A more plausible theory held that when the torpedo exploded, the concussion shook the ship with such violence that the nearly empty coal bunkers became clouded with explosive coal dust, which then ignited. There is evidence that such a cloud did arise. One fireman, who had been standing in the center of a stokehold, reported hearing the crash of the torpedo and suddenly finding himself engulfed in dust. But this cloud apparently did not ignite: the fireman survived. Here too, survivors’ accounts don’t depict the kind of fiery convulsion such an ignition would have produced. Subsequent investigation by forensic engineers concluded that the environment in which the ship’s coal was stored was too damp, in part from condensation on the hull, to foster the ideal conditions necessary for detonation.
What most likely caused the second event was the rupture of a main steam line, carrying steam under extreme pressure. This was Turner’s theory from the beginning. The fracture could have been caused by the direct force of the initial explosion, or by cold seawater entering Boiler Room No. 1 and coming into contact with the superheated pipe or its surrounding fixtures, causing a potentially explosive condition known as thermal shock. The fact is, immediately after the torpedo exploded, steam pressure within the ship plummeted. An engineer in the starboard high-pressure turbine room reported that pressure in the main line dropped “to 50 pounds in a few seconds,” roughly a quarter of what it should have been.
IN THE END, Schwieger’s attack on the Lusitania succeeded because of a chance confluence of forces. Even the tiniest alteration in a single vector could have saved the ship.
Had Captain Turner not had to wait the extra two hours for the transfer of passengers from the Cameronia, he likely would have passed Schwieger in the fog, when U-20 was submerged and on its way home. For that matter, even the brief delay caused by the last-minute disembarkation of Turner’s niece could have placed the ship in harm’s way. More importantly, had Turner not been compelled to shut down the fourth boiler room to save money, he could have sped across the Atlantic at 25 knots, covering an additional 110 miles a day, and been safely to Liverpool before Schwieger even entered the Celtic Sea.
Fog was an important factor too. Had it persisted just a half hour longer, neither vessel would have seen the other, and Schwieger would have continued on his way.
Then there was the almost miraculous fact that Schwieger’s attack even succeeded. Had Captain Turner not made that final turn to starboard, Schwieger would have had no hope of catching up. What’s more, the torpedo actually worked. Defying his own experience and the 60 percent failure rate calculated by the German navy, it did exactly what it was supposed to do.
Not only that, it struck precisely the right place in the Lusitania’s hull to guarantee disaster, by allowing seawater to fill the starboard longitudinal bunkers and thereby produce a fatal list. No one familiar with ship construction and torpedo dynamics would have guessed that a single torpedo could sink a ship as big as the Lusitania, let alone do so in just eighteen minutes. Schwieger’s earlier attack on the Candidate required a torpedo and multiple shells from his deck gun; his attack later that same day on the Centurion required two torpedoes. And almost exactly a year later, on May 8, 1916, he would need three torpedoes to sink the White Star liner Cymric, which even then stayed afloat for another twenty-eight hours. All three ships were a fraction of the Lusitania’s size.
Moreover, Schwieger had overestimated the ship’s speed. He calculated 22 knots when in fact the ship was moving at only 18. Had he gauged the speed correctly and timed his shot accordingly, the torpedo would have struck the hull farther back, amidships, possibly with less catastrophic effect and certainly with the result that the many crew members killed instantly in the luggage room would have survived to assist in launching the lifeboats. The steam line might not have failed. If Turner had been able to keep the ship under power, he might have made it to Queenstown, or succeeded in beaching the ship, or even leveraged its extraordinary agility to turn and ram U-20.
However, it also seems likely that if the Lusitania had not been so visibly crippled Schwieger might have come back for a second shot.
Really the only good piece of luck that Friday was the weather. The water was preternaturally calm, the day sunny and warm. Even a modest sea would have swept survivors from their floating oars and boxes and planks of wood, and likely swamped overloaded lifeboats. At one point, survivor Ogden Hammond’s boat had seventy-five people aboard; its gunnels were only 6 inches above the water. The benign conditions of the day saved scores of lives, if not hundreds.
WASHINGTON; BERLIN; LONDON
THE LAST BLUNDER