One of the American attachés, Capt. W. A. Castle, wrote his own account of the meeting and noted that a particular subject was glaringly absent from the conversation. “I was struck by the fact that the Admiral while seeming to be desirous of justifying the Admiralty in its measures of protection, did not mention the presence of any destroyers or other Naval vessels.” Castle added that during his train trip back to London he had discussed the subject with a fellow passenger, a Royal Navy lieutenant, “who spoke quite frankly, although I suppose of course confidentially, and said that he could not understand nor could his brother officers, why so many torpedo boats of the old type, which could make 25 knots an hour without difficulty, and would be just the thing to protect an incoming steamer, are left at various wharves, instead of being used for this purpose, and said that had they placed one of these to starboard, another to port, and another in front of the Lusitania, she could not have been torpedoed.”
WHY THE ADMIRALTY would seek to assign fault to Turner defies ready explanation, given that isolating Germany as the sole offender would do far more to engender global sympathy for Britain and cement animosity toward Germany. By blaming Turner, however, the Admiralty hoped to divert attention from its own failure to safeguard the Lusitania. (Questioned on the matter in the House of Commons on May 10, 1915, Churchill had replied, rather coolly, “Merchant traffic must look after itself.”) But there were other secrets to protect, not just from domestic scrutiny, but also from German watchers—namely the fact that the Admiralty, through Room 40, had known so much about U-20’s travels leading up to the attack. One way to defend those secrets was to draw attention elsewhere.
The Admiralty found added motivation to do so when, on May 12, wireless stations in Britain’s listening network intercepted a series of messages from the then homebound U-20, which upon entering the North Sea had resumed communication with its base at Emden. At the Admiralty these messages drew an unusual degree of attention. Room 40 asked all the stations that had intercepted them to confirm that they had transcribed them correctly and to provide signed and certified copies.
In the first message of the series, Schwieger reported: “Have sunk off the South Coast of Ireland, one sailing ship, two steamers, and LUSITANIA. Am steering for the mouth of the Ems.”
The Admiralty received it at 9:49 A.M.; the decrypted copy was marked “Most Secret.” This message confirmed that the culprit had indeed been U-20, the submarine that Room 40 had been tracking since April 30.
That afternoon, Room 40 received the intercept of a reply sent to Schwieger by the commander of Germany’s High Seas Fleet, which read, “My highest appreciation of Commander and crew for the success they have achieved. Am proud of their achievement and express best wishes for their return.”
Then came a third message, sent from Schwieger to his base. After detailing the latitude and longitude of his attack on the Lusitania, Schwieger noted that he had sunk the ship “by means of one torpedo.”
This was a surprise. By now the prevailing view in the world’s press was that the Lusitania had been sunk by two torpedoes and that these accounted for the two major explosions reported by passengers. But now the Room 40 cognoscenti knew without doubt that Schwieger had fired only one torpedo.
And this, they understood, raised sensitive questions: How could a single torpedo sink a ship the size of the Lusitania? And if there was no second torpedo, what exactly, caused the second explosion?
They recognized, also, that Schwieger’s message had to be kept secret at all costs, for it was precisely this kind of special knowledge that could tip Germany to the existence of Room 40.
BY THE TIME the Mersey inquiry began, on June 15, 1915, the British government had undergone one of its periodic upheavals, amid controversy over the shell shortage on the western front and the failure, at great cost in lives and ships, of Churchill’s plan to force the Dardanelles. New men ran the Admiralty. Fisher had resigned, and Churchill had been jettisoned. These changes, however, caused no easing of the campaign against Captain Turner.
After preliminary public testimony from several witnesses, including Turner, who briefly described his experience in the disaster, Lord Mersey convened the first of the secret sessions and again called Turner to the witness box. The Admiralty’s lead attorney, Sir Edward Carson, attorney general, questioned the captain in harsh fashion, as if the proceeding were a murder trial with Turner the prime suspect. Carson clearly hoped to prove that Turner had ignored the Admiralty’s directives, in particular its instructions to keep to a midchannel course.