At about the same time the ship received another message, this one directed to all British ships and sent in a special Admiralty code reserved for merchant vessels. Once decoded, it too was delivered to Turner. The message warned ships in the English Channel to stay within 2 miles of England’s southern coast but ordered those ships en route to Liverpool to avoid headlands, stay in midchannel, pass the entrances to harbors at high speed, and finally take on a harbor pilot at the Mersey Bar to guide them to their wharves in Liverpool. The message ended: “Submarines off Fastnet.”
Coming one after the other, the two messages were disconcerting—and confusing. The second seemed to contradict itself. On the one hand, it advised ships in the English Channel to stay close to shore. On the other, it recommended that ships on Turner’s route stay in midchannel. It urged captains to race past harbors, but at the same time told them to stop and pick up a pilot at the entrance to the Mersey River. Nor did these messages offer any clue as to the actual number of submarines or their precise locations. The waters off the south coast of Ireland formed an immense expanse of ocean. The phrase “submarines off Fastnet” could mean half a mile or a hundred miles. Together, the two messages suggested waters teeming with U-boats.
For Captain Turner, one fact was certain: the Lusitania would be passing the Fastnet Rock the next morning and would be off the south coast of Ireland for the remainder of the voyage to Liverpool.
AFTER DINNER, Preston Prichard led the night’s “whist drive” in the second-class lounge, while in first class the evening concert got under way. The night’s program has vanished from history, but one passenger reportedly dressed up as Bonnie Prince Charlie, in full Highland regalia, and sang six Scottish songs. On past voyages, passengers recited poetry, displayed their skills at “legerdemain,” read aloud from books, and gave “comic recitations”; they sang songs like “Down by the Old Mill Stream,” “Genevieve,” and “Tip Top Tipperary Mary”; and they showed off their instrumental talents, with solos on the euphonium and mandolin and cello—Godard’s “Berceuse d’Jocelyn” and Schumann’s “Traumerei.” There was one regular feature: each concert ended with the audience standing to sing “God Save the King” and its American cousin, “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” Same tune, very different lyrics.
It was here, during intermission, that Turner stepped forward to offer his sobering remarks about submarines and the war zone and assured the audience they would soon be securely in the embrace of the Royal Navy.
While the concert was under way, a team of officers conducted a night inspection of the ship, another measure prompted by the submarine threat. In addition to wanting all portholes closed, Captain Turner now ordered that they all be curtained to prevent the escape of light, and that all doors that led to outside decks be closed. Turner also turned off the ship’s running lights.
The inspection team, led by Senior Third Mate John Lewis, checked all the portholes and windows in public rooms throughout the ship, and those that could be examined from the decks, but Cunard rules forbade the men from entering staterooms. The inspection team left a list of open portholes for the room stewards, tucked into a corridor light fixture. Passengers had been instructed to keep their portholes closed, but the weather was so mild that many opened them for ventilation.
Book dealer Charles Lauriat made it his business to observe the inspections and other shipboard operations. “I was keenly interested in all that was done aboard ship as we approached the Irish Coast,” he wrote, “and in fact all through the voyage I kept my eyes unusually wide open.” That Thursday night, as he walked to his room on B Deck—which, being an interior room, did not have a porthole—he saw the list of open portholes, “stuck right in the lantern as you walk along the passageway.”
Captain Turner’s concern about open portholes was shared by all captains, whether in peace or war. A porthole was just what its name indicated: a hole in the side of a ship. Under certain conditions, a single open porthole could admit water at a rate of 3.75 tons a minute.
THAT EVENING a group of passengers got together and formed a committee to teach one another how to put on the new “Boddy” life jackets, “these being of a different pattern from the usual cork waistcoat,” said passenger Arthur J. Mitchell, a representative of the Raleigh Cycle Company. Mitchell had reason to be concerned. In his travels thus far he had survived two shipwrecks.
Captain Turner approved the idea, Mitchell said, provided “that no suggestion would be made to the passengers that the use of the preservers was in any way imminent.”
There was enough unease as it was. A first-class passenger named Josephine Brandell, twenty-three years old, was so frightened she decided she could not sleep in her own cabin, and asked another passenger, Mabel Gardner Crichton, forty-two, if she could spend the night in hers.
Mrs. Crichton assented.
Wrote Brandell, “She was only too happy to be of any assistance to me and did all she could during that whole night to quiet my nerves.”
THE SHIP’S Marconi room now received a new message, this of a different sort. It was for Alfred Vanderbilt, from a woman. It read, “Hope you have a safe crossing looking forward very much to seeing you soon.”
LONDON; WASHINGTON; BERLIN