Dead Wake: The Last Crossing Of The Lusitania

This one-page section contains numerous telegrams sent to the British Admiralty about the attack on the Lusitania and its subsequent sinking.

Many of the passengers attempt to board lifeboats. However, this proves difficult because the ship’s tilt causes the lifeboats on the starboard side to hang far out from the deck. Passengers attempt to reach the boats and drag them closer to the deck. Others choose to jump onto them. On the port side of the ship, the lifeboats have swung so far into the deck that they can no longer be deployed. Some of the passengers choose to grab life jackets and swim into the water, searching for debris to hang on to. Turner and his other officers remain on the bridge but wear life jackets. After Turner realizes that the ship is sinking at an increasingly quick rate, he orders his helmsman to leave the bridge and escape. 

This one-page section describes Schwieger’s response to the attack. Later, Schwieger describes the scene as “the most terrible sight I have ever seen,” suggesting that he feels remorse for the mayhem and destruction he caused (264).

Larson describes the chaos of the Lusitania’s sinking as passengers and crewmen attempt to flee the ship, shifting between the stories of different passengers. The bookseller Charles Lauriat returns to his room to grab his valuables before boarding a floating lifeboat in the water. However, the lifeboat remains tied to the ship. Lauriat urges the women and children in the lifeboat to swim away before the ship drags them under, but none of them do. Lauriat swims away and sees the entire lifeboat and its passengers disappear under the ocean. Other passengers, such as Theodate Pope, are not able to make it to a lifeboat and float in the ocean with their lifejackets. Sailor Leslie Morton attempts to help passengers board lifeboats. As Morton lowers one lifeboat into the water, another lifeboat comes crashing down on top of it, killing everyone inside. Morton decides to simply swim away from the ship without a life jacket. As Morton looks back at the ship, he sees “Captain Turner in full dress uniform still on the bridge” (273). 

This one-page section contains a single S.O.S. telegram from the Lusitania.

As the Lusitania sinks deeper into the ocean, its stern rises above the water. The numerous passengers still onboard the Lusitania attempt to climb up to the stern. However, the Lusitania finally sinks under the ocean, dragging the passengers along with it. Captain Turner remains on the ship’s bridge throughout the sinking. The sinking causes a massive ocean swell—what one survivor later describes as a “great swirling greenish white bubble” (277). The remaining survivors float in the sea, but no ships appear to be coming to rescue them. On the coast, a number of people witness the sinking and alert the Admiralty of the Lusitania’s destruction. 

In this section, Larson traces how news of the Lusitania’s sinking spreads around the world. In Queenstown, Ireland, Wesley Frost hears a rumor that the Lusitania has been attacked. Frost calls Admiral Charles Henry Coke, and he speaks with Coke’s secretary, who informs him that the rumors are true. Coke, meanwhile, has ordered numerous ships in the harbor to rescue the Lusitania’s passengers, including a large and powerful warship called Juno. The British Admiralty quickly informs Coke to recall the Juno because they have a strict policy that no warships should assist in a rescue after a submarine attack. The Admiralty fears that the submarine might still be in the water and could destroy the Juno.

News of the attack reaches Ambassador Walter H. Page in London. He also receives false information that all of the passengers and crew survived the attack. At a dinner party later that night, Page receives more news about the sinking, and he learns that the sinking’s casualties are far worse than had been initially thought. In Washington, D.C., Woodrow Wilson first learns about the attack at 1:00 p.m. Wilson takes a walk to clear his head and decide how to respond to the attack. Later that night, Wilson learns that at least one thousand people on the Lusitania have been killed. He assumes that many of the victims were Americans.

After the ship’s sinking, many survivors are left floating in the water. Some put their life jackets on incorrectly and drown. Others develop hypothermia from the cold sea water, losing consciousness and eventually dying. Children are particularly vulnerable to hypothermia. Some passengers, such as Charles Lauriat, encounter stray lifeboats in the water. After boarding them, these passengers maneuver through the ocean, picking up any other survivors they can find. After three hours, the rescue ships sent from Queenstown arrive and pick up as many passengers as they can hold. Theodate Pope, who lost consciousness in the ocean, awakens to find herself on a rescue ship. The long interval between the Lusitania’s sinking and the arrival of the rescue ships caused many who escaped the Lusitania to die in the water. 

As the U-20 leaves the Lusitania, it comes across a large British tanker. The tanker, the Narragansett, was responding to the Lusitania’s S.O.S. message. Schwieger orders the crew to use one of the last two torpedoes to attack the tanker. However, the torpedo misses because the tanker spots it and quickly changes directions to avoid impact. After the attack, the Narragansett assumes that the submarine faked the S.O.S. message, and it sails away. 

Though Captain Turner is on the ship’s bridge when the Lusitania sinks underwater, his life jacket brings him to the surface and keeps him alive. Turner swims until he encounters a lifeboat. He is eventually rescued by a ship, the Bluebell. Many of the survivors on the Bluebell are celebrating their survival. However, Captain Turner remains solemn, and he sits by himself. One survivor approaches Turner, telling him that her son died in the shipwreck and blaming Turner for not being more prepared for an emergency. As the rescue ships reach the shore, the survivors are greeted by numerous townspeople, who applaud them and provide them with support. 

In the days following the attack, the Cunard Steamship Company focuses on locating and identifying the dead. Numerous family members of Lusitania passengers contact the Cunard Steamship Company, asking whether their relatives have survived. The Cunard Steamship Company struggles to keep up with the flood of messages, poring over passenger lists to determine which passengers actually boarded the Lusitania. In the chaos, the Cunard Steamship Company mistakenly declares that numerous dead passengers have survived. A temporary morgue is set up in Queenstown’s town hall where the Cunard Steamship Company photographs each of the bodies and attempts to identify them. Consul Frost handles the corpses identified as Americans. However, many of the bodies are unable to be identified, and the Cunard Steamship Company decides to stage a mass burial of these bodies in Queenstown. The buried bodies are meticulously noted and photographed to enable later identification. On Monday, May 10, the bodies are buried. Three of the coffins are marched through Queenstown in a funerary procession.  

More than 600 bodies are never recovered. Family members of these victims attempt in vain to find out what happened to their deceased relatives. The mother of one passenger, Preston Prichard, writes to numerous survivors in an attempt to discover how her son died. Some families ask for autopsies of their relatives, hoping to understand how they died. However, the autopsies often prove inconclusive. The Cunard Steamship Company continues to collect corpses for a month after the attack, offering one-pound rewards to anyone who finds a body. The final death count for the disaster is 1,198 passengers and crew, including 123 Americans.