He was, in fact, the head of British Naval Intelligence. But Blinker Hall was the guy who understood how this information could be used to best advantage. He had the features of a woodpecker and a keen imagination. He was a very, very cunning guy. It is incorrect to say that Schwieger was stalking the Lusitania. It is this confluence of chance forces that converged in the Irish Sea.
The ship departed two hours late because it had to take on passengers from a ship that had been commandeered by the British Admiralty. Those two hours put the ship right on the path of contact with the submarine. Schwieger had actually decided to go home and end his patrol because of fog and bad weather.
But he came up for a look and found that the weather had suddenly cleared. In the distance, he saw this large collection of masts and antennae.
At first he thought it might be a number of ships. But as he watched, he saw that it was just one ship. It was too far away to catch. But he decided to follow and see what would happen. And sure enough, the Lusitania made a starboard turn that put it directly in the path of the U, and Schwieger was able to set up his shot and attack. In the case of the Titanic , it was women and children first on the available boats.
In the case of the Lusitania , the study argues that the very short time it took for the ship to sink caused mores to break down and it became every man for himself. The passengers on the Lusitania actually behaved with great courtesy and calm.
The problem was that, after the torpedo struck, the ship immediately took on this very severe list. Half the lifeboats were unusable.
The other half were slung out 60 feet above the sea and 8 to 10 feet out from the hull, so it was definitely not for the faint of heart to try and board them. In fact, relatively few people went into the lifeboats at all. Most people jumped or remained on the ship—for reasons that are very hard to fathom—and were ultimately swept away in the final cataclysm.
You can argue for both sides of this. Churchill saw it from a British point of view. And there is a lot to his argument. In fact, what he wrote in his book enhanced my appreciation of him. He was a unique, if at times erratic, genius. But I think Wilson was doing the right thing for his country. It is a misconception that America was champing at the bit to get into the war after the Lusitania was sunk.
Teddy Roosevelt and his party were. But the vast majority of Americans did not want to get into the war. In fact, many charming petitions were filed with the President endorsing his calm reaction to the Lusitania [sinking], expressing confidence that he would do the judicious thing and not be affected by the passions of the moment. In that respect, Captain Turner shapes up very well.
He stayed on the bridge to the last moment. He stayed on the bridge until the ship was washed away below him. Was he the last man off? But he would have been if the ship had sunk differently. But what is very clear from the record is that the Admiralty went after him immediately, within 24 hours.
Turner was going to be made the scapegoat, which is odd, because the publicity value of laying the blame on Germany would have been enormous. Hence, the whole idea of letting it stand in the historical record for decades that the Lusitania was sunk by two torpedoes, when Room 40 knew beyond a doubt that it was only one torpedo.
Cover-up is a very contemporary term. The extravagant jubilation with which the crime was everywhere hailed in Germany was the finishing touch to the episode, and greatly intensified the wrathful indignation that and disgust of civilized humanity. But if the sinking of the Lusitania is one of the key events that prompted the entry of the U.
Then again, there were witnesses who thought they saw two torpedoes fired at the ship. But it seems silly to conjure conspiracy theories from the murk of wartime propaganda, nationalist sentiment and even amid the current Internet-fueled enthusiasm for such theories: the cargo manifest lists 50 barrels of aluminum powder and 50 barrels of bronze powder.
Both of these powders, if fine enough, and thrown into the air, say, by a torpedo explosion, present an explosion hazard. This from the Aluminum. And when these powders come into contact with water perhaps, say, seawater rushing in through a gash in a boat hull , they both give off hydrogen gas, which, as we remember from the Hindenburg disaster of , is explosively flammable.
It seems likely that a few barrels of ordinary cargo and common chemistry helped one torpedo sink this grand ocean liner. But arguments about cause aside, the loss of this ship full of civilians still ranks as one of the many tragedies of the Great War for Civilization.
See the first installment of this post here. Our full archive of the war, called Scientific American Chronicles: World War I, has many articles from on artillery. It is available for purchase at www. Dan Schlenoff was a contributing editor at Scientific American and edited the 50, and Years Ago column for one seventh of the magazine's history.
Credit: Nick Higgins. Already a subscriber? Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. Go Paperless with Digital. As they continued to divert blame, British propaganda against them snowballed.
Throngs of vengeance-seeking Brits rushed to enlist, and anti-German riots broke out in London. Before entering the war, the U. In August , a German submarine sunk the British ocean liner S.
Arabic and claimed self-defense. The event further strained diplomatic relations between the United States and Germany. Satisfied, at least for the moment, President Wilson chose not to declare war on Germany despite being encouraged otherwise by some of his cabinet members. Arthur Zimmermann, circa The Zimmerman telegram was the final straw. The sinking of Lusitania was a public relations nightmare for Germany as public opinion in the United States turned against them.
The Zimmerman telegram stated that Germany planned to return to unrestricted submarine warfare and would sink all ships — including those carrying American passengers — located in the war zone. The telegram also proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico should the United States decide to join the European Allies. However, when Germany officially resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, Wilson and the American public had had enough.
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