LUSITANIA: ADRIFT
1 “I saw myself hundreds”: Letter, E. S. Heighway to Mrs. Prichard, June 25, 1915, Prichard Papers.
2 the killer was hypothermia: For a primer on hypothermia, see Weinberg, “Hypothermia.”
3 “The most frightful thing”: Letter, Dwight Harris to Mother, May 10, 1915, Harris Papers.
4 “The cries for help”: Ibid.
5 “When I came to the surface”: Mackworth, This Was My World, 246.
6 “a little dazed”: Ibid., 247.
7 “so that one could inhale it”: Ibid., 248.
8 “an oasis in a desert of bodies”: Morton, Long Wake, 108
9 “We were picking people out of the water”: Testimony, Frederic J. Gauntlett, Petition of the Cunard Steamship Company, April 15, 1918, U.S. National Archives–New York, 123.
10 “Never have I heard”: Lauriat, Lusitania’s Last Voyage, 25.
11 “I would, old chap”: How delightful, frankly, that people actually did once upon a time use the phrase “old chap.” Ibid., 40.
12 Seaman Morton swam to get her: Morton, Long Wake, 108–9.
13 “The clothes were almost blown off”: Lauriat, Lusitania’s Last Voyage, 29.
14 “I heard a woman’s voice say”: Ibid.
15 “Come, Holy Ghost”: Henry Wood Simpson’s account in “Saved from the Lusitania,” Church Family, May 14, 1915, courtesy of Mike Poirier.
16 “I was fully expecting the submarine”: Mersey, Report, 1, account of George Bilbrough.
17 Here were the Brock: See a list of boats that participated in the rescue effort, enclosed within letter, Vice-Admiral C. H. Coke to Admiralty, May 9, 1915, Admiralty Papers, ADM 137/1058, National Archives UK.
18 “No news could be had”: Frost, German Submarine Warfare, 191.
19 “We did everything we could:” Ramsay, Lusitania, 25–26.