The Postcard
An H.J. Series postcard. The image is a glossy real photograph.
The card was posted in Weston-super-Mare using a halfpenny stamp on Saturday the 4th. September 1915.
The card was sent to:
Miss A. Fryer,
Luggs Farm,
Sharpness,
Gloucs.
The pencilled message on the divided back of the card, which was written in a childish hand, was as follows:
"Dear Annie,
Wit love and xxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx from
Joan."
The Scuttling of a Submarine
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 4th. September 1915, British submarine HMS E7 was scuttled after being caught in an anti-submarine net in the Dardanelles.
Casualties in Gallipoli
Also on that day, following heavy casualties sustained at the Battle of Scimitar Hill during the Gallipoli campaign, five depleted British mounted brigades were combined to form the 1st. and 2nd. Composite Mounted Brigades.
These were active for four months until they were dissolved upon their return to Egypt.
Walther Schwieger
Also on the 4th. September 1915, a submarine captained by Walther Schwieger torpedoed and sank RMS Hesperian.
Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger, who was born in Berlin, German Empire on the 7th. April 1885, was a U-boat commander in the Imperial German Navy (Kaiserliche Marine) during the Great War. In 1915, he sank the passenger liner RMS Lusitania with the loss of 1,199 lives.
In 1903 he joined the Imperial German Navy and from 1911 onwards he served with the U-boat Service. In 1912 he took over the command of the U-14. After the outbreak of the Great War he was promoted to Kapitänleutnant and given command of the U-20.
On the 7th. May 1915, Schwieger was responsible for U-20 sinking passenger liner RMS Lusitania leading to the deaths of 1,199 people, an event that played a role in the United States' later entry into the Great War.
He also torpedoed and SS Cymric on 8 May 1916. On the 31st. May 1917, his U-boat U-88 sank the Miyazaki Maru during that ship's voyage from Yokohama to London, causing the loss of eight lives.
Schwieger was killed in action at the age of 32 on the 5th. September 1917. His U-boat U-88 was sunk by the British Q-Ship HMS Stonecrop. It sank north of Terschelling with the loss of all hands.
During his wartime career, Schwieger captained three different submarines, on a total of 34 missions. He sank 49 ships, measuring 183,883 gross register tons (GRT).
Schwieger was represented in the docudrama "Lusitania: Terror At Sea" in 2007, where he was played by actor Florian Panzner.
The Sinking of the Lusitania
By 05:00 on 7 May 1915, Lusitania had reached a point 120 nautical miles (220 km) from the southern tip of Ireland, where she met the patrolling boarding vessel Partridge.
By 06:00, heavy fog had arrived, and extra lookouts were posted. Captain Turner had 22 lifeboats swung out as a precaution so that they could be launched more quickly if needed.
As the ship came closer to Ireland, Captain Turner ordered depth soundings to be made, and at 08:00 for speed to be reduced to eighteen knots, then to 15 knots, and for the foghorn to be sounded.
Some of the passengers were disturbed that the ship appeared to be advertising her presence. By 10:00, the fog began to lift, and by noon it had been replaced by bright sunshine over a clear smooth sea, and speed was increased to 18 knots.
U-20 surfaced at 12:45 as visibility was now excellent. At 13:20, something was sighted and Schwieger was summoned to the conning tower: at first it appeared to be several ships because of the number of funnels and masts, but this resolved into one large steamer appearing over the horizon.
At 13:25, the submarine submerged to periscope depth of 11 metres and set a course to intercept the liner at her maximum submerged speed of 9 knots. When the ships had closed to 2 nautical miles (3.7 km) Lusitania turned away,
Schwieger feared he had lost his target, but she turned again, this time onto a near ideal course to bring her into position for an attack.
At 14:10, with the target at 700m range he ordered one gyroscopic torpedo to be fired, set to run at a depth of three metres.
In Schwieger's own words, recorded in the log of U-20:
"Torpedo hits starboard side right behind the bridge.
An unusually heavy detonation takes place with a
very strong explosive cloud. The explosion of the
torpedo must have been followed by a second one
[boiler or coal or powder?]
The ship stops immediately and heels over to
starboard very quickly, immersing simultaneously
at the bow... the name Lusitania becomes visible
in golden letters."
U-20's torpedo officer, Raimund Weisbach, viewed the destruction through the vessel's periscope and felt the explosion was unusually severe. Within six minutes, Lusitania's forecastle began to submerge.
Though Schwieger states the torpedo hit beneath the bridge, survivor testimony, including that of Captain Turner, gave a number of different locations: some stated that it was between the first and second funnels, others between the third and fourth, and one claimed it struck below the capstan.
On board the Lusitania, Leslie Morton, an eighteen-year-old lookout at the bow, had spotted thin lines of foam racing toward the ship. He shouted through a megaphone:
"Torpedoes coming
on the starboard side!"
He believed that the bubbles came from two projectiles, not one. The torpedo struck Lusitania abaft the bridge, sending a plume of water upward which knocked Lifeboat No. 5 off its davits and a geyser of steel plating, coal smoke, cinders, and debris high above the deck.
One passenger recalled:
"It sounded like a million-ton hammer
hitting a steam boiler a hundred feet high."
A second, more powerful explosion followed, ringing throughout the ship, and thick grey smoke began to pour out of the funnels and ventilator cowls that led deep into the boiler rooms.
Schwieger's log entries attest that he launched only one torpedo. Some doubt the validity of this claim, contending that the German government subsequently altered the published fair copy of Schwieger's log, but accounts from other U-20 crew members corroborate it.
The entries were also consistent with intercepted radio reports sent to Germany by U-20 once she had returned to the North Sea, before any possibility of an official cover-up.
At 14:12, Captain Turner had Quartermaster Johnston stationed at the ship's wheel to steer 'hard-a-starboard' towards the Irish coast, but the ship could not be steadied, and rapidly ceased to respond to the wheel.
Turner signalled for the engines to be reversed to halt the ship, but although the signal was received in the engine room, nothing could be done.
Steam pressure had collapsed from 195 psi before the explosion, to 50 psi and falling afterwards, meaning Lusitania could not be steered or stopped to counteract the list or to beach herself.
Lusitania's wireless operator sent out an immediate SOS, which was acknowledged by a coastal wireless station. Shortly afterward he transmitted the ship's position, 10 nautical miles (19 km) south of the Old Head of Kinsale.
At 14:14, electrical power failed, plunging the cavernous interior of the ship into darkness. Radio signals continued on emergency batteries, but electric lifts failed, trapping crew members in the forward cargo hold who had been preparing luggage to go ashore at Liverpool later that evening.
Unfortunately it was these seamen precisely who were to report to muster stations to launch lifeboats in the event of a sinking.
Bulkhead doors that had been closed as a precaution before the attack could not be re-opened to release trapped men.
The rudder became inoperable with the loss of power as well, meaning that the ship could not be steered to counteract the list or to beach herself.
There were reports of passengers being trapped in the two central elevators, though one saloon passenger claimed to have seen the lifts stuck between the boat deck and the deck below while passing through the First Class entrance.
About one minute after the electrical power failed, Captain Turner gave the order to abandon ship. Water had flooded the ship's starboard longitudinal compartments, causing a 15-degree list to starboard.
Lusitania's severe starboard list complicated the launch of her lifeboats. Ten minutes after the torpedo struck, when she had slowed enough to start putting boats in the water, the lifeboats on the starboard side swung out too far to step aboard safely.
While it was still possible to board the lifeboats on the port side, lowering them presented a different problem. As was typical for the period, the hull plates of Lusitania were riveted, and as the lifeboats were lowered they dragged on the inch-high rivets, which threatened to seriously damage or capsize the boats before they landed in the water.
Many lifeboats overturned while loading or lowering, spilling passengers into the sea, and others were overturned by the ship's motion when they hit the water.
It has been claimed that some boats, because of the negligence of some officers, crashed down onto the deck, crushing other passengers, and sliding down towards the bridge. This has been disputed by passenger and crew testimony.
Some untrained crewmen lost their grip on handheld ropes used to lower the lifeboats while trying to lower the boats into the ocean, spilling their occupants into the sea.
Other lifeboats tipped on launch as panicking people jumped in.
Lusitania had 48 lifeboats, more than enough for all the crew and passengers, but only 6 were successfully lowered, all from the starboard side.
Lifeboat 1 overturned as it was being lowered, spilling its original occupants into the sea, but it managed to right itself shortly afterwards and was later filled with people from in the water.
Lifeboats 9 (5 people on board) and 11 (7 people on board) managed to reach the water safely, and both later picked up many swimmers.
Lifeboats 13 and 15 also safely reached the water, overloaded with around 150 people. Finally, Lifeboat 21 (52 people on board) reached the water safely and cleared the ship moments before her final plunge.
A few of Lusitania's collapsible lifeboats washed off her decks as she sank and provided flotation for some survivors.
Two lifeboats on the port side cleared the ship as well. Lifeboat 14 (11 people on board) was lowered and launched safely, but because the boat plug was not in place, it filled with seawater and sank almost immediately after reaching the water.
Later, Lifeboat 2 floated away from the ship with new occupants (its previous ones having been spilled into the sea when they upset the boat) after they removed a rope and one of the ship's "tentacle-like" funnel stays. They rowed away shortly before the ship sank.
There was panic and disorder on the starboard side of the deck. Schwieger had been observing this through U-20's periscope, and by 14:25, he dropped the periscope and headed out to sea.
Surviving passengers on the port side of the deck, however, paint a calmer picture. Many, including author Charles Lauriat, who published his account of the disaster, stated that a few passengers climbed into the early portside lifeboats before being ordered out by Staff Captain James Anderson, who proclaimed, "This ship will not sink" and reassured those nearby that the liner had "touched bottom" and would stay afloat.
In reality, he had ordered the crew to wait and fill Lusitania's portside ballast tanks with seawater to even the ship's trim so the lifeboats could be lowered safely. As a result, few boats on the port side were launched, none under Anderson's supervision.
Captain Turner was on the deck near the bridge clutching the ship's logbook and charts when a wave swept upward towards the bridge and the rest of the ship's forward superstructure, knocking him overboard into the sea.
He managed to swim and find a chair floating in the water which he clung to. He survived, having been pulled unconscious from the water after spending three hours there.
Lusitania's bow slammed into the bottom about 100 metres (330 ft) below at a shallow angle because of her forward momentum as she sank. Along the way, some boilers exploded and the ship returned briefly to an even keel.
Turner's last navigational fix had been only two minutes before the torpedoing, and he was able to remember the ship's speed and bearing at the moment of the sinking. This was accurate enough to locate the wreck after the war.
The ship travelled about two nautical miles (4 km) from the time of the torpedoing to her final resting place, leaving a trail of debris and people behind.
After her bow sank completely, Lusitania's stern rose out of the water, enough for her propellers to be seen, and went under.
As the tips of Lusitania's four, 70-foot-tall funnels dipped beneath the surface, they formed whirlpools which dragged nearby swimmers down with the ship. Her masts and rigging were the last to disappear.
Lusitania sank in only 18 minutes, at a distance of 11.5 nautical miles (21 km) off the Old Head of Kinsale. Despite being relatively close to shore, it took several hours for help to arrive from the Irish coast.
By the time help arrived, however, many in the 52 °F (11 °C) water had succumbed to the cold. By the days' end, 764 passengers and crew from Lusitania had been rescued and landed at Queenstown.
The final death toll for the disaster came to a catastrophic number. Of the 1,959 passengers and crew aboard Lusitania at the time of her sinking, 1,199 had been lost.
In the days following the disaster, the Cunard line offered local fishermen and sea merchants a cash reward for the bodies floating all throughout the Irish Sea, some floating as far away as the Welsh coast. Only 289 bodies were recovered, 65 of which were never identified.
The bodies of many of the victims were buried at either Queenstown, where 148 bodies were interred in the Old Church Cemetery, or the Church of St Multose in Kinsale, but the bodies of the remaining 885 victims were never recovered.
Two days before, U-20 had sunk Earl of Lathom, but had first allowed the crew to escape in boats. According to international maritime law, any military vessel stopping an unarmed civilian ship was required to allow those on board time to escape before sinking it.
The conventions had been drawn up before the invention of the submarine, and took no account of the severe risk a small vessel, such as a submarine, faced if it gave up the advantage of a surprise attack.
Schwieger could have allowed the crew and passengers of Lusitania to take to the boats, but he considered the danger of being rammed or fired upon by deck guns to be too great.
Merchant ships had, in fact, been advised to steer directly at any U-boat that surfaced. A cash bonus had been offered for any that were sunk, though the advice was carefully worded so as not to amount to an order to ram.
This feat was accomplished only once during the war by a commercial vessel when in 1918 the White Star Liner HMT Olympic, sister ship to the Titanic and Britannic, rammed SM U-103 in the English Channel, sinking the submarine.
According to Bailey and Ryan, Lusitania was travelling without any flag and her name painted over with darkish dye.
One story—an urban legend—states that when Lieutenant Schwieger of U-20 gave the order to fire, his quartermaster, Charles Voegele, would not take part in an attack on women and children, and refused to pass on the order to the torpedo room – a decision for which he was court-martialed and imprisoned at Kiel until the end of the war.
This rumour persisted from 1972, when the French daily paper Le Monde published a letter to the editor. Despite seemingly putting an end to this rumor, Voegele's alleged hesitation was depicted in the torpedoing scene of the 2007 docudrama Sinking of the Lusitania: Terror at Sea.
