A Higher Form of Killing (27 page)

This was a mere hint of the “blame Turner” attitude prevalent within the Admiralty and being spun to the British and American press. Captain Richard Webb, director of the Trade Division of the Admiralty and responsible for guidance to merchant shipping, had written a damning memorandum, the key paragraph of which read:

In taking the course he did, the Master of the
Lusitania
acted directly contrary to the written general instructions received from the Admiralty and completely disregarded the telegraphic warnings received from Queenstown during the hours immediately preceding the attack. On the facts at present disclosed, the Master appears to have displayed an almost inconceivable negligence, and one is forced to conclude that he is either utterly incompetent or that he has been got at by the Germans. In considering this latter possibility it is not necessary to suppose that he had any conception of the loss of life which actually occurred and he might well have thought that being close to the shore there would be ample time to run his ship aground into a place of security before she foundered.

On receiving the note, Fisher had little doubt who to blame, scrawling “Fully concur” in his characteristic green ink against Webb’s comment that Turner was either utterly incompetent or had been got at. He added: “As the Cunard Company would not have employed an incompetent man, the certainty is absolute that Captain Turner is not a fool but a knave. I hope that Captain Turner will be arrested immediately after the inquiry whatever the verdict.” He then noted: “Ought not Lord Mersey to get a hint” and “I feel
absolutely
certain that Captain Turner of the
Lusitania
is a scoundrel and been bribed . . . No seaman in his senses could have acted as he did.”

Churchill’s reaction was only slightly more circumspect. He wrote in red ink, “Fully concur with DTD [Webb]. I consider the Admiralty case against the Captain should be pressed before Lord Mersey by a skilful counsel and that Captain Webb should attend as witness if not employed as assessor. We should pursue the captain without check.” Having agreed this very clear government policy guidance for what should have been an independent and impartial inquiry, Churchill and Fisher now left the detail to their staffs. They turned instead to a topic both considered more important than the
Lusitania
but over which their disagreements were becoming ever more pointed—the Dardanelles.

Convinced by intercepts from Room 40 that further German submarines were bound for the Mediterranean, Fisher insisted on May 12 that the navy’s newest battleship, HMS
Queen Elizabeth
, be withdrawn from the Dardanelles back to the Home Fleet. He reluctantly agreed to Churchill’s demand that older vessels should replace her. On Friday, May 14, Churchill urged additional reinforcements for the Dardanelles fleet and the two met that evening. Afterward Fisher believed that they had agreed to limit further deployments to a level he could accept. He went to bed early as usual but on rising before dawn discovered that Churchill had written again requiring additions “greatly in excess” of those they had agreed on. Around five
A.M.
Fisher penned his letter of resignation which finished “I am off to Scotland at once so as to avoid all questionings.”

At first neither Prime Minister Asquith nor Churchill took his resignation seriously. He had, after all, threatened to resign at least nine times in the past four months. Then alarmed at his continued absence from the Admiralty, both attempted to persuade Fisher, who had not in fact left London, to relent but he would not.

At the same time Asquith and his administration were themselves under great pressure following an article in the
Times
of May 14 alleging a “scandalous shortage of shells on the Western Front.” The rumor was that Churchill had leaked the story during his visit to France to further his own political ambitions. If so, the affair backfired on him badly. To avoid an onslaught from the Conservative opposition, by Monday, May 17, Asquith decided to seek a coalition government of national unity with the Conservatives. Eleven years previously Churchill had deserted the Conservatives to join the Liberals. The Conservatives were also critical of his conduct of the Dardanelles operation and of other naval matters, including the loss of the
Lusitania
. Therefore, part of their price for joining a coalition would be his removal from the Admiralty.

Fisher saw an opportunity and on May 19 wrote to Asquith graciously agreeing to return and “guarantee the successful termination of the War and the total abolition of the submarine menace” on strict conditions, including that “Mr. Winston Churchill is not in the Cabinet to be always circumventing me,” that he himself should have “absolutely untrammelled sole command of all the sea forces whatsoever” and an equally free hand in all appointments. This “extraordinary ultimatum” angered Asquith who told the king that it “indicated signs of mental aberration.” Fisher’s resignation was accepted.

Churchill did not long survive him. Under the new coalition government he was indeed replaced, being moved on May 25 to be chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a less important position with only a few ill-defined duties. (He would resign from the government entirely on November 12 to become a battalion commander on the western front.) The cool, languid, self-contained former Conservative prime minister, Arthur Balfour, succeeded him as First Lord of the Admiralty. Thus, in less than three weeks after the sinking of the
Lusitania
the two most senior figures had left the Admiralty. Soon after taking office and despite the outcry at the
Lusitania
’s sinking, Balfour quickly announced, in a bid to avoid further German retaliation against British prisoners of war, that captured U-boat crewmen would be treated no differently from other prisoners.

In line with Churchill’s statement to the Commons, one of Captain Webb’s first tasks in preparing the Admiralty’s deposition for the forthcoming inquiry into the sinking of the
Lusitania
was to ensure nothing was said that might undermine national security. He therefore required the deletion from the list of questions proposed by the Board of Trade (the government department responsible for the inquiry) for answer in the published report, the simple question: What were Captain Turner’s instructions from the owners or the Admiralty? He did, however, allow two other questions to stand. Had the captain had instructions? If so, had he carried them out? Both could be answered simply “yes” or “no.”

Closed sessions would, however, discuss the nature of the instructions. Captain Webb therefore had to list those that were relevant and that Turner could be shown to have received. He included the detailed Admiralty note of February 10, 1915, with its instructions to avoid headlands; to steer a mid-channel course; to operate at full speed off harbors; to post extra lookouts, and to ram any attacking submarines. He added another four, including some issued earlier and related mainly to avoiding attacks by surface vessels. His sixth and final choice was a dubious one—an instruction dated April 16 advising captains that “fast steamers can considerably reduce the chance of successful surprise attack by zig-zagging.”

Webb knew that a more comprehensive version of the zigzagging note, including an illustrative diagram, had not been issued until May 13. However, he thought an initial three-paragraph note might have gone out on April 16. If so, and if Turner could be claimed to have received and ignored it, it would further demonstrate his incompetence. Webb asked Cunard to establish whether they had received and issued it. The answer was inconclusive but Webb decided to include it anyway, perhaps because he believed that if Turner could be shown to have ignored it—the
Lusitania
had not been zigzagging—it would focus criticism on Turner, which he, as well as Fisher and Churchill, considered both justified and expedient.

Captain Webb also had to determine what should be said to the inquiry about the signals sent to the
Lusitania
during her final voyage. He asked the various wireless stations to provide details of all transmissions. He then listed in his submission only general messages to all ships in the area, such as ones sent out nightly and based on the February guidance about avoiding headlands and steering a mid-channel course. He did not include the messages sent to the
Lusitania
alone during the two days before the sinking, for example, the
QUESTOR/WESTRONA
exchange about which code the
Lusitania
was using, or personal messages, such as that from May Barwell to Alfred Vanderbilt.

From gaps in the telegram sequence on Admiralty files and from informal statements made by the Ministry of Defence to previous historians, it is possible there may have been further official messages sent only to the
Lusitania
. Their content has been a matter of fervid speculation. If they indeed existed, Webb did not include them in any of his drafts. What he did include was criticism of Turner for not following some of the instructions he had listed. The captain had not only failed to zigzag but had also not kept a mid-channel course as well as tarrying at reduced speed in a danger zone. Webb’s concluding sentence read: “He thus kept his valuable vessel for an unnecessary length of time in the area where she was most liable to attack, inviting disaster.” The sensitivities were such that Webb produced at least two drafts of his note. The major change in the later version was to emphasize the trouble taken by the Admiralty to ensure that Captain Turner received the messages sent and to provide further details of some of them.

In addition to Webb’s submission, statements were collected from every surviving crewmember and recorded in the same hand on partially preprinted forms but signed by the individual witness. Where witnesses like able seaman Hennessy, on lookout in the crow’s nest when the torpedo was sighted, were illiterate each man marked them with his cross. All statements recorded in almost identical wording that the ship had been in good order, unarmed, and that boat drills had been carried out before departing New York. Hugh Johnston, the quartermaster who had remained at the wheel until told by Captain Turner to save himself, later recalled the pressure from Cunard to be loyal to the company. Despite the Admiralty knowing definitively that the
U-20
had sunk the
Lusitania
with only one torpedo, in what seems to have been a concerted attempt by the authorities to cover up the possibility that the widely reported second explosion had been caused by the munitions the liner had been carrying, witnesses were also encouraged to testify that there had been two torpedo strikes. According to Hugh Johnston, “I was asked in Liverpool getting ready to go to London how many torpedoes struck the ship. I said one. Well I was told two would help the case. I said there was only one.”

Passengers’ statements were carefully sifted and five were initially invited to give evidence. A few more volunteered to do so and were accepted but Oliver Bernard’s persistent offers were ignored despite the prominence given to his statements and drawings of the sinking in the press. He explained the reason in a letter to the grieving mother of the missing medical student Dick Prichard: “I have been prepared and am still ready to declare under oath that we were struck by only one torpedo . . . abaft the bridge.”

In the United States, the neutral country where Britain was most concerned to preserve the propaganda advantage, the press condemned the sinking as barbaric. Editors broke the news using banner headlines set in the enormous typeface they irreverently called “Second Coming type.” The
Minneapolis Journal
declared: “Germany intends to become the outlaw of nations. Perhaps we are yet to witness savagery carried to its ultimate perfection.” The
New York Nation
called the sinking “A deed for which a Hun would blush, a Turk be ashamed and a Barbary pirate apologize . . . The law of nations and the law of God have been alike trampled upon . . . The torpedo that sank the
Lusitania
also sank Germany in the opinion of mankind . . . It is at once a crime and a monumental folly . . . She has affronted the moral sense of the world.” To the
Boston Post
the sinking was “a reversion to barbarism . . . the worst crime against civilization and humanity that the modern world has ever known” and to the
Boston Herald
it was “another and a most frightful illustration of the German official temper. It is the spirit of Attila the Hun, translated into the 20th century.” The
Richmond Times-Dispatch
’s
view was “Germany surely must have gone mad. The torpedoing and sinking evince a reckless
disregard of the opinions of the world in general and of this country in particular.” The
Los Angeles Times
wrote that Germany had placed itself “outside the pale of civilization.”

Crowds booed and hissed German ambassador Count von Bernstorff in New York. As he got into a taxi for the station to return to Washington reporters jostled him. He shouted that he would not make a statement and when the driver did not move off yelled, “Go on, damn you, go on!” Reporters pursued him to Pennsylvania Station, down to the platform and on to the train demanding his reaction to claims that he had provoked the attack on the
Lusitania
by placing the warning in the papers, even that he was a murderer. Von Bernstorff responded angrily that he was indifferent to anything the papers might allege.