He was also under the impression the ship was being watched over by British naval forces. “Evidently,” he wrote, “we are being carefully convoyed all the way across.”
THAT MORNING Charles Lauriat got up at 8:00 A.M., called back to consciousness by his steward. He also took a sea bath. Once dressed, he strolled the first-class promenade, stopping to chat with the Hubbards and other acquaintances. He dined with his traveling companion, Lothrop Withington. They took their meals together in the opulent first-class dining room at the center of D Deck, where some 470 passengers at a time dined at tables arrayed on two levels under a dome frescoed with cherubs, amid palm trees, potted plants, white plaster walls, and fluted Corinthian columns with gilded capitals. Gold leaf seemed to coat every raised surface, from plaster wreaths and vines to balustrade rails.
Lauriat was sufficiently well known to Cunard officers and crew that on some past voyages he had been allowed to climb up into the crow’s nest on the ship’s forward wireless mast and stay there throughout the day. This was not, however, something Captain Turner was likely to let him do. Dealing with bloody monkeys on deck was one thing; having them climbing the wireless mast was another.
Lauriat knew well the routines of shipboard life, including the daily pools where passengers placed bets on how many miles the ship would travel in a given day. Places in the pool denoted a particular distance and were auctioned by a ship’s officer. Passengers based their bets on their sense of how the ship would fare given the weather and sea conditions likely to prevail over the next twenty-four hours. The most unpredictable factor was fog, which if it persisted would sharply limit a ship’s progress, for the only safe way of coping with fog was to cut speed and start blowing the ship’s foghorn. The mileage pool and its associated strategizing and arguing and the cigars and whiskey consumed by those present invariably helped spark friendships and break down barriers of formal courtesy and convention.
On Sunday, the ship’s first full day at sea, it traveled 501 miles, according to Lauriat’s recollection. He found this surprising. He too assumed the ship was moving at 25 knots. At that rate, equivalent to about 29 miles an hour, it should have covered 700 miles. The periodic fog accounted for part of this sluggishness, he gauged, but certainly not all. At noon the next day, Lauriat and Withington would discover the ship was traveling even more slowly. “At this rate,” Lauriat told Withington, “we’re not going to make Liverpool on time.”
Lauriat retired to his stateroom to examine the Thackeray drawings. He looked them over, mulling what he would ask Lady Ritchie to write and planning how each drawing would be mounted.
FOR CAPTAIN TURNER, the voyage thus far was routine, and it was likely to remain so for at least the next four days. The weather was peaceful, for the most part, and there was little likelihood of encountering a German submarine in mid-ocean. When the ship neared Ireland, however, the danger of attack would grow. While Turner himself expressed little anxiety about submarines, within Cunard there was a growing sense that the threat they posed was becoming more acute.
Before each crossing, the company gave Turner confidential advisories and notices about conditions that might affect the voyage. Lately these had included Admiralty memoranda that delineated the growing submarine threat and offered advice on what to do if confronted by a U-boat. Cunard’s managers still shared the widely held belief that no U-boat commander would dare sink a passenger liner; at the same time, they had watched as Germany began conducting attacks against other merchant ships without scruple. U-boats now ventured as far as Liverpool. One merchant victim, the Princess Victoria, was torpedoed just off the Mersey Bar.
These attacks prompted the Admiralty to issue new advisories to address the danger. Cunard relayed to Turner orders to halt all wireless transmissions from the ship’s Marconi room except when “absolutely necessary.” Its wireless operators were expressly prohibited from “gossiping.” Passengers could receive messages but could not send them. Another Admiralty advisory warned, in italics, “Ships should give prominent headlands a wide berth.”