COME SATURDAY morning, May 1, Turner would make a detailed inspection of the ship, accompanied by his purser and chief steward. All preparations for the voyage had to be completed by then, rooms cleaned, beds made, all stores—gin, Scotch, cigars, peas, mutton, beef, ham—loaded aboard, all cargo in place, and the ship’s supply of drinking water tested for freshness and clarity. Special attention was always to be paid to lavatories and bilges, and to maintaining proper levels of ventilation, lest the liner start to stink. The goal, in official Cunard parlance, was “to keep the ship sweet.”
Everything had to be done in such a manner that none of the passengers, whether in first class or third, would be aware of the nature and extent of the week’s travail. The needs of passengers were paramount, as the Cunard manual made clear. “The utmost courtesy and attention are at all times to be shown to passengers whilst they are on board the Company’s ships, and it is the special duty of the Captain to see that this regulation is observed by the officers and others serving under him.” On one previous voyage, this duty included allowing two big-game hunters, Mr. and Mrs. D. Saunderson of County Cavan, Ireland, to bring two four-month-old lion cubs aboard, which they had captured in British East Africa and planned to give to the Bronx Zoo. The couple’s two-year-old daughter, Lydia, played with the cubs on deck, “much to the amusement of the other passengers,” according to the New York Times. Mrs. Saunderson attracted a good deal of attention herself. She had killed an elephant. “No, I was not afraid,” she told the Times. “I think I never am.”
Complaints had to be taken seriously, and there were always complaints. Passengers grumbled that food from the Kitchen Grill came to their tables cold. This issue was at least partly resolved by changing the route waiters had to walk. The typewriters in the typing room were too noisy and annoyed the occupants of adjacent staterooms. The hours for typing were shortened. Ventilation in some rooms was less than ideal, a stubborn flaw that drove passengers to open their portholes. There was a problem, too, with the upper-level dining room in first class. Its windows opened onto a promenade used by third-class passengers, who had an annoying habit of peering in through the windows at the posh diners within. And there were always those passengers who came aboard bearing moral grudges against the modern age. A second-class passenger on a 1910 voyage complained that the ship’s decks “should not be made a market place for the sale of Irish Shawls, etc.,” and also that “card playing for money goes on incessantly in the smoking rooms on board the Company’s steamers.”
Cunard’s foremost priority, however, was to protect its passengers from harm. The company had a remarkable safety record: not a single passenger death from sinking, collision, ice, weather, fire, or any other circumstance where blame could be laid upon captain or company, though of course deaths from natural causes occurred with regularity, especially among elderly passengers. The ship carried the latest in safety equipment. Owing to the epidemic of “Boat Fever” that swept the shipping industry after the Titanic disaster, the Lusitania had more than enough lifeboats for passengers and crew. The ship also had been recently equipped with the latest in life jackets, these made by the Boddy Lifesaving Appliances Company. Unlike the older vests, made of cloth-covered panels of cork, these resembled actual jackets. Said one passenger, “When you have it on you look and feel like a padded football player, especially around the shoulders.” The new Boddy jackets were placed in the first-and second-class staterooms; third-class passengers and crew were to use the older kind.
No safety issue escaped the notice of Cunard’s board. On one crossing, as the Lusitania moved through heavy seas, crewmen discovered that a section of third class was “full of water.” The culprit was a single open porthole. The incident underscored the dangers posed by portholes in rough weather. The board voted to reprimand the stewards responsible for that section of the ship.