WILLIAM MERIHEINA, OF GENERAL MOTORS: “TUESDAY—Resumption of games on deck today. Dandy sunshine weather.”
NELLIE HUSTON, thirty-one, second class, heading home to England: “Tuesday: I didn’t write a letter each day you will notice. On Saturday night after I’d written to you I went to bed and had a fine night. I’ve got the top bunk and really I don’t know if I was supposed to be able to spring right into it but I tried and couldn’t so had to ring for the steward to bring me some steps. They seem to be short of everything so I had to wait quite a while. He tried to persuade me to jump in but I’m too heavy behind.”
JANE MACFARQUHAR, of Stratford, Connecticut, traveling with her daughter, Grace, sixteen; second class: “I think a happier company of passengers would be impossible to find. They were of all ages: a large number of babies in their mothers’ arms, children of various ages and men and women up to the age of seventy.
“Games were heartily enjoyed on the decks during the daytime and concerts were enjoyed in the evenings—sunshine and happiness making thoughts of danger almost impossible.”
CHARLES LAURIAT: “As the days passed the passengers seemed to enjoy them more and more, and formed those acquaintances such as one does on an ocean crossing.”
DOROTHY CONNER, twenty-five, of Medford, Oregon, in first class: “I’d never seen a more uneventful or stupid voyage.”
ROOM 40
THE ORION SAILS
ON TUESDAY, MAY 4, THE ADMIRALTY DECIDED IT could no longer hold the HMS Orion at Devonport but took precautions to make sure the superdreadnought made it safely to the fleet’s base at Scapa Flow.
Admiral Oliver ordered the ship to depart that night, under cover of darkness, and gave strict instructions that it sail 50 miles west past the Scilly Islands before turning north and then keep at least 100 miles out to sea for the remainder of the voyage up the Irish coast. He also assigned four destroyers—HMS Laertes, Moorsom, Myngs, and Boyne—to provide an escort until the Orion reached deep ocean.
A succession of reports to the Admiralty provided a step-by-step account of the Orion’s progress, including changes in speed. It was the most closely watched ship on the high seas.
The Admiralty’s telegraphic records show no reference made at all to the Lusitania, by now four days into its voyage and halfway across the Atlantic.
IN LONDON, at the Admiralty’s War Room, messages arrived reporting fresh submarine sightings and new attacks. On the morning of Sunday, May 2, a French ship, the Europe, was torpedoed and sunk off the Scillies. A lighthouse keeper elsewhere reported spotting a “steamer chased by submarine.” An Admiralty collier, the Fulgent, was torpedoed off the Skelling Rocks west of Ireland; nine members of its crew were rescued and landed at Galway on Monday evening. Early on the morning of Tuesday, May 4, an observer reported spotting a submarine on the surface northwest of Frenchman’s Rock in the Scillies. He watched it move east, then dive. That same morning, at 3:15 A.M., a coast watcher reported a “large sheet of flame” rising from the sea off County Mayo.
But in Room 40, Commander Hope and his code breakers heard nothing new from Kptlt. Walther Schwieger. The submarine was too far from Germany to attempt wireless communication. Room 40 could only presume that Schwieger was still on his way to his patrol zone in the Irish Sea.
It was a curious moment in the history of naval warfare. Room 40 knew a U-boat was heading south to Liverpool—knew the boat’s history; knew that it was now somewhere in the North Atlantic under orders to sink troop transports and any other British vessel it encountered; and knew as well that the submarine was armed with enough shells and torpedoes to sink a dozen ships. It was like knowing that a particular killer was loose on the streets of London, armed with a particular weapon, and certain to strike in a particular neighborhood within the next few days, the only unknown being exactly when.
The quiet meant nothing. At some point U-20 would make its presence known.
U-20
FRUSTRATION
AT 7:40 P.M., TUESDAY, SCHWIEGER AT LAST SIGHTED the coast of Ireland. A lighthouse lay on the horizon, barely visible in the rising mist.
The day had been a disappointment. Strong swells had made the going uncomfortable for the crew below, and Schwieger had found no targets worthy of attack. An armed trawler briefly had come into view, but he realized its draft was so shallow that a torpedo would likely run underneath its keel. Visibility had been poor for most of the day, though by evening it improved to the point where he could see distant objects. The gathering haze, however, foretold a night of fog.