Fisher agreed, and at 1:20 P.M. Oliver sent a telegram to the commander in chief of the fleet, Admiral Jellicoe, ordering him to hold the Orion in Devonport a while longer. That same afternoon the Admiralty also urged Jellicoe, “in view of the submarine menace West of the West Coast of Ireland,” to take precautions to protect lesser ships, such as colliers and tenders.
Over the next several days, Oliver would send explicit warnings to two other warships, HMS Gloucester and HMS Duke of Edinburgh, and would direct a third, HMS Jupiter, to take a newly opened route, the so-called North Channel, deemed far safer than alternative paths. The Admiralty had closed the route previously because of German mines but had declared it clear on April 15 and promptly made it available to navy ships but not merchant vessels. The route passed between Scotland and Ireland, through waters bracketed by friendly shores and heavily patrolled by the Royal Navy.
Despite the North Channel’s safety, Admiral Oliver issued orders to have the Jupiter escorted by destroyers.
THAT SUNDAY there was more news of the North Channel. Adm. Richard Webb, head of the Admiralty’s Trade Division, which in wartime held dominion over all British merchant shipping, received notice that the new route would now in fact be open to all vessels, merchant and military alike. This meant that civilian freighters and liners sailing to Liverpool could henceforth avoid the Western Approaches altogether and sail instead over the top of Ireland, then turn right and go south to Liverpool.
Admiral Webb did not transmit this new information to Cunard or to the Lusitania.
Through much of Sunday, the Admiralty also tracked the progress of the wounded American tanker Gulflight, under tow and escorted by the navy. At 4:05 that afternoon the ship was reported making “good progress.” Two hours later it arrived at St. Mary’s Island in the Scillies, with its foredeck nearly submerged, its propeller visible at the stern.
IN QUEENSTOWN, IRELAND, America’s local consul opened a newspaper and read for the first time about the warning the German Embassy had published in American newspapers the previous day.
The consul was Wesley Frost, now just beginning his second year of service in Queenstown. The town was still a major port, although Cunard’s largest liners no longer stopped there, having “touched bottom” in its harbor once too often. Although Frost knew the Lusitania was at this moment on its way to Liverpool, he felt no particular concern. “The reference to the Lusitania was obvious enough,” he recalled later, “but personally it never entered my mind for a moment that the Germans would actually perpetrate an attack upon her. The culpability of such an act seemed too blatant and raw for an intelligent people to take upon themselves.”
THAT SAME SUNDAY, well to the south in London, U.S. ambassador Walter Page, Frost’s chief, took a few moments to write a letter to his son, Arthur, an editor at the New York publishing company that the ambassador and his partner, Frank Doubleday, had founded in 1899.
Page was an Anglophile through and through. His dispatches consistently favored Britain and time and again struck President Wilson as being decidedly un-neutral. In fact, Wilson had by now lost confidence in Page, though the ambassador did not yet seem to know it. The president had left enough hints, however, often failing to respond to Page’s communiqués. The presence of Colonel House in London as Wilson’s personal emissary should, by itself, have been evidence enough of Page’s diminished influence, but the ambassador still seemed not to grasp just how little Wilson cared for him and the information he supplied.
Page wrote often to his son and now, in his Sunday letter, told him of his concern that America might be drawn into the war. Later this letter would seem prescient to an uncanny degree.
“The blowing up of a liner with American passengers may be the prelude,” the ambassador wrote. “I almost expect such a thing.”
He added, “If a British liner full of Americans be blown up, what will Uncle Sam do? What’s going to happen?”
U-20
A PERILOUS LINE
AT 12:30 P.M. SUNDAY, FINDING HIMSELF BRACKETED by patrol boats and destroyers, Schwieger ordered another fast dive. The line of vessels ahead seemed to be an antisubmarine cordon, with Fair Isle at the top and North Ronaldsay in the Orkneys at the bottom. Schwieger suspected the cordon might be a permanent presence in these waters. If so, he wrote in his log, by way of warning other captains, “it would not seem advisable to pass this line during the day, especially when visibility is very good.”
U-20 traveled submerged for the next four hours. At 4:30 P.M., Schwieger ascended to periscope depth and immediately spotted a patrol boat off to starboard. He dove back to cruising depth.
So much underwater travel was taxing for his crew. The atmosphere grew close and warm. But it was especially taxing for the submarine’s batteries. Even moving at a mere 5 knots, a boat of U-20’s class could cover a maximum of only 80 nautical miles before the batteries failed.