U-20
FOG
SCHWIEGER AND HIS CREW SPENT A PEACEFUL NIGHT FAR out at sea. At five o’clock Friday morning, May 7, he ordered the submarine back to the surface and climbed into the conning tower. He shifted to diesel power and began charging the batteries below.
At intervals U-20 passed through mist and clarity. “From time to time, it clears up a little,” Schwieger wrote. These brief periods of clearing at first gave hope of better visibility to come, but soon all sunshine disappeared and the fog returned as dense as ever.
It was discouraging and affirmed Schwieger’s earlier decision not to proceed to Liverpool. He later recounted the story of that morning to his friend and fellow U-boat commander Max Valentiner. The heavy fog allowed “small chance of sinking anything,” Schwieger told him. “At the same time, a destroyer steaming through the fog might stumble over us before we knew anything about it.”
Schwieger wrote in his War Log, “Since the fog didn’t subside, decided already to begin the return trip now.”
He set a new course for home. As far as he was concerned, this patrol was over.
PART III
DEAD WAKE
THE IRISH SEA
ENGINES ABOVE
EARLY FRIDAY MORNING A NUMBER OF PASSENGERS awoke and dressed and climbed to the topmost decks to watch the sun come up. Although sunrise would not officially occur until 5:30, already the eastern sky was beginning to brighten. Elbridge and Maude Thompson of Seymour, Indiana, both thirty-two years old and traveling in first class, were in position by 4:30 A.M., as were second-cabin passengers Belle, forty-nine, and Theodore Naish, fifty-nine, of Kansas City. At about five, the two couples spotted a warship off the port side, distant, traveling fast on a course parallel to the Lusitania. Mrs. Thompson called it a “battleship,” though in fact it was the HMS Partridge, a high-speed destroyer with three funnels. Aboard the Partridge, the officers and crew of the early morning watch also saw the Lusitania.