When Theodate Pope’s ship, the Julia, arrived, a doctor was summoned to come aboard to examine her. Assisted by two soldiers, the doctor helped her down to the wharf and into a motorcar, then accompanied her to a hotel. As she stepped from the car, she collapsed onto the sidewalk. The doctor helped her inside. “I was left on a lounge in a room full of men in all sorts of strange garments while the proprietress hurried to bring me brandy,” she wrote. One of the men was the English passenger who at lunch that day had joked about not getting torpedoed before having his ice cream. He was wearing a dressing gown. Pink.
Theodate drank brandy and was helped to a room. Her face was swollen and discolored. She arranged to send her mother a telegram, one word: “Saved.”
She tried to sleep. “All night I kept expecting Mr. Friend to appear, looking for me,” she wrote. “All night long men kept coming into our rooms, snapping on the lights, bringing children for us to identify, taking telegrams, getting our names for the list of survivors, etc., etc.”
But Mr. Friend never did appear, nor did Theodate’s maid, Miss Robinson.
TURNER WALKED ashore wrapped in a blanket. He spent the night at the home of a local banker. The next morning, in his uniform, he went for a walk. He had lost his Cunard hat and stopped at a haberdasher’s shop to buy something to replace it. A survivor named Beatrice Williams, who had also been aboard the Bluebell, saw him and bristled. “You should be worrying about a hat when so many of us have lost everything we own. Why—you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
A correspondent for the New York World also encountered Turner that morning and conducted a brief interview. In a cable to his editor, the reporter wrote that the captain “appeared stunned.”
The reporter informed Turner that the bodies of a number of Americans had been recovered, including that of Broadway producer Charles Frohman, with whom Turner had spoken on the morning of the ship’s departure. Upon hearing this, Turner seemed to struggle to control his emotions. Tears filled his eyes.
QUEENSTOWN
THE LOST
OF THE LUSITANIA’S 1,959 PASSENGERS AND CREW, only 764 survived; the total of deaths was 1,195. The 3 German stowaways brought the total to 1,198. Of 33 infants aboard, only 6 survived. Over 600 passengers were never found. Among the dead were 123 Americans.
Families learned of the deaths of kin mostly by telegram, but some knew or sensed their loss even when no telegram brought the news. Husbands and wives had promised to write letters or send cables to announce their safe arrival, but these were never sent. Passengers who had arranged to stay with friends in England and Ireland never showed up. The worst were those situations where a passenger was expected to be on a different ship but for one reason or another had ended up on the Lusitania, as was the case with the passengers of the Cameronia transferred to the ship at the last minute. The transfers included passengers Margaret and James Shineman, newlyweds from Oil City, Wyoming, who suddenly found themselves aboard the fastest, most luxurious ship in service, for their journey to Scotland to visit Margaret’s family. The visit was to be a surprise. Both were killed. Of the forty-two passengers and crew transferred, only thirteen survived, among them Miss Grace French, who breezed through the whole ordeal with aplomb.
There was the usual confusion that follows disasters. For days dozens of cables shot back and forth between Cunard offices in Liverpool, Queenstown, and New York. These conveyed a sense of both urgency and surprise, as though Cunard had never expected to lose one of its great ships and to actually have to use its passenger records to tally the living and dead.
MAY 10: “DID GUY LEWIN ACTUALLY SAIL LUSITANIA.”
MAY 10: “NAME CHARLES WARMEY APPEARS ON SECOND CLASS SHOULD THIS BE CHARLES WARING WHICH DOES NOT APPEAR—REPLY QUICKLY.”
MAY 11: “DID F A TWIGG ACTUALLY EMBARK LUSITANIA.”
MAY 11: “GIVE US FULL CHRISTIAN NAMES AND CLASSES ALL PASSENGERS NAMED ADAMS WHO SAILED LUSITANIA—VERY URGENT.”
A few passengers reported to be dead were in fact alive, but more often those reported alive were dead. “Report of Mr. Bilicke as survivor is erroneous,” U.S. consul Frost wrote in a terse telegram to Ambassador Page in London. A five-year-old boy, Dean Winston Hodges, was at first said to be safe, but then came a cable from Cunard to its New York office, “Regret no trace of Master Dean Winston Hodges.” His body proved to be among those taken aboard the rescue ship Flying Fish. Names of the dead were misspelled, offering moments of false hope. A man identified as Fred Tyn was in fact Fred Tyers, who had died; Teresa Desley was in fact Teresa Feeley, who perished along with her husband, James. There were two Mrs. Hammonds. One lived; the other—Ogden’s wife—died. Two waiters were named John Leach. One survived, the other did not. A dead passenger named Greenfield was in fact Greenshields.