The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a “dead wake.”
THE SMOOTHNESS of the sea presented some passengers with a view of the torpedo that was startling in its clarity.
Dwight Harris, his Medici book in hand, was walking toward the stern, along the starboard side, when something caught his eye. He wrote, “I saw the torpedo coming!—a white and greenish streak in the water!—I stood transfixed!”
Passenger James Brooks, a chain salesman who came from Connecticut, was walking along the boat deck, when friends on the next deck up—the Marconi deck—called to him to join them for a round of shuffleboard. These friends were Mr. and Mrs. Montagu Grant, of Chicago. He climbed the stairs, and as he walked toward them across the upper deck he saw a foam trail moving fast across the water.
“Oh, yes, I saw the torpedo coming, and exclaimed, ‘Torpedo!’ and rushed to the rail just aft of the staircase and stood on one foot and leaned forward, over, to watch the explosion which I expected to see occur on the outside of the ship.”
Any other man would have found this scene terrifying. Brooks was entranced. He saw the body of the torpedo moving well ahead of the wake, through water he described as being “a beautiful green.” The torpedo “was covered with a silvery phosphorescence, you might term it, which was caused by the air escaping from the motors.”
He said, “It was a beautiful sight.”
HAD THERE BEEN more time, had the idea of a torpedo attack against a civilian liner not seemed so incomprehensible, had submarine tactics and evasion stratagems been better understood, there would have been a chance—a tiny one—that Turner could have maneuvered the ship to lessen the damage or even avoid the torpedo altogether. He could have engaged the ship’s reverse turbines, thereby slowing the ship and nullifying the calculations made by the submarine commander as to its range and speed, causing the torpedo to miss. He could also have taken advantage of the Lusitania’s proven agility and ordered a full turn to port or starboard, to dodge the oncoming torpedo or cause it to glance off the hull.
In just two months, another Cunard captain, Daniel Dow, back at work, would do exactly that, and win a citation from the company’s board. On July 15, 1915, at dusk, a lookout aboard Dow’s Mauretania spotted a periscope about half a mile out. An instant later two torpedoes began racing toward his ship, their tracks clearly visible. He ordered an immediate full turn to starboard, toward the submarine. Both torpedoes missed; the submarine submerged and fled.
U-20
“TREFF!”
SCHWIEGER’S LOG ENTRY FOR 2:10 P.M., MAY 7, BEGAN with the German word Treff, for impact. He wrote, “Torpedo hits starboard side close behind the bridge. An unusually great detonation follows with a very strong explosive cloud (cloud reaches far beyond the forward funnel). The explosion of the torpedo must have been accompanied by a second one (boiler or coal or powder?).”
By now his pilot, Lanz, was standing next to him at the periscope. Schwieger stepped aside and let Lanz peer through the eyepiece. Lanz could identify ships, even small ones, by their silhouettes and deck configurations. This one was easy. An instant after looking through the eyepiece, Lanz said, “My God, it’s the Lusitania.”
Schwieger’s log indicates that he only now learned the ship’s true identity, but this seems implausible. The ship’s profile—its size, its lines, its four funnels—made it one of the most distinctive vessels afloat.
Schwieger again took the periscope. What he saw now shocked even him.