fasten their lifejackets. Lusitania carried 2 325 lifejackets in total, including 125 specially designed for children, along with 35 lifebuoys. The crew, including Steward Robert Chisholm, went into action by ensuring that every passenger had their own life preserver and would be ready to evacuate the ship once the order had been received to launch the boats. Everything appeared to be done in an orderly fashion.

We told all the passengers at once to go to their rooms and get their lifebelts. In every berth there is a lifebelt. There are notes and diagrams in every room showing how these lifebelts are worn. As far as I could see the passengers obeyed our instructions. The stewardesses also gave similar instructions to the passengers. There was no panic. I then went to my own room and got my lifebelt on.

Stewardess Fannie Morecroft also followed her instructions.

There were many of the second cabin gentlemen passengers doing their best to get lifebelts for the women. I myself took some of them into rooms and pointed out where they were, though I think in those few terrible moments few of us recognised one another. Any of the men I saw during that time were just splendid and seemed to have no thought for themselves.

Many passengers had to return below decks in order to retrieve lifejackets from their cabins. With the ship listing to one side and many of the corridors and rooms being in complete darkness due to power failure of the electrical systems, this caused problems for some such as Canadian passenger Robert Williams.

I was on deck when the vessel was struck and my wife was below. I went down stairs, brought her up and made two more trips down below again. I found one lifebelt which my wife used and I went down with the vessel without one and thus lost hold of our little girl. On my last trip down below to look for a second belt I had to climb the stairs on hands and knees as the ship was over at such an angle. There were sufficient belts if one could get down to them. Unfortunately they were all in the cabins and as the ship was so big, difficult to get hold of promptly. I knew many men who were coming over to join up in the war and only know one who survived, and have no doubt that many men gave up their belts to women as some of these men were strong healthy fellows with every prospect of being able to swim clear without a belt on. Many brave unrecorded deeds were done on that afternoon.

Ambrose Cross confirmed the general lack of initial panic.

It was shortly after lunch and there were few people in the big rooms, and anyhow most people were waiting to pick up this, that and the other, no doubt thinking too that there was plenty of time (vide the case of the Titanic). There was hardly any row. The few stewards about were quietly saying that it was «all right», a vague assertion which I found myself repeating to one or two ladies who appeared flustered.

However, from his observation point on the bridge, Captain Turner would have been able to see the immense problems involved in trying to launch his ship’s lifeboats. With the boats already swung out on each side of the vessel, the ship’s dramatic list to starboard meant that those lifeboats situated on the port side had now swung inwards against the hull, making them virtually impossible to launch. The ship was also still moving at a fair speed, making the launch of any boat a dangerous endeavour. In order to allow them to be launched safely, Turner therefore ordered Lusitania’s engines to be put into reverse in order to slow the ship down as quickly as possible. Yet, presumably due to internal damage caused by the explosions, her engines failed to respond. On account of the speed at which the ship’s momentum was still carrying her forward, Turner therefore judged it best to avoid launching the lifeboats for the time being and issued an order to stop any being prepared. For a few minutes, most passengers accepted this and it was not until the list became more noticeable that they began to question the wisdom of simply standing around in readiness. Few realised the danger involved in launching a lifeboat while the ship was still in motion.

Wallace Phillips had proceeded to the boat deck, above which the lifeboats were suspended.

On reaching there I found a large number of people standing around quietly and the officers shouting that no boats were to be lowered and that the vessel was not in danger of sinking. A few of the boats were partially filled with people, but I did not see any others getting into them.

Henry Needham, a British subject returning home with the intention of enlisting, like so many other of the young male passengers, could also testify to the general feeling that there was no immediate urgency to abandon ship. By this time, the ship was listing to starboard by some 15 degrees. The order not to launch any lifeboats had been followed, yet in many cases this meant trying to coax passengers out of boats which were already being filled. With each of the twenty-two lifeboats accommodating up to sixty-eight persons, this involved a good deal of organisation and persuasion.

As to people realising this danger, I think they did not, especially as I heard someone who came from the direction of the Captain’s bridge say, «The Captain says the boat will not sink». The remark was greeted with cheers and I noticed many people who had been endeavouring to get a place in the boats turn away in apparent contentment.

The worst situation was on the port side of the ship, where the list had caused all the suspended lifeboats to swing dangerously inboard. Unfortunately anxious passengers coupled with the general confusion led to the captain’s orders not being followed, and lifeboats 2 and 4 on this side of the ship were released. Both boats swung sharply and impacted on the side of Lusitania, crushing those passengers and crew who happened to be standing on the boat deck before sliding down the deck and smashing into the area immediately under the bridge. This tragic and wholly unnecessary incident killed and maimed many passengers and crew, including most likely a good number of women and children who would have been waiting patiently for a place in the boats.

Further chaos ensued on both sides of the ship, as the officers tried desperately to stop passengers getting into lifeboats or attempting to launch them themselves. Despite the crew’s best efforts, they were overwhelmed by desperate and angry people anxious to escape the sinking ship and lifeboats 6, 8 and 10 on the port side all suffered the same fate as the earlier ones, smashing against the side of Lusitania before sliding down the deck to add to the splintered debris and loss of life.

Passenger James Baker recalled the confusion over launching the boats on the port side of the ship, and the unclear instructions being received from the bridge.

The boat opposite the main entrance was being lowered, an officer in her. I noticed one man at the bow fall, paying out in jerks when a bigger jerk started a run, this he could not stop. I ran to the side and saw the boat’s bows in the water, her stern high in the air, not a soul in the boat, the officer holding on to the bow trying to get in. The stern stem had been wrenched away from the planks on both sides.

I went to the boat opposite the reading room and saw one of the crew clearing the couplings. While at work, two men (3rd class) got in. The main in charge (without uniform or cap) attacked them with a hatchet; they got out and we then filled the boat with women and children and, the word being given, a number of passengers pushed her out to clear the side. Owing to the list this was done by swinging her. Just as we had got her moving came a sharp order from the Staff Captain on the bridge – «Stop lowering the boats, there is no danger, clear out the boats». This order was obeyed. I helped out a number of ladies and advised those who had not got belts to get them at once.

By this time I noticed that though very much down by the bows, the list was hardly noticeable and I wondered why we were not allowed to lower the boats; we could have done so. A few minutes must have passed, when without orders the boat was again filled and we swung her clear and she was lowered to the level of the deck and then to B deck. But as she went down, her clinker sides caught bolt heads and projections and not having enough men to keep her off, she must have got damaged. Then again she started running and scraping down the side and just crumpled up like a match box; the men at both falls not having been able to hold her. A third boat on the port side had the same fate, crumpling up because there were not men enough in the boat to ward her off and because she went down too fast. In my opinion this was due to lack of supervision and the incompetence of the men at the falls. In one of these boats was Ambrose Cross.

A steward or someone told me to jump in and I did. There was no crush on deck at all. Then the boat wouldn’t move. Someone asked where the hatchet was, and no one knew. Then there was a slight rush from within and I remember helping in a lady in a violet costume. Then a big man with a lifebelt on precipitated himself on to me with great force, and that tore it. Down went the boat, but we had such a big list to starboard by that time that she struck against the ship and I think she must have smashed, for, after spending a brief time under water and being kicked and buffeted by fellow victims, I came up among what looked like the remnants of a boat. Although I am a strong swimmer, I thought to husband my strength and as the mast of the boat (I believe) fell to my share I took it and was drifted to stern (there was still a slight way on the ship) for a quarter of a mile, or possibly more, as distances at sea are deceptive.

Realising that no lifeboats were likely to be launched properly from the port side of the ship, James Baker looked elsewhere for a way to escape.

I then thought of the collapsible boats. No preparation was being made to clear them. With a penknife I released one opposite the smoking room, cut the lacing to the canvas covering and started on a second. [I] had cut away one of the straps and part of the lacing when I saw the water pouring over the bulwark under the Captain’s Bridge. I realised that the ship was pitching forward, so ran to the end of the deck, got over the side and slipped down to the «B» deck, then to the «C» deck; as I steadied myself the water ran over my boots and when it had got to my knees I sprang away and swam as hard as I could.

With the list now amounting to 20 degrees or more, those on board became more desperate. In one particularly unfortunate incident, an American first-class passenger, Isaac Lehmann, pulled a revolver out and threatened the crew stationed at lifeboat 18, ordering them to launch the boat full of passengers. Once released, the lifeboat smashed into the side of the ship’s hull and suffered the same disastrous fate as the other port-side boats. Wesley Frost, the American Consul at Queenstown and a later commentator on the Lusitania sinking, felt that the confusion, chaos and disorder evident were forgivable under the circumstances.

Unskilled persons in attempting to handle the falls or pulleys which lowered the lifeboats made awful failures; and several boats were released at one end only, spilling their occupants out into the sea. Other boats were never freed from the davits at all, and were therefore dragged down with their occupants when the ship sank. Still other boats were broken by lurching inboard or against the side of the vessel. For example, the second port boat swung in against the deck-wall of the smoking-room, and crushed to death or hopelessly crippled some thirty or forty passengers who were huddled together waiting for its preparation. In none of these accidents can strong blame be imputed to the persons on board the Lusitania. Probably instances did occur in which better judgement might have saved lives; but on the whole the standard of conduct not only as to courage but as to self-possession and resourcefulness was amazingly high.

By now the list had increased to a dramatic 25 degrees, yet the crew were experiencing some small success in launching lifeboats on the starboard side of the ship. Wallace Phillips was fortunate in this regard.

I saw several boats filled with people being lowered, and then walked along the extreme end of «A» deck. By this time the boat had taken such a decided list that I thought she was going over every second, so I climbed over the side and dropped into the lifeboat which had been lowered below me, this being one of the very few lifeboats that were properly launched from the ship, and it was in charge of First Officer Jones. I landed on the gunwale of the boat, but for an instant I was undecided whether to stay on or dive overboard, as the ship was coming on top of us. I should judge that our boat had the most advantageous position of the three or four others that were launched at the same time, and I rather imagine as the ship went down it must have crushed under it several of the boats.

After this there appeared to be another explosion in the engine room, as the most terrific quantity of water and soot shot out from one of the funnels, the funnels at this time being just submerged, and hit the people in our boat directly in the face at the same time blowing one woman out of the funnel who had been sucked in an instant before.

Some boats were lowered too quickly and smashed to pieces when hitting the water, while others were lowered unequally, resulting in their passengers being tipped out into the sea below. In the anxious haste and general confusion, many disastrous mistakes were made, as Archie Donald attested.

With my life belt in my hand I crossed over into the first class portion and went down on the lowest side and helped to load the second boat from the end. The stokers tried to get into it, and I can vouch that the crew were stationed at this boat in a proper manner. Some first class passengers and myself kept the men back and shouted that the women should be put in first. We eventually loaded all the women in sight to the number of about twenty, and when the boat started to be lowered the men were the only ones standing on the side. They began to lower away but unfortunately the forward fall began to run out too quickly while the rear fall seemed to stick in the block, the result being that the boat was hanging perpendicularly, all the passengers being thrown into the sea. They cut the hanging rope and the boat went into the water, but of course was water logged. The passengers seemed to be crawling up on a rope netting on the lower deck, climbing higher as the water reached them.

Nurse Alice Lines, carrying the three-month-old baby Audrey in her arms and with the five-year-old Stuart clinging tightly to her, had made her way up the stairway to the outside deck: «Just as I got outside on the stairway, there were men, the husbands of the wives I take it, who were throwing money and things of importance to their wives, into the lifeboats».

We eventually managed to get to the top to the lifeboat deck and I was on the port side. To get to the boat it was a climb, the ship was going, the people were falling in on the opposite side and a sailor came and grabbed Stuart and I followed. And he threw Stuart over the rail to a lifeboat and the lifeboat was just ready to go, it was full. Now I went to jump into the lifeboat and the sailor grabbed me back and he said, «It’s full, there’s plenty of room in the next one». I’m afraid I did get a bit hysterical, I yelled and to be quite honest I bit his hand and he let go and I jumped, thinking I was only going to jump quite naturally into the lifeboat but I jumped just as the lifeboat was going down and I went off to the side of it. The lifeboat landed in the water almost as I did and a man who was in the lifeboat leaned forward and grabbed me by the hair and I toppled over into the lifeboat. So I always say that my hair saved my life. And the baby was very tightly tucked up round my neck.

Alice’s dramatic jump into the lifeboat may well have been an elaboration, since she clearly suffered from memory loss after the traumatic sinking and some of her testimony contradicts known events. Yet her escape from the ship is included here for completeness.

In those final moments on board Lusitania, each passenger took what opportunities they could in order to escape the liner and so survive. Jane Lewis, accompanied by her husband and daughter, had made her way to one of the lower decks.

We were standing by a lifeboat on the ship, waiting to see what it could do. There was nobody about where we were hardly. But there was plenty in the water. And then my husband said he’d better go down to the cabin and get lifebelts. I said, «No, you’re not going down … if you go down there you’ll never get up again. If we’re going, we’re all going together». Well we stayed there and then there was a lifeboat, one small boat, in the water. It was tied or fastened to something. Then we got into the boat but you couldn’t get away and not any of the men could find a penknife on them. They seemed to have lost them all. So we got away eventually at last … I was thrown into the boat because we had to be quick.

There was a poor bandsman trying to get out of some of his uniform I think. He was on the deck with us and he couldn’t get out. And, oh, he was so fat. And then nobody could help him. There was nobody there to do anything for him. I don’t know what became of him, and why he got on the deck with that on I don’t know.

May Bird escaped, despite the starboard list still confounding the launch of the boats.

Of course there wasn’t enough lifeboats for everybody because we could only use one side. People were jumping overboard, getting a hold of deck chairs, floats, and that kind of thing. Some of them were jumping over, they didn’t wait for the boats to be lowered. Well the boat I got into was the last boat and I was the last person on deck to get into one.

Only the fact that the officer in charge recognised her as one of the ship’s stewardesses enabled her to escape.

When he saw who it was he said, «Well can you jump?» And it was rather a long jump, and I said I’d try. And I jumped into the middle of the lifeboat. The lifeboat had gone down past the davits and of course it was a very long jump. I should say about 15 feet. But I managed it. The officer was the only other member of the crew in the lifeboat. So he found rowing very difficult and asked, «Is there anybody here that can row?» Well I was the only other person who could row, so I took an oar. Of course I was very fond of rowing, I used to row a lot. I lived near a lake and I used to go and row quite a lot in my young days. So I was able to take an oar and very pleased to do it.

By this time the ship was listing very badly and almost leaning on top of us, so we had to row very, very quickly away. But not before we were showered with soot from the ship’s funnels, it came all over us. But we managed to get away safely. Of course it was a very sad sight to see hundreds and hundreds of people in the water, screaming for help, hanging on to deck chairs, hanging on to anything, begging to be taken into the boat when we dare not do it. Had we taken one more in we should have all been drowned. But it was a terrible sight, there were hundreds of them.

As one of the ship’s lookouts, Leslie Morton had been among the first to give warning of the impending disaster.

I went down the forward scuttle to see if my brother who was in the other watch down below had got out. I met him coming up, using seaman’s language about it, and then I went straight to my boat station on the top deck which was number 11 boat on the starboard side. The ship was heeling over about 35 degrees to starboard by this time and with the in-rush of water, which made all the boats on the port side useless, if our own station didn’t get away. There I met my brother, he was at that boat at one end, he had one end of it and I took the other, we got her full of people by lowering it down to deck level as the ship heeled over and lowered it into the water. The ship was heeling over all the time and with the boat full we tried to push off from the ship’s side but many of the passengers hung on to the ship – they didn’t feel that the big ship should be let go from this little boat they were in – and as the Lucy came further over […] the davit hooked on the near side gunwale of the boat and started to tip it inboard with all the people in it. And I yelled out to my brother, «Where are you going?» He went over the side at one end, I went at the other. I was a little worried because I knew he couldn’t swim, until I hit the water and came to the top. I took an instinctive look over my shoulder and he was doing a marvellous double trudgen stroke for France, apparently, 130 miles away, getting along beautifully.

Then, remembering a collapsible boat that had slipped off the deck a few minutes before, I should say the whole thing was over in 15 minutes, it takes longer to tell, I remember this collapsible boat slipping off the deck and I went back over the course as the Lucy passed me. She was under way all the time, the engines were going all the time, they couldn’t cut them off due to torpedo damage. I found this collapsible boat and ultimately got the sides up and in due course picking up people, everybody helping, we got it full of people. Passenger Archie Donald had delayed his escape until the very last moment.

A fireman by my side took a most beautiful dive from the rail, and I saw him swim in the water to the stern of the ship – it was then that I realised the danger and that the best policy was to leave the ship if possible. I then found an empty beer box which had two handles, and it entered my head that this would help to act as a life preserver. Taking my two watches I put them in my left hand trouser pocket and stripped my coat off, and with my beer box started to climb the stair to the next deck when I was met by a Doctor McCready of Dublin, whom I knew slightly. He wore a life belt and had one in his hand, and I said where did you get the life belts, and he said down in the cabins. I had never thought of life belts until this time, and luckily I discovered that I was on the port side of the same deck on which my cabin was situated, and there was a door which had been shut during the voyage, open. Going through here I found myself in the passage and was soon in my cabin. The deck had listed so much that it was hard to walk. I felt in the locker on one side of my cabin and found the belts gone, and felt on the other side and they seemed to be gone also, but by good chance I tried again at the very back and found the last remaining life belt.

I came out on the surface again, and went up on to the top boat deck. There I saw Mr and Mrs Stroud who had been through the Mexican War; he seemed to know exactly what to do – he had torn the clothing off his wife, and all she had on was her stockings and her life belt; he himself was tearing the cover off a collapsible boat. After helping him to accomplish this I stood and watched the people going into the lifeboat which was hung at that point, but I do not believe they ever managed to float that one, as the ship had listed so much that the boat could not clear the side.

I stood for a moment and immediately considered what was the best thing to do, and I remember wondering why I was not frightened; my brain seemed to be perfectly clear, and the thoughts seemed to crystallise at once […] Looking along the side of the ship with all the boats swung out, I saw the ship was going very quickly down, and that the boat deck rail and the water were rushing as it were towards me. Then I thought that it was time for me to leave the ship so getting a steward to tie on my life belt I put my money, which consisted of about £8 in my sock. I started to take off my shoes but found that there was no time. Jumping down about twelve feet in the water I of course went underneath, but with the buoyancy of the life belt soon came to the surface.

Swimming was the most marvellous revelation to me, the speed with which I seemed to get over the top of the water, my chest and head being high above the water, my legs acting as a good propeller, and swimming seemed to be an easy matter. As I looked behind me I saw the ship – the propellers and rudder were completely in mid air, and then with an explosion and the rattling of all the loose material leaving her deck she began to take the last plunge. Going over sideways I had great fear the mast was going to hit me, and my brain wondered whether the stay ropes were made of hemp and rope or wire – a most absurd thing to think of but details seemed to flash on one’s mind in these times – it missed me by 15 feet. Then a tidal wave, perhaps 3 feet high, picked me up and shot me out into the calm water. The suction or vortex drew me down. I came to the surface and opposite me there shot up an 8 × 8′ post and also a 2 × 6′ plank; if they had hit me they would most probably have killed me or broken a limb. However, I seemed to be guarded, and they missed me by a few feet.

Ambrose Cross was also treading water, but had managed to hold on to some debris from the ship along with other struggling passengers.

I found myself in company with a bald headed Jew, an elderly Jewish lady, a Belgian and some other woman. We also had one oar. The Jew groaned and called upon Moses alternately. He had a lifebelt and I told him to pull himself together, but it was no good, just a case of Kismet with him. The old lady was an awful sport; spat the salt water out of her mouth like a good ’un. I bucked her up, telling her she was doing splendidly, and I wished I could have helped to save her. None of these four could swim, so, of course, the mast or whatever it was, was well submerged, as they sprawled all over it instead of hanging on and treading water. For myself, I think I must have been lightheaded or something, for I felt that I didn’t care and generally took charge of my crew and passed the time of day with those on adjacent flotsam or jetsam.

Suddenly, Lusitania’s forward movement ceased.

The ship had seemed to stop her listing and to be stationary, and I thought perhaps we might get back, so told such of my lot as were capable to hold on and kick out, but it wasn’t for long. Suddenly she started again and I really think she must have completed her sinking in a matter of seconds. It was an awful sight and yet it fascinated you, the grace with which the huge thing slithered in, raising its stern on high at the last. So far as I remember, we heard no noises from where we were. Then came the worst part. We were alone. The space a few moments ago occupied by our luxurious home was a ghastly blank of almost still water. The swells caused by the sinkage rolled towards us, and with them came the dead bodies.

Remarkably quickly, the ship was lost beneath the waves, its funnels being the last part to sink out of sight. Treading water, James Baker recalled seeing the ship go down.

After a few strokes I looked over my shoulder, the place where I got over was under water, and from the beginning of the second class deck her stern was up in the air at an angle of about 40 degrees. I could see her keel, rudder and propellers. I swam hard for another few strokes, looked again and she was gone. I next saw washed past me foam and wreckage and, fearing to be hit, I turned to face it; light wreckage flew past me, being driven away from the ship. At the same time what appeared to be about the middle of the white foam rose a huge mound of water, I should say 12 to 15 feet high and 30 to 40 feet long. After a few seconds it subsided.

Jane Lewis had managed to escape in a lifeboat with her husband and young daughter.

The boat was going down. She went down, down, oh down. And I was in the little ship, the little boat on the water. My husband said to me, he said «Look round now, she’s going down now». And I said, «No, I won’t». I didn’t want to see it go down, and neither the children. But I thought I’d better look and I looked, just before – she was just going down, down into the water. The end of it like that was the last I saw of it. It was a ship that we’d had such a nice time on. People had all been happy there. They’re all gone.

The noise and chaos as Lusitania sank was followed by a startling calmness. After the ship had disappeared beneath the waves and the final disturbances of water had subsided, the contrast must have seemed to many as if the last twenty minutes had been but a horrible nightmare. ‘The sea was calm. And all you could see was bodies and wreckage of all furniture and everything that had been in the ship and was floating on the water.

Alice Lines lay in a lifeboat, safe with her two charges, and reflected on the final end of the mighty Cunard vessel. The sea was full of struggling people.

Oh yes, there were quite a lot of them swimming. There was quite a lot of them hanging on to deckchairs and tables and things that were floating. But the horror to me as far as the memories go was to see that beautiful boat, a huge ship supposed to be the largest in the world, disappear under my very eyes and all I could see all over was bodies and wreckage floating. That’s my last memory.

Throughout all of the chaos following the initial torpedo strike, during the many attempts to launch the lifeboats, and while individual passengers and crew attempted desperately to save their lives as Lusitania foundered, U-20 remained submerged close by. Captain Schwieger had a perfect view of events on board the ship as they happened and recorded as much in his log-book entry.

It does not take long for a great confusion to set in on board; the lifeboats are released and a part of them are set down on the water. While engaged on this the sailors must have lost their heads, in several instances the tackle is not uniformly secured and the lifeboats are hurled into the water with their bows or sterns first and sink instantly. Owing to the ship’s list which has got stronger they only succeed in releasing a few boats on the port side. The air pressure causes the decks to splinter. I notice at the bows the name Lusitania in gold letters. The funnels were painted black. No flag hoisted astern. The ship had been sailing at a speed of 20 knots.

14.25 hrs: As it seems to me that the ship no longer has much more time afloat I submerge to 24 m and cast off to the open sea. In any case I could not have launched a second torpedo into the midst of this crowd of humans trying to save themselves.

Once Lusitania had slipped beneath the waves, only seven of her lifeboats were afloat out of a total of twenty-two. Six had been successfully launched from the starboard side, while Number 2 boat had been swept off the ship when she sank. Although Number 14 boat had also been launched, the only one from the port side, it soon became filled with water and proved unusable. Also adrift among the wreckage were a good number of collapsible boats out of the forty-eight in total carried by Lusitania, many of which had also been swept out to sea once the ship sank. Wesley Frost believed that: «The collapsible lifeboats had for the most part been unfastened from their places by the ship’s seamen during the brief moments before the sinking; and this type of boat must have accounted for at least one- third of all the life-saving».

Lusitania finally sank beneath the waves at 2.28 p.m. From the moment that the torpedo hit her, the ship had stayed afloat for only eighteen minutes, and it would be this fact more than anything else which led to the enormous loss of life. Out of a total number of 1 960 passengers and crew, only 763 would survive.

Investigations

News of the sinking travelled fast and as soon as the Prichard family learned of the disaster, their first thought was of Preston. Had he survived? Was he injured? The lack of any immediate news from Preston himself would have been their major concern, and Mostyn therefore departed immediately for Queenstown, where any investigations into Preston’s whereabouts could be best undertaken. While he was away, his mother and sisters remained at the family home on Brockenhurst Road in Ramsgate, desperately scanning each daily newspaper for the latest lists of survivors and eagerly reading the eyewitness stories reported for any slight reference to their «Prets». The tall terraced house provided a fine view down the gently sloping street which ended on Victoria Parade, and one can easily imagine Margaret Prichard gazing across the cold sea of the English Channel in despair, wondering what had happened to her eldest son. One of his last letters home, with reference to his imminent medical exams, had closed with the postscript «Will write later, no news is good news». This phrase likely returned to haunt his family as they waited, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

Mostyn arrived at Queenstown on Monday 10 May, accompanied by a family friend, Mr Heald. Both men established themselves at the Westbourne Hotel where, at 7.30 that evening, Mostyn first wrote home to his mother and sisters. Commanding a view across the harbour and being adjacent to the post and telegraph offices, the hotel proved to be a perfect base for the men to undertake their investigations.

My Dearest Gwen and all, Darling Mother and Gwladys, You may be sure I am trying to do my utmost. Mr Heald is so good – I don’t know what I should do without him. We arrived here at noon today and have spent half our time in [the] Cunard office and post office and have been to Military Hospital and wired to all the others, but no such person as dear Preston is in same.

The place is alive with miserable creatures like ourselves. The sights and one’s whole aim tends to the same question. Mr Heald and I were unable to see the bodies of those not identified but we saw the personal effects of them and nothing whatsoever lead to Preston’s identification. They were chiefly women and children and a few men whose ages were much above and below Preston’s … we saw their personal effects and nothing whatever helped with Preston.

Mr Heald has to leave tomorrow at 3 o’clock because of Ascension Day. But you need not worry about me, I am quite alright and you will be pleased to hear I asked someone about Preston and as soon as I showed [his] photo the man immediately knew him. He had two others (ladies) with him. He said Preston was perfectly well as far as he knew all the time, and once when he went on deck they asked him to play Quoits but he refused to do so. The women also recognised him. One woman said she lived at Montreal and when she went on board she soon recognised Preston. You need not worry about me for I have them and other very kind friends. Everyone is in the same plight and the universal sympathy of the entire town in simply amazing and splendid. Everyone speaks to everyone.

The relatively small nature of the town meant that it offered a myriad of different sources to tap for information. The testimony of sailors who were in the initial rescue boats and who collected bodies from the site of the sinking was particularly valuable.

I had a man in here just now who went in the Stormcock and has since been all round. He is going to let me know any news. He is off again tonight on patrol duty, five boats are searching the whole coast and smaller ones are going near the coast and shore. There are six of the Lusitania boats in this harbour.

The funerals took place today and the town was THICK. Preston is not amongst them, that I am certain. The difficulty is one hears different rumours as to their bodies being taken to English ports and immediately we go to [the] Cunard office and they say they have no official report. There is a list of passengers saved … and one is a Mr F. Pickard who left here by train on Saturday with many others. But the most extraordinary thing is that this Mr F. Pickard is not on list of passengers sailing whereas R. B. Prichard is and yet this F. Pickard is on list of «saved». The Company say that they must have omitted his name in cabling from New York. We are doing our utmost but it is bewildering to know what to do.

Some bodies were buried at Kinsale today at 3 p.m. and Heald wired but did not get a reply, but the Company said there were only about five and all were identified except one poor old woman […] One sees and hears people asking about their wives and children and sisters and I don’t know what. The man who saw Preston is named Meriheina and is going to stay at the Grand Hotel London for a few weeks so if I do not discover Preston himself you can see him at London. For goodness sake don’t go looking over the papers, for according to Cunard reports they are a pack of lies. Preston was perfectly well on voyage according to this man.

I intend remaining here a few days more in the chance of any discovery, although I have left every conceivable identification in the hands of the authority who are more than kind and sympathetic.

There was a rumour about an hour ago that 45 bodies were coming in but Cunard knows nothing of it. If you came to see the utter misery of the people here you would want to be where those people are whom they are looking for. If I find Preston I will give instructions for him to be brought as far as London and then wire and you can decide destination. But don’t be over anxious, apparently they allow relations and friends to take charge of those found. It is a pitiful sight, one sees nothing but hearses and coffins. You may be sure we are doing all and are not nearly in the dark. The company give those people a chance of identifying those not known and photos have been taken of all those buried today.

I cannot write more, I only pray and trust I have not written too much. But you must bear up and cheer one another so that I can rest assured and feel more equal to my work. Cheer up. Wire me what you like and I will wire you, I am quite alright so don’t worry.

Back in Ramsgate, Mrs Prichard began to write letters to anybody who might have relevant information to impart concerning the fate of Preston. This process benefitted greatly from the list of the names of Lusitania survivors published in the days after the disaster, while in due course those replying to her enquiries would often offer additional names and addresses to follow up. Letters written by Margaret or Mostyn Prichard were destined to be received by the Cunard company, surviving passengers and crew, and the Irish authorities responsible for recovering the bodies. Each letter enclosed a handbill, hastily printed, bearing a photograph of Preston and a basic description of his likely appearance at the time of the sinking.

I am writing to ask you whether you can kindly tell me anything about my son whose photo with description I enclose. I should be most grateful to you if you can tell me anything about him either during the voyage or at the time of the Disaster. You will notice his Cabin was D.90. Do you think if he were in his cabin he would have had time to get up on deck, or did the ship list to such an extent as to make it impossible for him to ascend. And were the stairs crowded to such an extent that many were injured or were many hurt by falling wreckage. Did you notice whether the majority of the men jumped at the last. My son was a medical student. I should be thankful if you know of any other survivors if you would kindly give me their addresses that I may write to them. My son had a very deep dimple in his chin.

Unfortunately, a comprehensive list of survivors’ contact addresses was not forthcoming from the authorities, as a letter received from the New York office of the Cunard Steamship Company testified.

We are unable, much to our regret, to give you the desired complete list of the names and addresses – destination – of the Second Cabin survivors of the Lusitania, as these addresses, except in a few instances, are not taken when they are booked or purchase their tickets. In addition, a number of the survivors have already requested us not to furnish their names or addresses as they were, themselves, greatly bereaved and unable to give any information as to other passengers.

Your son, Richard B. Prichard [sic], did not book at this office but purchased his ticket of Messrs Thomas Cook and Son, Montreal. On inquiring, through our Agent in that city, as to whether your son was travelling with any friends or acquaintances, we are in receipt of the enclosed reply stating that, as far as the firm is aware, he was travelling alone.

After a few days the first responses began to arrive through the letterbox at Brockenhurst Road. At first, the Prichard family would have felt great disappointment at the lack of relevant information being offered regarding Preston. Most correspondents had not seen him during the voyage and were unable to offer any details regarding his possible fate. However, their responses did provide the opportunity for many writers to include detailed accounts of their own experiences of the sinking, and these letters remain an invaluable source for appreciating the final moments of Lusitania and the various means by which both passengers and crew had saved themselves. Many writers also used the opportunity to share their personal feelings regarding the disaster.

I am sorry I cannot tell you anything of your son other than I saw him on board. I wish I could, but there were so many on the ship that it really was like living in a town, one saw fresh people every day and never knew who they were. It must be dreadful for you and others who do not know the end of their dear ones. I myself lost a dear baby of 2½ years, thank God I knew her end, she died in my arms. Many mothers on board were separated from their children at the time of the Murder, I term it, and their thoughts must be truly dreadful.

In reply to your letter which reached me yesterday I regret very much to have no information to give you about your son. My husband and I were also second class passengers. We were sitting at lunch when the vessel was struck. We were at the second table. Those who were served at the first table would be on deck or in the smoking saloon when the blow fell. Your son’s cabin could not have been very far from ours, for our number was 84. We were on the same floor as the dining saloon. There was a wild rush up stairs when the shot was fired. My husband and I waited quietly till everyone had gone up. While we were on our way to the deck my husband remembered our life belts and went back to the cabin for them. When we reached the middle deck we saw almost no one – all were up on the top deck where the boats were being launched. The ship by this time was very much over on her side. When we saw the sea breaking over her bows my husband and I jumped into the water and swam for a little and then we got hold of a plank to which we clung. After being in the water for about four hours I was rescued by a trawler. My dear husband was lost, but I had the great satisfaction of finding him on Saturday and seeing him laid to rest in the cemetery in Queenstown.

You must excuse me for not answering your letter as I am so dreadfully nervous since my dreadful experience in the Lusitania that I really could not settle to sit down and write you. I will never be the same and it is an unforgettable experience. My husband has got a nervous shock and not been able to work since he got such a shock when he heard about it being torpedoed and its loss that I don’t think he will ever get over it. I am terrible sorry that I can’t give you any information regarding your dear son or else willingly I would do so. I have lost my memory since, it is gradually coming back. I did not know I was in the water till the following day, a gentleman told me … Is it not a wonder I have been spared and so many young ones went down. I am 66 years of age.

A slight glimmer of hope that they might learn something concerning Preston’s fate was offered by Edward Heighway, one of the stewards on board the ship.

I cannot say I saw your son on that terrible day, but I remember him on the voyage as I was the saloon deck man. I showed him through the first class. The second torpedo [sic] hit us right under the 2nd Class and if he had been in his room he may have been killed there as his room D90 was low down and near the ill-fated spot. All the second cabin decks were a mass of people when the ship suddenly threw her stern up 200 feet in the air, throwing everyone head long down among chairs, boats, seats and all sorts of loose gear. Then the ship took a plunge and went to the bottom passing me with my boat load like an express train. I just got my boat two yards clear of the ship when all this happened, and I am sure there were 600 or 700 people killed and taken down without a chance of saving themselves. I am sure your son may have got killed or hurt there and prevented him from swimming away clear. Very near everyone had life belts which there were plenty of. I saw myself hundreds of men and women dead with life belts on in the water after the ship had gone.

Some survivors, such as the second-class passenger Edward Tarry, were able to elaborate on the layout of the ship and thereby make suggestions based on the location of Preston’s cabin. Tarry had been travelling to Leicester in order to make his annual report to the company Encorah and Sons, for whom he acted as Canadian representative.

My cabin was C28 and therefore your son, in D90, was one floor below me and on the same side, i. e. the port side (the cabins were so arranged that the odd numbers were on one side and the even on the other). We were torpedoed on the starboard or right hand side so if your son was in his stateroom at the time, he would certainly have had time to regain the open deck.

I was in my stateroom at the time but I heard afterwards from various survivors that there was a fearful congestion among the above passengers in their frantic desire to all regain the boat-deck at once. The stairway was of the average width but it is practically certain that some met their death in this mad scramble.

Yes it was only too easy and the work of a moment to realise the ship was doomed. I was in my cabin when the disaster happened. I felt a dull thud followed by the sound of rending iron plates and splintering wood and immediately the vibration of the engines ceased. The Lusitania then listed very heavily to starboard, sinking head first. I put on a lifebelt [and] … dove overboard, swimming as rapidly as I could from the doomed liner. I had progressed but some thirty yards when the poor old Lucy disappeared with a deafening roar. I was swimming on my back at the time and could discern dozens of people on the decks sliding out of sight as the ship disappeared. It was heartrending. About a dozen lifeboats were launched and about two rafts, but many survivors clung to the wreckage which was scattered in all directions. Several of these were picked up afterwards by rescuing steamers. I was picked up about 1½ hours after by one of the boats.

Some of the responses received by the Prichards were simple but truly heartbreaking. Mrs Elizabeth Ferrier was travelling in second class with her husband, a fruit grower from Penticton in Canada, along with their infant daughter Sheila who was barely a year old.

I am sorry not to be able to give you any information concerning your son. I lost my husband and baby. I was picked up unconscious many hours afterwards with my baby, so you can understand my memory is not very clear. My husband’s body has never been found.

The trauma experienced by survivors is often quite evident from their correspondence, having been written so soon after the event. Mrs Lilian Pye was travelling from Edmonton in Canada with her eighteen-month-old daughter Marjorie.

Am extremely sorry not to have answered before, but I have not yet recovered from the fearful shock and tragedy of that awful affair «the sinking of the Lusitania» and writing about it is still very painful to me. No doubt you have heard of my terrible experience and how when the ship went down it carried my darling baby girl and self with it and how I held her in my arms under the water until I became unconscious and then she was dragged away from me and I have never seen her since. Twice I went under the water and the second time on coming to the surface I held on to a piece of wreckage and drifted around amongst the dead for some considerable time. I cannot say how long I was in the water, it seemed to be an eternity, but when I was rescued I was not taken straight into a lifeboat, but three men who were sitting on an overturned boat pulled me out of the water when I happened to drift their way, and it was some time afterwards that a boat load of people came along and took me on to their boat. When I got on board my life was almost gone … It all happened so swiftly and everybody was more or less insane.

I cannot go on living without her. I know too what you must be suffering and my heart goes out in sympathy for you. I have written this letter as bereaved mother to bereaved mother and am sure you will understand.

However, it was not only Margaret Prichard and her children who were seeking information on Preston. Staff and students at McGill University had also been shocked to hear about the Lusitania sinking since they had been aware that Preston intended to sail on the ship. Hearing nothing from Preston and fearing for the worst, on 5 June the Registrar’s Office at the Faculty of Medicine contacted Mrs Prichard in order to express their concerns and ask for news.

I beg you will forgive me writing to you, but we have been waiting all this time for definite news of Mr R. P. Richard who we know registered on the Lusitania when she left New York on her last trip. The agents of the Company here do not seem to know anything and are always promising to give us definite information, but it never comes and we have now come to the conclusion that he was lost. I am now writing to you personally to ask if you will kindly let us know what information you have in this matter. Mr Prichard was one of our best students, earnest and enthusiastic about his studies and a favourite with both students and Professors. Please forgive me writing you but we would like some reliable information as we have been very anxious.

By this time, both mother and son had rushed into action with their letter- writing campaign and evidently realised that McGill would be a particularly useful source for personal details on Preston. Although it was clear by now that Preston had lost his life, they still wanted to seek clarity on the circumstances of his death. Any up-to-date descriptions of his appearance, health and clothing could then be included in their further appeals for information. May Brand of the Registrar’s Office at McGill consequently responded to the family on 17 July.

At the medical examination on entering (which all students have to undergo), Mr Prichard’s card read as follows:

• Oct 21st 1913. R. P. Prichard, aged 27. Weight 149,3 lbs, Height 69 inches, height sitting 35,1 inches;
• chest, expanded, 36,5 inches;
• Waist 28,5 inches. Slight skin eruption (pemphigus).

With regard to the skin eruption this was purely a nervous trouble which came and went as he was feeling well or run down. Just at examination time before he left he had a recurrence of this and it is just possible he may have had this rash while on board ship. When he went away he told me this thing was bothering him again and he was sure the sea voyage would help him immensely.

I have made enquiries at the Wesleyan College where he stayed and the house-keeper looked up his linen and found the mark 7190 R. P. on his linen, while his collars were size 16. They were unable to tell me the colour of his suit, but I am sure it must have been a navy blue one as he wore nothing else at the college and I don’t think he ever wore a vest, always these wash shirts with a thin stripe in it and his ties were always of the narrow kind, mostly blue. The suitcase he had when he came up to the College to say goodbye was a light tan leather but whether it was a square case or a bag tapering towards the handles I do not remember, nor can I find any of the students who took any notice of it. As to his watch and chain, I cannot find out about this either – at least not just now as there are no students around at all – but from my recollection I think he nearly always wore a fob of some sort as he did not wear a vest much. He carried his watch either in his trousers’ pocket or in his coat pocket, up near the armhole of the sleeve. I will keep in mind all these little details, however, and if I meet any of the boys who knew him I might be able to get some more definite points.

The housekeeper at the Wesleyan College says there is a little tin box marked as having his will in it, perhaps you ought to have this. All his clothes and his room is just as he left it, and as the housekeeper will require the room about the first of September I have asked Mr Derrick to come up and see me so that everything may be packed and stored until you decide what is best to be done. I suppose in your description you mentioned the dimple on his chin; it was most marked and ought to help some in identification if circumstances have not altered the body beyond this, which seems very likely after all this time.

Please pardon this long letter but I wanted to jot down all the little details I could think of in case they would be of use to you. I cannot tell you how bad we all felt when we heard the news and how we hoped against hope that he might be saved, for he was a general favourite with the boys and the teachers had just begun to take notice of him for he was a man of more than average intelligence and so eager to learn and everything he studied he mastered thoroughly, there was no skimming on the surface with him. Then he was always so good natured and often helped the boys with their lessons. I see a great many students in the office here and get to know them fairly well in that way and I assure you I had a great deal of respect and liking for Mr Prichard. Nearly all his mail came here and how he used to gloat over his packages from home and often he would open them and show them to me with such pride. He was an awfully good soul and we shall miss him very much I can tell you.

We are living in terrible times. I have a brother in France now. It almost makes you feel that life isn’t worthwhile, but we fortunately are not the judges so we must shoulder our burdens and trudge on.

The news soon spread among the staff and those studying at McGill. Fellow student Reginald Blomfield wrote to the Prichard family the following day.

When I first heard of it, I could hardly believe it and so waited until I found, alas, that it was too true. Often, and then perhaps too late, you never realise what one’s friends mean to you. I lose one of the best and sincerest friends a fellow could have in Dick, and his will be a loss I shall never be able to replace. However we have this mutual consolation of knowing that he can now at least understand and appreciate our love and affection for him.

Another student, Clifford Derick, had been a particularly close friend and took it upon himself to ensure that Preston’s property was kept safe until it could be returned to his family.

It was with deep regret that I learned today of your great loss. Principal Peterson announced at convocation that it was definitely known that he was lost when the Lusitania was sunk, and out of respect all the university flags were hung at half mast.

I, as all his other fellow-students, feel that I have lost one of my best and truest friends. He being one of the most congenial members in our year. As we roomed next each other in the Wesleyan Theological College last term we saw a great deal of each other, and he asked me, should anything happen that he did not return to McGill would I look after his things in storage at the College, he only taking a travelling bag with him. I should be only too glad to do anything whatever possible to see after his things for you should you so desire it.

About Prichard’s things, they are still in his room as he left them the first of May. He had most of his things packed in trunks. He had six of his finest pictures, remembrances from his sister, framed and these he left with the matron at the College. They were a pride to him and much admired by all who saw them. When I go to town this week to get my sister I am going to leave the things placed in my room as then they will be alright until I hear from you as regards packing and shipping them.

With reference to his textbooks, he had sold all of his first year books but had all of his second, and had purchased his books for the coming year from a third year man who went with the Base Hospital. Should you like I can take the books to the book room at the New Medical Building where second hand books sell for half price.

I believe Mr Candy was the only person to go down to the train with «Prich» when he left for New York. That is from the Building, the reason being we had a party on go to the theatre that night. He was to have gone with us and taken a Montreal boat for home but on that Friday he went down at noon and booked his passage, having spoken for it before, telling us that he felt it would be much safer to sail by way of the Lusitania, she being the largest passenger boat to cross. I received a letter from him written after he had gone aboard boat at New York saying that there was a good passenger list and a bright outlook for a pleasant voyage.

I don’t know as you have heard that he took four honours out of a possible of six which is a very creditable standing. Will try and get a report book when in Montreal and send it, that you may see the results.

About his health at the time of sailing, it was not very good as also he had not been well for the past two months previous. He was treating with a Doctor. It was due to over work, his nervous system being in a somewhat dilapidated condition. The Doctor told him that the voyage on the water and a rest was all he needed as he wouldn’t stop work right up till the last night. Rising at seven in the morning he was at his work either up at the College or in his room until 12 p.m. or 1 a.m. every day, which is most trying even on the strongest and most rugged constitutions.

About his personal matters I suppose you know as much as I although he at different times told me about different money loans that he had in the west. I believe he took most of his papers with him as he said he had some things to straighten out with his sisters. Also he had at least four horses in the West, in charge of a Mr Richards I believe.

Meanwhile, the letters from Lusitania survivors kept arriving at the Prichard home in Ramsgate. Even those responses which had nothing to offer regarding Preston’s fate could still contain a wealth of valuable information concerning the last moments of Lusitania. The distinction between different classes of passenger was quite evident on board ship, and this is reflected in several letters. The windows of the upper-level first-class dining room opened onto the third-class promenade deck, and on earlier voyages it had been reported that passengers would tend to peer inside at the «posh people» eating dinner, much to their annoyance.

I am only too sorry to say that I had not the pleasure of meeting your brother on board the Lusitania, but I see by the photograph sent that he was in a Second Cabin D90, and as I was a First Class passenger rarely saw any of those in the 2nd class, with the exception of the evening when they gave a special concert.

Some well-meaning responses actually proved detrimental to the Prichards’ mission and sent their investigations in the wrong direction, as they concentrated on several cases of what appear to have been mistaken identity. In the chaos of the sinking, it is only to be expected that many survivors were confused over what they saw and their memories of the traumatic event could prove somewhat inaccurate. On occasion the information received would no doubt have been upsetting to Margaret and her children.

My husband and my sister travelled to Queenstown in the hopes of identifying my dear sister amongst those whose bodies were awaiting identification and burial there, but alas! Their mission so far as our dear one was concerned was futile; but whenever my husband saw your son’s photo he could almost be sure he saw his body amongst the rest there. He so well remembers the deep dimple in the chin and high forehead, also what drew his attention to this body particularly was the position it was in, the boy was just as though he was peacefully reclining on a coach, and both he and my sister remarked on the beautiful new boots he had on, they had patent leather uppers with cloth buttoned tops, also he was wearing a lounge suit but no collar or tie, perhaps if you could find out whether he really possessed such boots it might be some comfort to you to know that his body would be laid to rest at Queenstown along with the others.

Upon receipt of this particular letter from Mrs Agnes Mogerley, the family then began to concentrate on ascertaining whether Preston did indeed own a pair of patent leather boots and was wearing them at the time of the sinking. For a while the family also appear to have believed that Preston may have been the same young man whose dead body was seen in one of the lifeboats, leading to further fruitless inquiries. A similar sighting of a body resembling Preston’s was described by passenger Elizabeth Duckworth, who had visited the Queenstown morgues.

I am almost sure I saw him laid dead in the morgue, as I went over the dead bodies many times as there were four warehouses full and I was looking for my Cabin passengers and had to go often as they were bringing them in all the time I were there. I am almost sure I saw your son and if it be so he would be buried on the Monday afternoon in Queenstown. Your only hope is to see the Chief of Police as all the bodies were numbered as they came in the morgue and all jewellery and money and papers were taken from the bodies and folded in brown paper parcels for each one with their number, and if he will take the trouble for you he is the most likeliest to enlighten you. I am only a poor woman and if I had only the means I would go to Queenstown with you. I too have had an awful shock, it has affected my head. I have done no work since I came home, trying to get well again. I was afraid I was going to be afflicted all the time but I feel a little better thank God for it and I am going to try in the mill [for work] on Monday next as I am a widow. I lost my husband just before I sailed home. I am staying with my sister and I have to work for myself. I find it very hard indeed as I am not as young as I was when I worked in the mill before.

I have got 53 years old and I lost both money and plenty of clothes on the wreck and when I asked for compensation from the Cunard Company they could not grant any, but told me to write to the Mayor of Liverpool for help from the Lusitania Relief fund. All I got was 3 pounds and I know they have collected from 10 to 12 thousand pounds and there is only a few of us saved. I do not understand why I got so little and when you ask anything you don’t get satisfaction […] With deepest sympathy for you, we had an awful time … I feel sorry for them all and can still hear them crying out for help. I can never forget and will never be the same again through life. God help us all to bear up in life or death.

In response to a follow-up enquiry from the desperate Margaret Prichard, Mrs Duckworth sent a further letter.

I cannot just tell which morgue he, your son, was in and I did not notice the kind of clothes he had on as I only looked on their faces and again, not knowing them personally you don’t notice everything. Only you know some faces strike your attention more than others, I have found more than once. Just as the face seem to come to me again I saw him sure enough, don’t you think it best to ask the Chief of Police in Queenstown to look for papers or something. You ask me if he had on a tie pin, there was nothing left on a person in jewellery, only wedding rings, other jewellery was taken off as other people were going through the morgue and may take them. As you know some are not to be trusted even on the Dead […] To give you the truth … you must not expect to find his clothes as they were put in their coffins just as they came from the water with what clothes they had on.

Another potential, although ultimately unhelpful, sighting was described by first-class passenger James Baker, although on this occasion the alleged encounter was of Preston when he was still alive. Again, it was almost certainly a case of mistaken identity.

I very much regret that I cannot give you any information about your son that is reliable, but I met a young man in the water, without coat or collar. I was looking for a piece of wreckage to help keep myself afloat and saw some 30 or 40 yards away, a copper air box that had got loose from one of the lifeboats that had been upset. I swam towards it and finally got to it, just as a young man, not unlike your son, also reached it. We clung to it, but after a few minutes I told him it was a dangerous thing to hang onto, it was so buoyant that it was difficult to hang onto and we should soon get exhausted. He agreed and I told him to swim towards a broken lifeboat while I swam away in the opposite direction and picked up an oar on which I hung for over an hour and a half – being picked up by a collapsible boat which was broken, and after being on her for a good two hours I was taken on the Indian Empire and later helped to unload Thornton’s collapsible boat which came alongside and tho’ pretty well done myself, tried to revive a man who was in a bad way, but I think he was a steward – but with no results. By that time we had some 200 survivors on board and started for Queenstown.

The Prichard family must have felt despair at these many nuggets of information which, together, did not yet really amount to much or tell them anything concrete about the fate of Preston. How long should they continue the search? The responses to their enquiries continued to arrive, however, and it would surely only be a matter of time before something more tangible was established which could enable them to find some form of closure.

Reaction

The Lusitania sinking was immediately plastered across the front pages of the world’s newspapers and became the main talking point. Everybody held an opinion on the incident, whether it was sympathy with the passengers or moral indignation at the German attack on an unarmed civilian vessel. Public opinion in Britain, the United States and their allies was overwhelmingly critical towards Germany with the ship’s fate becoming integral to any discussions about the enemy’s «barbarism» and the need to stamp out such inhumane warmongery.

Unsurprisingly, the sinking was regarded rather differently in Germany itself. The nation’s press regarded the incident as a great success in the ongoing fight against the British naval blockade. While regrets were expressed about the loss of civilian life, the sinking was portrayed as a fully justified attack against a ship which was likely to have been carrying munitions or troops and was therefore probably armed. It was also consistently pointed out that a clear warning had been issued before the liner set sail. The overall accusation, therefore, was that blame for the sinking lay firmly on the shoulders of Britain itself, with German commentators pointing in particular to the arrogant irresponsibility of the Cunard Steamship Company in continuing to operate a transatlantic service despite the obvious threat to their passengers of sailing through what had become, in effect, an active war zone.

It soon became apparent that Germany had scored a proverbial «own goal» by sinking Lusitania, as the ensuing controversy was seized by Allied propagandists to ensure that the enemy was portrayed in the worst possible light. Some of the more interesting reactions were seen from neutral countries, notionally removed from the conflict raging across much of Europe, yet encouraged by the great loss of life to declare a strong opinion on the incident. Typical was the information forwarded by Britain’s Ambassador to Spain, Sir Arthur Hardinge, who sent the following confidential memorandum to the British Cabinet on 13 May.

The destruction of the Lusitania by German submarines has produced a very painful impression on Spanish public opinion, and I hear on all sides that even those elements of Spanish society which have, up to now for religious and other reasons, been in sympathy with Germany, have been profoundly shocked by the horrible accounts of the wholesale drowning of neutrals and women and children. A worthy Spanish lady, whose family is very Catholic and Germanophil, expressed herself yesterday very strongly in this sense in speaking to Lady Hardinge; and the more decent and moderate pro-German papers, including the A. B. C., have gently hinted that the measure was a cruel one. Many Spaniards who would have warmly applauded a German naval or military triumph feel that this latest proceeding is a dastardly one, whilst amongst those who are on the side of the Allies, it has produced an outburst of frantic indignation. At Barcelona, where Mr Pearson, one of the victims, was much respected, the corporation has, according to the papers, voted a resolution of sympathy with Great Britain, which the Mayor has been requested to present in person to His Majesty’s consul-general. I have already received a strongly worded note of protest against these latest German methods from the Freemasons of Alicante, and I have little doubt from what I hear that many others will be forthcoming. In a large industrial concern in Catalonia, all the German artisans have been dismissed, their English and American fellow workmen having declared that they would leave unless this was done. In higher and more responsible circles which are obliged to be more respectful of Spanish neutrality, the same sentiments are, albeit more discreetly, expressed. The Minister of State has addressed to me a private letter assuring me of his deep sympathy with the victims of the outrage, and the Epoca, the official Conservative journal, has conveyed in grave and cautious, but still unmistakable terms, its disapproval of the latest German violation of the laws of civilised warfare. One element in the feeling aroused by it is that the Germans have not only not attempted to deny, but have actually exulted in their crime, so that their Spanish friends cannot say as they did about the Louvain and Dinant massacres, that these cruelties had not really taken place, and were inventions and calumnies spread by the Allies.

Read also: Premonitions of Titanic Disaster – Historical Facts of the Tragedy

Any analysis of the public reaction to the sinking in Britain, and indeed in any of those countries sympathetic to the British cause, needs to take into account the overall feelings about Germany which were widely felt by May 1915. Percival Yearsley, a 47-year-old doctor practising in London, kept a journal throughout the war in which he recorded the particular events which impacted on the home front while offering his personal views on the development of the conflict. Yearsley was an open-minded and sprightly man who took a keen interest in current events and his journal provides an excellent record of what were considered at the time as the «Hun atrocities». Whilst one could argue that much of Yearsley’s information was received second-hand at best, the important thing to note is that these stories were commonly believed across the country and impacted heavily upon the way in which people regarded Germany.

Within the first few weeks after war broke out in August 1914, stories began to be circulated of atrocities carried out by German troops within occupied Belgium.

I may be pardoned for seeming to dwell upon the Hun atrocities, but there are certain Germanophiles who have denied them. One feels that every piece of authentic evidence should be recorded, and I intend to give each one as I heard it. I have heard much undeniable brutality attributed to the Prussians, but from many sources of evidence by those whose veracity is absolutely unimpeachable, all German soldiers from whatever province were equally guilty. A former House Surgeon of mine in the RAMC informed me that, from his own personal observations, the German atrocities were not exaggerated. A Hospital Sister under my care described to me the case of a young soldier in her ward who, when lying wounded with seven bullets in him, had his pockets gone through by the Germans. When he moved his head, one struck him senseless (evidently with the intention of killing him) with his rifle butt. Nor was it alone the soldiers who behaved in this blackguardly way, but non-combatants were equally callous and brutal. In one of the Belgian hospitals, three British soldiers had each just suffered amputation of a leg when the head German surgeon gave orders for them to be entrained at once for Germany. A Belgian surgeon intervened; protesting that to move them in such a state meant their certain death. «All the better», retorted the Hun sawbones. «That will make three fewer of them». Apart from their inhumanity, these brutalities were extraordinarily short-sighted, but the German mentality is such that it believes it can cover the vilest action by impudent lying.

On 4 December 1914, concern over such atrocity stories (as well as, undoubtedly, recognition of their potential value for propaganda purposes) led the British Government to appoint Lord Bryce to chair a Committee on Alleged German Outrages. The Committee would review over a thousand witness statements made since the beginning of the war before publishing their findings, although the final report would not see light until 12 May – five days after the sinking of Lusitania. As will be seen, the wide promulgation of this report would have major consequences. Until then, however, Germany continued to explore new ways of fighting the war which served only to incite the anger of Britain and her allies.

On the night of January 19th [1915], there was an air-raid on the East Coast. This particular raid was probably intended to catch the King and Queen at Sandringham and evoked some sharp protests concerning the «Hun in our midst». Four bombs were dropped at the first visit to Yarmouth, four on Sheringham, one each on Dersingham, Snettisham and Grimston, and it is significant that King’s Lynn, so close to Sandringham, received no less than seven. The damage done was considerable, but the toll of life amounted to five only – a soldier, a shoemaker, a youth of seventeen, the widow of a soldier killed in France and an old lady of seventy-two. This raid roused the New York Herald to an editorial on «More Slaughter of the Innocents», in which occurred: «Is it the madness of despair or just plain everyday madness that prompted the Germans to select for attack peaceful undefended resorts on England’s East Coast? What can Germany hope to gain from these wanton attacks on undefended places and the slaughter of innocents? Certainly not the good opinion of the peoples of neutral nations, for these know that the rules of civilised warfare call for notice of the bombardment even of places fortified or defended».

On February 3rd everyone was madly indignant at another dastardly violation by Germany of civilised conventions, when one of her submarines attempted to torpedo a British Hospital Ship, luckily without success. Much indignation was expressed at the silence of the United States Government over these repeated breaches of international law.

Dr Yearsley proceeded to sum up the various indictments made against Germany by the beginning of 1915, as they had appeared in the national press.

1 Violation of treaties.

2 Bombardment by sea and air of defenceless unfortified towns.

3 Destruction of cathedrals, churches and monuments.

4 Mutilation, and worse, of non-combatants. The evidence produced of these atrocities was apparently unimpeachable.

5 Murder of defenceless women and children.

6 Murder of the wounded.

7 Torture and murder of priests.

8 Placing of heavy artillery behind their own hospitals, well knowing that the Allies would respect the Red Cross flag, while at the same time they knowingly and wantonly shelled our hospitals.

No doubt these heavy indictments may have been somewhat exaggerated, but I for one believe that they contained a preponderance of truth. At any rate, they helped materially to fan a growing flame of fierce blood-lust.

On February 5th Germany issued a new threat, that of a blockade, to start on the 18th. All merchant ships, neutral or otherwise, to be torpedoed. Probably, we said, a little exhibition of petulant frightfulness – the snarl of a vicious animal at bay, biting at everything around it, friend, foe or neutral. This was another German blunder, causing much wrath in the United States, the Government of which sent a strong warning note. Doubtless Germany was blinded by her anger at the attitude of America, and a German naval writer telegraphed from Amsterdam, asserting that the destruction of American ships could give the Washington Government no cause for complaint.

At the end of March, another outrage spurred us on. This was the torpedoing of the liner Falaba, with the loss of some hundred and odd lives, mostly inoffensive passengers. Even the United States was deeply angry, calling it «ruthless murder» and «one of the worst crimes in history», for it was said that the submarine crew laughed and jeered at the drowning passengers.

One of the most interesting points that Dr Yearsley made was his recognition that Britain was now experiencing what has since been termed «total war». The conflict had become so far-reaching that it was now not only affecting the servicemen at the front, but also civilians back home. German bombing had brought the war to peoples’ very doorsteps, affecting every level of society, and the need to change and restrict aspects of daily life in order to boost the war effort meant that nobody was untouched by the national requirement to fight.

I alluded to a growing blood-lust at the Home Front. I am not ashamed to say that I felt it and many, both men and women, have told me they were similarly affected. With it came a loss of interest in our ordinary work, which we carried on perfunctorily and listlessly, longing to be more actively engaged in «doing something». The cause of this new mental attitude was probably that, the whole nation having realised the position and its serious nature and settled down to it, the war obtruded itself into everything and we were fired by all we saw, read or heard. We were passing through the hysterical stage to that of grim earnest, not without a spice of apprehension concerning things to come, a fear we thrust more and more determinedly into the background. In a way, we of the Home Front were more truculently warlike than those in the fighting lines on land or sea or in the air. We had not the feeling of the soldier of a tempered respect for the enemy with whom he is in almost daily contact but were obsessed with a tight-lipped, set-teethed fury. I have been told that this is practically the invariable case with the non-combatants of a nation at home and that it takes longer to overcome, and may make for insistence upon harder peace conditions when the enemy is finally defeated. It may be that both the Government and the Press designedly fostered this pugnacity.

Indeed, the national press would never pass on an opportunity to stoke up hatred against Germany. The Spectator of 30 January 1915 published an extensive article headed «What is wrong with Germany?» The answer, according to this particular journalist, was the German devotion to «Abstractions» – a preoccupation with following a logical course, regardless of the consequence to others.

When Englishmen create an Abstraction they do not call upon all mankind to enthrone it. They treat it as something which is «there or thereabouts», as something useful, no doubt, but not to be pressed too far. When the Germans create an Abstraction they fall down and worship it. They not only treat it with intellectual servility, but regard it as a living thing. When their Abstraction is once established, they will not place any limits on its authority. They follow it ruthlessly, relentlessly, remorselessly, and to the bitter end. The result is what we see in the world today – the earth reeking with blood, Belgium, Poland, and some of the fairest parts of France drinking the cup of suffering to the dregs, and millions of men by land and sea locked in a death struggle … They are maddened by an Abstraction, but they adore it. Frankenstein had to obey the monster he created, but he loathed and feared it. Germany, the new Frankenstein, worships her creations, and is willing to follow them through blood and fire, no matter what the consequence to herself or to the rest of mankind.

Before we leave Percival Yearsley, let us read his personal reactions to the Lusitania sinking.

My wife and I were at Penzance for a fortnight from the end of April to the middle of May, a restful time, comparatively speaking. There, but for the khaki-clad men of the Yorkshires and Devons and the closing of the church and castle on St Michael’s Mount, and of the lighthouses, it was difficult, save for the papers, to realise that we were at war. On May 7th, my wife and I reached Plymouth in lovely weather. The Hoe was beautiful and nothing seemed further from our minds than war as we gazed across the Sound. Yet the eastern entry was mined and every steam trawler was a patrol-boat, doing its work in deadly earnest. Then came a catastrophe which shook us all and gave America strong stimulus to action.

As we settled in the Palm Court at the Royal Hotel for after-dinner coffee, an excited waiter came to us. «Have you heard the latest?» he asked, and, without waiting for an answer, «The Lusitania has been torpedoed!» An evening paper gave the bare information that the Great Cunarder, with 1 978 souls aboard, had been sunk in forty minutes [sic] off Kinsale. It was hoped that a large number had been saved, but next day we knew that hope to be unfounded. In the same paper we learned that the enemy was using asphyxiating gases in their attacks in France, but, for the moment, this new crime was as nothing to that of the Lusitania. For some days, in spite of [Field Marshal Sir John] French’s significant message that the lack of adequate numbers of shells prevented the pushing home of his offensive, the chief event centred on the loss of the Cunarder.

On 22 April, in the sector of the Western Front just north of the Belgian town of Ypres, the German Army released clouds of poisonous chlorine gas which drifted across the trench lines and caused French soldiers hastily to flee their positions. While causing severe irritation to the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, in severe cases of inhalation the gas could kill. This release of gas by the Germans, in what would become known as the Second Battle of Ypres, marked the first widespread use of chemical warfare. In the following days they would launch further such attacks, firstly against the Canadians two days later before attacking British positions at the beginning of May. Hundreds of soldiers were made casualties as a result of the new weapon. However, as Dr Yearsley observed, this new «uncivilised» method of waging war was soon overtaken by the news of Lusitania. Killing soldiers was one thing, but deliberately targeting unarmed civilians was a completely different level of barbarism. J. C. Kennedy, writing a private letter from Ayrshire, gave a very typical opinion on the news.

What a terrible business this torpedoing of the Lusitania is! That business and the asphyxiating gases have just about ‘put the lid on’, and shown up these truculent Prussians in their true light. Pirates and murderers! The scum of Europe. I have looked upon them in that light for many years; ever since I saw part of the Franco Prussian war, but they are worse now than they were then.

Ada McGuire, resident in Lusitania’s home port of Liverpool, wrote to her sister in Boston, Massachusetts on 9 May. News of the sinking was by then widely known, and everybody had an opinion on it.

I suppose you have been as horrified as we have been over the latest German murder. I was at Laura’s when I got the news. Bess and I were there to tea and Mr M phoned the news through. We were absolutely staggered and L had a good cry – but I felt too fierce for that. We thought then that no lives would be lost – that Germany would be afraid of American anger but it seems to me they are trying to draw America in and then they will have an excuse for asking for peace. There seems nothing but death and destruction everywhere. I was in town yesterday morning and that little street at the side of the Cunard offices was filled with a dense mass of people waiting for news. The crew belonged almost entirely to Liverpool and Wirral. Poor things! We are all waiting eagerly to see what America will do. Will it be a feeble protest again. It seems to me that all the nations who signed the Hague Convention should see that it is enforced. Germany seems to be allowed to do just as she likes.

At church this morning Mr Hughes said in his sermon that England as a nation needs bringing back to God, and that he does not think he is speaking too strongly when he says that no sorrow, no disaster is in vain if it makes us realise what life is for. But I don’t believe God is the cause of the war. It is the natural effect of violating God’s laws, Germany has violated every Divine Law and this havoc is the result.

I wonder if there were any letters for us on the Lusitania. Fancy, to think we will never see that lovely ship in the Mersey again – what a cruel shame!

A report published in The Times the following day emphasised how the sinking had inflicted an overwhelming feeling of moroseness on the ship’s home port.

Liverpool is profoundly moved over the sinking of the Lusitania. There are reasons why the calamity should be felt more keenly here than anywhere else. Liverpool regarded the magnificent ship as its own special possession, one of the glories of its great port, and there was no spectacle to which parents were more fond of bringing their children to see than that of «Lucy», as she was affectionately called, coming in or going out of the Mersey. To add to the sense of personal loss, the captain and nearly every man of the crew belonged to Liverpool.

Most of the survivors of the crew came home this morning. They were expected at 5 o’clock, and even at that early hour there was a big crowd at Lime Street Station to meet them. They were the same people whom I had seen last night waiting and weeping before the windows of the Cunard offices, in which were shown the names of rescued passengers and crew as they were telegraphed from Queenstown. For the most part they were women and girls, the mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts of the crew. With grey shawls wrapped round their heads they kept vigil through the night, and hungrily scanned each fresh bulletin. Now and then a piercing cry was heard, «He’s saved», and three or four women would rush away frantically exclaiming «Saved! Saved! Saved!» as if hastening to spread the good news in their neighbourhood.

The scenes at Lime Street Station were more poignant still. Shortly after 6 o’clock the train came in with over 200 of the crew. There were a few petty officers; the others consisted of:

• engineers;
• stewards;
• firemen;
• seamen;
• trimmers;
• watchmen;
• waiters and messenger boys,

who made up the miscellaneous staff of the big liner. Some had bandages round their heads, some were limping, and a few, more seriously injured, had to be carried away in motor-cabs. They all came in such clothes as they happened to have on when their ship was taken unawares, but what was most curious was the contrast between their stoical unconcern and the anxious, tear-stained faces of the throng of women and girls by whom they were immediately surrounded.

I saw one elderly woman, with her shawl hanging from her shoulders and her grey hair in disarray, advancing slowly through the crowd calling out, «Is Dan Daly among ye? Dan Daly the fireman?» She was a mother seeking distractedly for her son. Clutching by the arm each member of the crew she encountered, she would moaningly ask whether he did not know Dan Daly the fireman, but none of them knew him. At last she came upon a fireman who did know, and I heard the decisive answer which shattered her hopes. «Dan is gone, ma’am. He was down below at the time». Throwing up her hands with a gesture of despair, the mother turned aside to lean over a packing case for support while she wailed and wailed in sorrow.

The feeling here is composed of fury and grief. Moving among the crowds before the Cunard offices and at Lime Street Station I heard men say to each other, with set teeth and grim faces, «These accursed Germans». The expression indicates the loathing that is felt for a foe at whose deeds civilisation stands aghast. But something more is wanted, and what that is is best described in a sentence from an appeal which Lord Derby issued yesterday. «This country», he says, «calls no longer for men to fight an honourable foe. It calls for men to hunt down and crush once and for all a race of cold-blooded murderers».

The Union Jack on the City Hall floats at half-mast out of respect for the dead, but the flag floats mast-high in the national spirit of the people.

Almost as an afterthought, without necessary linking it to the patriotic call to action, The Times followed up its report from Liverpool with the observation that:

The intensity of feeling aroused in Liverpool has resulted in a number of shops owned by Germans being wrecked. The windows of the shops were broken and the contents thrown about the streets. In the neighbourhood of Everton so threatening was the attitude of the crowds that a posse of police about 50 strong had to be called upon and they made about 20 arrests. The angry rioters thereupon jostled the police in an endeavour to rescue their comrades, and the police had to use their batons to quell the disturbance.

Ada McGuire continued the letter to her sister two days later, with further news about the local civil disturbances.

There have been dreadful riots in Liverpool and Seacombe against the Germans. The Scotland Road women I believe were just like the women of the French Revolution, so I was told by an eyewitness. They come from the seafaring quarters of the town and of course the crew of the Lusitania belonged chiefly to Liverpool. They boarded the car after a German who had escaped them. I believe it would have gone badly with him if they had caught him. But it is horrible! Of course they will be punished but I think we all feel the same only we are more restrained. Miss Phythian told me she was terribly frightened last night going home from school. She lives in Liverpool and onto the boat came a gentleman (English) and a German fighting – at least they started when they got on. She said blood was flying about and they fairly flew at each other.

Miss Huston who was drowned in the Lusitania belonged to Wallasey. She was a Wallasey High School girl and went in for teaching. I believe she gave it up and went in June on a visit to her married sister in America. When war broke out her sister would not let her come home but as her mother was ill she finally sailed in the Lusitania. Miss Elkin met her father yesterday. She said he seemed quite dazed. He had had a telegram saying her body had been found and then had received another to say it was a mistake, it was not her body. Oh, no wonder the poor people go for the brutes. Fancy if it had been you coming home!

Walter Greenwood, later to find fame as a novelist in the 1930s with works such as Love on the Dole, was in 1915 an eleven-year-old schoolboy living in Salford. Being a child of the working classes who spent much of his time on the streets, he was well-placed to witness the riots which spontaneously erupted.

Well, the news suddenly went round that the Lusitania had been sunk and all the women turned out furious, cursing the Germans and suddenly they began to talk about the people who had got German names, groups began to form and somebody rushed around and said «Kettles», the pork butcher’s shop, had been broken in by a crowd of women and all eatables stolen. Well, I happened to be walking down this street and from nowhere came a great rush of women with clogs and shawls and stood outside this draper’s shop, shouting and shaking their fists and an old woman stepped forward out of the crowd and threw a tin can at the window. Well, it bounced off harmlessly and that might have been a signal of command, so the other women threw their shawls back, produced half bricks which they had been concealing under their shawls and a fusillade of these missiles crashed into the window.

There was a mad rush of everybody to push their way into the shop, elbowing one another, shouting, shoving, thumping and they started to snatch at everything that was available. The stock boxes were pulled out, all the things were snatched from the shelves. They took boots, men’s suits, socks, anything and the same thing was going out as coming in; everybody pushing and shoving and shouting and even those people who couldn’t get anything tried to thieve what the others had stolen because a few thumps for that and off they went and all the time this policeman was shouting and quite helplessly couldn’t do anything at all. The crowd began to thin out and the old woman who had thrown the tin can, she had been elbowed at one side and the only thing that was left in the window was one of those old-fashioned three-legged brass telescopic hat stands. Well, that was the only thing that she could get so she snatched at that and shuffled away and then the copper, he looked at the departing hoard and shouted, «You’ll have it to pay for, it’ll all come out of the rates».

Young mother Nellie Clear worked in Liverpool, at a local doctor’s surgery.

Coming home I could see them throwing. I saw a piano coming out of the pork shop which was the corner of the avenue in Wavertree. It was off Smithdown Road and it came flying out. I thought to myself what’s happening here and then you could see – people going about breaking windows for no reason at all and, as I say, there was no wireless or anything to tell you anything like that. Those days you had to wait until you got the Echo, it was the Echo boy shouting, and of course when I got home I goes into the house wondering what’s happened. All that was in the house was the baby in the high chair, all the others was out. They were watching all the other shops in Earl Road being looted and that and there were policemen standing there letting them pick the things up. Where we lived … at the corner Lawrence Road’s police station is, it’s still there. I knew the man there, the sergeant, and when I said «What’s happening», he said, «Oh, the peoples gone mad over this Lusitania going down», I said «I can’t find any of my children», he said «Oh they’ll be in, they’ll be watching all the fun». I felt sorry for the German people at that time that owned the shops because they were all beautiful pork shops. But there you are, it was how people felt against them.

By 13 May, The Times could report that the spread of anti-German violence in and around Liverpool had been largely brought under control.

It is estimated that the wrecking of premises which has accompanied these anti-German demonstrations will cost the rate-payers about £40 000, 200 establishments having been gutted and the contents in some cases completely cleared out. This afternoon 150 of the German residents who have been taken charge of by the police were removed by special train and under military escort to Hawick for internment. A large crowd assembled at Lime Street Station to witness their departure, but there was no hostility shown towards them.

But the spread of anti-German feeling across the country could not be so easily halted, and the Lusitania sinking and recent gas attacks at Ypres served to lead the way in spurring the British public into further demonstrations of anger. In a case of perfect timing for a government keen to maximise the propaganda value of such events, Lord Bryce’s committee finally published its «Report on Alleged German Outrages» on 12 May, using first-hand testimony as evidence towards recognising atrocities committed by the German Army against both civilians and combatants. While the committee stressed that their investigation reflected on the conduct of the German Army as opposed to the actions or attitudes of the German nation as a whole, the conclusion reached by most readers of the report was largely to condemn Germany as a nation devoid of humanity and a sense of moral right. While the atrocities were largely found to be the result of isolated incidents and some of the evidence was questionable at best, the report was widely accepted and circulated throughout the world, being reprinted by many of the world’s national newspapers. With the Lusitania sinking serving as the perfect, undeniable piece of evidence to illustrate the continuing German «beastliness», the press reported on 13 May that anti-German rioting was no longer confined to the Liverpool area and had spread, assuming very serious proportions.

All day yesterday, and far into the night, there were angry demonstrations in East, South and North London; innumerable shops were dismantled or wrecked, the police in some districts being almost powerless. Many arrests were made, and several people, including policemen, sustained minor injuries. There have been riots in other parts of the country. At Southend last night order was not restored until soldiers had been called out. In the City feeling is stronger than ever; there was an impromptu meeting in front of the Royal Exchange yesterday, and today a meeting organised by City men will be held on Tower Hill to demand, in the strongest terms, the internment of all enemy aliens, «whether naturalised or not». As will be seen elsewhere, the Cabinet decided yesterday that all male enemy aliens in the Kingdom are to be interned. This does not apply to women, children, and naturalised aliens.

The Times was able to provide further detail.

Shops belonging to tradesmen of German or Austrian birth were attacked, wrecked, and plundered by angry crowds. The amount of the damage cannot be estimated but it is asserted that in the Camden Town and Kentish Town districts alone 150 shops were attacked. The rioting was particularly serious in Poplar and the East End districts and a considerable number of persons, including several constables, were injured.

The damage done by the rioters was very great. Not content with smashing doors and windows and looting the whole of the furniture and the contents of the shops, the interiors of the houses were in numerous instances greatly damaged. Staircases were hacked to pieces and walls and ceilings were knocked down. Shops were completely wrecked before the police had time to arrive upon the scene. At Poplar, for instance, in an area of a quarter of a mile half a dozen houses were attacked simultaneously by different crowds in the early afternoon. Before the constables were able to attempt to disperse the mob, horse-drawn carts, handcarts and perambulators – besides the unaided arms of men, women and children – had taken everything away from the wrecked houses. One saw pianos, chests of drawers, dressers, and the heaviest type of household furniture being carted triumphantly through the streets. «Here is wealth for the taking», said one man who had possession of several spring mattresses, and was calmly driving his overloaded donkey-cart down Crisp Street.

The attacks on the shops were affairs of a few moments only. A sudden rush on the part of a crowd from the scene of a previous exploit, a shower of stones, and a mad rush through broken windows or a battered-down door; and the house was surging with shouting people. Ten minutes later the place would be empty and nothing of value left.

In Poplar the crowds were perhaps more violent than in other parts. Scores of shops were attacked without particular regard to the nature of the ownership. Two bakers’ shops in Upper North Street belonged, for instance, to men of German descent but who have been associated with public life in Poplar for a great number of years. The scene in the streets was amazing. Every man seemed to have given up the day to the Anti-German orgy; and every other person one met seemed to be in possession of looted property. No attempt was made to cover the goods. «Made in Germany» was the excuse for possession […] It is estimated that quite £20 000 worth of damage was done during the day. Several policemen were slightly injured by stones or cut by falling glass. One of the rioters had to be surgically treated for a severe gash on his arm. English bakers, fearing that the crowd might attack their shops in mistake, in several instances hung out Union Jacks from their windows.

The newspaper went on to provide a valuable overview of how the anti-German feeling was manifesting itself across the country.

Manchester – As a result of the anti-German riots in the earlier part of the week, 13 men and eight women were charged before the Manchester stipendiary magistrate yesterday with disorderly conduct and wilful damage to property … The police are arresting all enemy alien shopkeepers in the city against whom public hostility has been shown, and it is believed that this action will allay the angry feelings aroused since the sinking of the Lusitania.

Nottingham – a deputation representing naturalised Germans in Nottingham waited upon the Mayor yesterday and made a declaration of loyalty and allegiance to King George. They stated that their sympathies were entirely with this country, for which some of their sons were fighting. They viewed with abhorrence and detestation the cruel and inhuman acts committed by the order of the German authorities by land and sea, and devoutly prayed that British arms might prove successful.

Newcastle-on-Tyne – Further demonstrations against German tradesmen took place yesterday. Two pork butchers’ shops in the east end of the city were attacked and the windows shattered with stones. In another case the crowd burst into a shop and wrecked the premises.

Bradford – Leading naturalised British subjects of German birth resident in Bradford waited on the Lord Mayor on Tuesday, and signed a protest against Germany’s inhuman manner of waging war against non-combatants.

Glasgow – Germans have not been molested, but public opinion is strongly in favour of more drastic steps being taken to control their movements. In the Royal Restaurant, West Nile Street, a notice has been issued that no Germans or naturalised British subjects of German birth would be served. No Germans or naturalised British subjects are members of the Glasgow Stock Exchange.

Cardiff – The Cardiff Exchange has passed the following resolution: «All members and associate members who are of German, Austrian or Turkish birth, although they may be naturalised British subjects, are requested to refrain from using this Exchange until further notice».

Rioting against German-owned property was not only limited to Britain. Arriving at Port Elizabeth in December 1916, at the very southernmost tip of South Africa, 2nd Lieutenant Harold Hussey took the opportunity to tour the local sights and places of interest, where he learned of how the locals had responded to the previous year’s sinking.

Near the park I took an especially interesting photo. After the sinking of the Lusitania the patriotic inhabitants quietly and quite soberly burnt many German houses. One German offered £60 to the Red Cross Fund if his house could be spared. The burning committee carefully considered it, but decided to burn it. Another German was let off as his son was serving with the Colours. Naturally the ringleaders were hauled up before the Court, but as naturally they were not punished. My photo was of the German Club, completely gutted.

Attitudes to the sinking shown by servicemen with a more direct link to front-line fighting are particularly interesting. Lieutenant Lionel Hull, serving on the Western Front with the 21st Battalion, London Regiment, wrote home to his wife on 12 May.

The Lusitania business, although appalling in its callous brutality, is nevertheless rather welcomed here as something calculated to wake things up a bit at home. One or two people will begin to realise what sort of a game it is that Germany is playing, and how utterly unscrupulous she is.

At Gallipoli, Private Davies of the 87th Field Ambulance expressed a similar sentiment when he remarked on the recent public rioting in England: «I quite understand that the sinking of the Lusitania has caused a great out-burst of feeling there against the Germans, and so it has here amongst the soldiers – they don’t say much but the act is as good as a good many more guns against the Turk».

Chief Steward W. Hughes, also at Gallipoli and serving aboard the troopship Californian, was succinct in his comments: «It is just murder and I hope our government will catch the devils. They ought to be hanged on the trees for the birds to pick their bones dry».

Maurice Pailland, a sergeant serving in the 123rd French Infantry Regiment, simply stated that he intended to «never speak to a German again». Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Blewitt, writing from the Western Front, took an even harder line. For him and many others, direct experience of the horrors of trench warfare had put things into clear perspective and his corresponding attitude to the ill-fated passengers was a harsh one: «In spite of being warned well, I think if they care to take the risk I don’t see that they’re much to be pitied. After all one loses fifteen hundred in a day here».

While recent events had encouraged those in Britain to perceive Germany’s conduct as being inhumane and in some cases unforgivable, the challenge for those of a more thoughtful persuasion was to find justification for Germany’s actions and to try to understand how a civilised nation could use such methods to fight a war.

As we have seen, Wesley Frost had direct experience of the Lusitania sinking since it was his duty as US consul in Queenstown to help those American survivors of the incident as well as work on the recovery of the nation’s dead. His opinions on the sinking, which were written in 1918 after the United States had entered the war and by which time an end was in sight to the conflict after some four years of fighting, were typical of the era’s more thoughtful critics of Germany.

Two principal exculpatory arguments have been put forward by the Germans for their act in destroying without warning the innocent civilians who perished with the Lusitania. In the first place they have had the effrontery to assert that the vessel was a ship of the British Navy. That this is a rank distortion and falsehood ought now to be too well known to bear repeating. The Lusitania was merely a reserve ship available for requisition, just as practically every fast ship in the world is today formally or informally a reserve ship of the nation to which it belongs. To use a simple illustration, she was in a position identical with that of a militia reservist working on a railway in one of our eastern states who has not been called to the colours. So long as he remains in civil life he has the full immunities of a civilian, even though the railway which he serves should habitually transport a certain proportion of munitions among other commodities. Just so the Lusitania, as a vessel of the British naval reserve, could by no stretch of the imagination be deemed a ship of war so long as she was pursuing her ordinary activities modified only as the war had modified every commercial activity.

This leads to the second German argument, that the part-cargo of munitions on the Lusitania made her a legitimate object of attack. No principle of international law, or any other law, has ever made any ship a legitimate object of the kind of attack perpetrated upon the Lusitania. If she had been signalled by a surface cruiser, it is true, and her occupants had been summoned to abandon ship for a place of safety provided by the enemy, she might have been fair prize. Even if the submarine had emerged and given warning, so that the Lusitania’s commanders could have had the option of surrendering for the sake of the passengers, Germany might have had some technical, if smirch, shreds of excuse. [But] Germany cold-bloodedly selected just that vessel which would involve the greatest number of passengers, and struck it down without a semblance of real warning. She could easily have managed to have her abominable resolution believed in by one or two overt acts involving less than a tithe or hundredth of the loss of life caused by the Lusitania crime.

Rationalisations for the sinking included the observation that the peacetime competition between rival shipping companies had naturally led, in time of war, to a more aggressive desire for one-upmanship. Coupled with what was perceived by Germany’s rivals as her innate aggressive tendencies to strive for power, Lusitania might be seen as a prize worth taking if the opportunity permitted, as Frost developed in his argument.

I believe it to be true that a sordid jealousy of the great ship had been corroding the minds of German shipping magnates since the day she was built, and that their desire to «get» her had been woven by them into the Kaiser’s war plans for many years. But far more important was the general German will to power at any cost; the insane ambition to smite down and exult their adversaries … disdain … of their western neighbours; the lust to seal and certify their abysmal contempt and hatred of anything and everything except the Germans identity.

For many, the ultimate excuse for the sinking could only be the cold-blooded inhumanity which was perceived to be inherent in the German psyche. By no coincidence at all it was this innate «beastliness» which formed the basis for so much anti-German propaganda.

Such occurrences as the Halifax explosion and the Guatemalan earthquakes are of course wholly devoid of the moral element; but even in the Armenian massacres and similar modern and ancient crimes of depressing moral culpability there has never been approximated the intensity of spiritual sin which we cannot but recognise in the Lusitania horror. For the latter’s perpetrators have not one of the mitigating excuses – the savage blood, the ignorance, the religious superstition – which have extenuated the crimes of Turk and Templar. The Prussians present the evil prodigy of men of enlightenment, progress and fine idealism propensely violating their consciences and hardening their hearts into a fierce and cold repudiation of all the principles they had themselves helped to erect toward the dignifying and vindicating of the existence of mankind.

Many commentators regarded the sinking as a «flash point» in relations between Germany and the still-neutral United States, questioning the likelihood of whether the death of 124 of the Lusitania’s American passengers might serve to bring the nation to involve itself directly in the war on Britain’s side. Despite strongly worded notes being issued by US President Woodrow Wilson shortly after the sinking, there was no immediate American action against Germany despite the nation’s vocal criticism, and this disappointed many British observers such as Captain H. G. Wood.

We are at present fighting a desperate enemy devoid of honour. We require all the aid we can get to bring the war to a swift conclusion. The Americans do not stand by us as we have stood by them. Why should we any more protect Americans. The greater percentage of passengers on the Lusitania were Americans. We probably require all our destroyers to keep the situation clear in the Channel and North Sea at present.

The influence of the Lusitania disaster would prove long-lasting. For a large part of the population it became the most important chapter in the German catalogue of atrocities, to the extent that for many years afterwards it was the single reason expounded by many as to why the United States joined the war. As we will see in a later chapter, the sinking did indeed have a profound effect on American public opinion, but different political conditions would be required in order to persuade the country actually to take up arms. For some individuals, however, such as Cunard employee H. S. Taylor, the sinking was a definite factor in their decision to enlist for military service.

I have been giving further consideration as to why I joined the Army in 1915 when I was under-age. Maybe I was influenced by the sinking of the Lusitania in May of that year, at which time I was with the Cunard Line Mediterranean Outward Freight Department in Rumford Street, Liverpool, round the corner from the main office in Water Street. On the day following the disaster the basement of a building in Rumford Street had been converted for the purpose of displaying press-type photographs of the bodies of passengers (and crew) lying on the shore where they had come to rest as the tides receded. One I particularly remember was of a young mother still holding a baby in either arm, but many of the photographs were too horrible for words. Each incoming tide floated in a further pathetic quota.

The entire staff became more or less on continuous duty for several days, and I was given the onerous responsibility, working through the night, advising by telephone to next of kin or relatives that passengers with whom they were connected had been identified, and I then had to break the sad news. This experience, which I endeavoured to carry out to the best of my untrained ability, made a great impression on me and I can only hope that my efforts in conveying the news to bereaved relatives with sympathetic sincerity were successful.

Following any great loss of life, whether accidental or deliberate, society always looks for somebody or something to blame. The sinking of Lusitania was no different, and it would be through the medium of an official inquiry that the British government would seek to allocate blame, in a manner carefully designed to its best advantage.