ON FRIDAY MORNING, Schwieger kept U-20 on the surface to continue recharging its batteries. He stood atop the conning tower. The sea was quilted with fog, but here and there sunlight gleamed through. Visibility improved quickly. The sea was flat, under a 1-knot breeze.
“All of a sudden visibility has become very good,” Schwieger wrote in his log. While this gave him a long view of the surrounding sea, it also provided that view to any British patrol boat or destroyer that happened to be in the vicinity. The flatness of the surface increased the danger that enemy lookouts would spot U-20, even when submerged to periscope depth, for the feathery white wake of Schwieger’s periscope would be visible for miles.
And in fact, a trawler off in the distance now began moving in U-20’s direction. Schwieger ordered a fast dive and raised his periscope. The vessel approached slowly, in a manner he found unsettling.
“Therefore,” he wrote, “we dive to a depth of 24 meters to get away from the trawler.” The time was 10:30 A.M. “At 12 P.M.,” he wrote, “I shall rise again to a depth of 11 meters and take a periscopic observation.”
But shortly before that was to happen, at 11:50 A.M., a surge of excitement passed through the submarine. Even 80 feet below the surface, the men in U-20 could hear the sound of a ship overhead, transmitted through the hull. Schwieger wrote in his log, “A vessel with a very heavy engine passes over our boat.”
From the sound, Schwieger knew it was neither a destroyer nor a trawler but something far larger, moving fast. It passed directly above, confirming the prudence of cruising at a depth that cleared even the largest ships’ keels.
Schwieger waited a few minutes, then returned to periscope depth to try to identify the ship.
WITH THE foghorn off, and the sun high and bright, the Lusitania’s passengers took to the open decks to play shuffleboard, throw medicine balls, and take part in other deck games. Older children played jump rope, as always. The youngest paraded the decks with nannies and stewardesses, on foot or in prams, with their sucking tubes hung around their necks or affixed to their clothing. In the shaded portions of the deck and in those areas exposed to the 18-knot breeze generated by the ship’s forward motion, it was still cool enough to require coats. One woman wore a large black fur.
This being the last full day of the voyage, with the sun so bright and the air so clear, passengers seemed to take a special effort to dress well and with a little flair. A seven-year-old girl wore a pink-and-white-striped cotton frock under a black velvet coat lined with red silk, then added a gold ring, a red coral necklet, and a mother-of-pearl brooch. The coat imparted to her the look of a red-winged blackbird. Pink seemed to be a popular color—for boys. One five-year-old boy tore around in a pink wool coat over a checked jacket and knickers. A man in his late twenties dressed with clear intent to dazzle. He wore:
Blue serge trousers
Striped cotton shirt (“Anderson Bros., Makers, 27, Bridge Street, Glasgow”)
White merino pants
Light lace-up boots (stamped inside with “Holober Bros., 501, West 14th Street, New York”)
Gray socks, with light-blue soles
Light-colored suspenders
Leather belt and nickel buckle
And this:
A pink merino vest.
MANY PASSENGERS settled into deck chairs to read, just as they’d done over the preceding six days. Dwight Harris sat on deck for a time reading a book about the Medicis, then went to the purser’s office to retrieve his engagement ring, his other jewels, and the $500 in gold that he had parked there at the start of the voyage. He went to his cabin and used a watch chain to hang several pieces around his neck, including the ring. “I pinned the big diamond brooch inside the pocket of my coat,” he wrote, “and before leaving my cabin unlocked the camera bag that held my life belt.” This was the belt he had bought at Wanamaker’s in New York the day before sailing. Harris had not yet run out of exclamation points. “I put the gold in my trousers pocket, and then went down to lunch!”
Despite the calm weather, Kansas City passenger Theodore Naish was seasick, as he had been throughout the voyage. He urged his wife, Belle, to go up on deck without him to see the Irish coast and its islands in sunshine. He knew from past experience how lovely the view was. Belle at first demurred: “I replied that his word was enough, I would see them when we returned, and if fog prevented, pictures would satisfy me.” But Theodore insisted, and she obliged; she was glad that she had. “A lovelier day cannot be imagined—the air was warm, no wind, bright sun, smooth sea.”
Throughout the ship there was that mix of sorrow and expectation that always marked the end of a voyage, but now it was joined by the relief of having made it to England safe and sound.