The Lusitania Murders

“Christ!” I blurted. “That’s Williamson!”

Anderson’s gaze flew to the man, who was snarling at the seaman, “Launch this boat, now!”

Williamson obviously planned to leap inside the craft.

“Can’t do it,” the seaman said, a young blonde lad. “Captain’s orders.”

And Williamson thrust a revolver toward the seaman-that gun he’d taken from the master-at-arms-and said, “To hell with the captain-do it!”

I stood frozen-all this ship needed right now was a madman shooting off a gun! But Anderson was edging forward, moving closer to Williamson, whose back was to the staff captain.

The young seaman complied with Williamson’s demands, freeing the snubbing chain.

Freed of its restraint, the boat swung inward like a pendulum and smashed into Williamson, squashing him like a bug against the boat’s gunwale. Any cry of his was obscured by the screams of passengers as the lifeboat crashed to the deck, sliding forcefully into a waiting knot of crew and passengers, Anderson among them. I plastered myself against the wall, the boatload of terrified women and children narrowly missing me, but sweeping the others with them, the unconscious staff captain, too, down the deck and into the rising sea.

Around me screams of horror followed the stunning display of brute stupidity-the author of which, one Charles Williamson, lay a crushed open-eyed corpse beneath the blood-smeared gunwale.

In moments the sea would come up and wash me off the deck, too; so I beat the bastard to it, and dove in. The coldness was a shock, yet somehow bracing, even invigorating, and I swam, despite the bulk of the life jacket, swam a good hundred feet away from the ship before turning, and treaded water. I wondered if anyone, perhaps from that crashed lifeboat, was following, and needed a hand.

I also wanted to see the steamer’s final plunge. The bow already buried beneath the sea, the ship’s fantail loomed a hundred feet into the placid blue sky, revealing four huge propellers, barely turning, and an immense rudder, sunlight glinting off their steel. Sliding into the blue waters, the ship suddenly, bizarrely, froze-the nose of the great ship, its eight-hundred-foot length deeper than the sea, had hit bottom!

A terrible clash and clatter echoed across the water as everything within her collapsed and scattered itself, as if a giant box of broken glass and spare metal parts were being shaken by a playful, nasty god.

Hundreds were mountain-climbing the slanted deck, seeking handholds, some falling into the sea, as the dying beast that was the Lusitania made its final agonized death cries-a boiler exploding, a funnel crashing, one last great moan of tortured steel.

Then she was gone-slipping under the water with no significant suction, no boiling vortex, foam flecking the last glimpse of her superstructure and decks, a few boats still swinging like toys from their davits. . a finger snap, and the big Lucy had disappeared.* She left behind a wide white ring glimmering on the surface of an otherwise smooth sea in the afternoon sun. Within that ring was a snarl of floating wreckage and bodies, on and under the surface, some of them alive, gaggles of men and women and children twisting like flies on some giant fisherman’s hook.

For a while I swam around and helped those I could by pushing pieces of wreckage to them, to which they might cling. After some fifteen minutes of this, I was getting tired, and cold, and was just realizing I was in trouble, when arms hauled me up out of the water and into a collapsible boat, a shallow thing with its folded canvas sides up.

The boat was filled with people-twenty or more, men enough to row but mostly women and children. A voice called out my name to me, and either I was dreaming a sweet dying dream, or had unpredictably enough gone to heaven.

Because the voice was Miss Vance’s, and I was soon, half-conscious, sheltered within the embrace of her damp but wonderful arms.

“I hope Williamson drowned in his cage,” she said, sometime later.

“Oh,” I said, “it was much better than that.”

Not much else is worth the telling. Our lifeboat had a good crew, which included that fellow Lauriat, and we might have headed for land but instead stayed out and, for two hours or so, picked up those who seemed in the most helpless of conditions. I will spare you the tragic images, involving women and children, particularly mothers and their babies. Some of the babies in their nursery baskets, thanks to Vanderbilt and Frohman, were retrieved from the sea.

When we had as many aboard as we dared-thirty-two was the final count, I believe-we finally rowed toward shore, but first encountered a fishing smack. Though they had already taken on two boatloads of survivors, they made room for us, as well.

The old fishermen gave us the blankets from their bunks, started a fire and made us tea; it was a wretched vessel, slippery with fish scales and the filth of fishermen, and no man or woman could wish finer accommodations. The steamer Flying Fish took us to Queenstown, where the rest of this tale is well-known and would only serve to depress the reader, and the book’s author.

Suffice to say, of the key figures involved in the mystery, only Miss Vance, George Kessler (minus his briefcase) and myself survived. The psychic Miss Pope also came through, and Dr. Houghton; so did Captain Turner, who on the rescue ship Blue Bell was bitterly chastised by a mother who had lost her child.

I suppose I would sound like Elbert Hubbard if I were to point out that a disaster brings out the best and the worst in us. The millionaire and the theatrical producer died bravely, helping the helpless; so did the noble doctor’s wife who had sought to raise money for hospitals. The Bard of East Aurora and his bride apparently went down to their cabin to die together, whether to make room for others in lifeboats, or to glorify themselves, who can say? Miss Vance, the heroine of the piece, was rescued in the midst of aiding others.

And the villain died, as he’d lived, a villain.

“It is what we think, and what we do,” Hubbard once said, “that makes us what we are.”

Perhaps, by that sweet fool’s yardstick, all I am is a survivor. . but we need survivors, don’t we? Who else would tell the tale?

A Tip of the Captain’s Hat

As in the previous novels in what others have called my “disaster mystery” series, I have in this book combined the factual with the fanciful. Unlike the first of these books, The Titanic Murders (1999), the mystery herein relates directly to the disaster itself, tied as it is to the political and historical context of the tragedy, and its causes. Nonetheless, some liberties have been taken, though precious few; and what may seem to some readers mistakes may be a reflection of the sometimes contradictory source material.

Before discussing the sources of my research, I would like to share a few historical afterthoughts that I did not feel appropriate to the body of the book.

Contrary to popular belief, the sinking of the Lusitania did not lead to America’s participation in World War One. Of the approximately 1,200 men, women and children lost in the sinking, only 124 were Americans-not enough to go to war over, but plenty to turn sentiment in the U.S. against the German side, undoubtedly paving the way for this country’s entry into the conflict.

Numerous theories have been posited as to the nature of the second-and far more damaging-explosion that followed the undoubted single torpedo that hit the ship, courtesy of the German submarine U- 20. Among these are munitions (specifically gun cotton) blowing up, the boilers exploding, coal dust combustion, a second torpedo or even a British sub sinking the ship, to prime the war pump for Winston Churchill. This novel proposes yet another possibility, based upon the factual presence of German saboteurs on the Lusitania.

Captain Bill Turner, incidentally, suffered through several Lusitania investigations but still was given a new command-he lost that ship to torpedoes, as well, and wound up sailing a desk. Whether he was a scapegoat or just an idiot remains a point of conjecture, and-like the reason for that second explosion-a subject much discussed in the reference sources I used.