My grandfather was on the Lusitania - May 7, 1915
'The world was shocked in 1912 by the loss of the Titanic to an iceberg, but the shock bore no parallel to that felt by the loss of the Lusitania, which was needlessly sacrificed to the insatiable gods of war.' [1]
When the transatlantic passenger liner Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20 off the Kinsale coast at 2.10pm on this day one hundred years ago, my great-grandfather John Davies was on it.
Born in Hollingsworth, Lancashire, England in 1879, he lived at 2 Green Lane, Blundellsands, and signed onto the Lusitania as a trimmer in the Engineering Department at Liverpool on 12 April 1915 for her last return trip across the Atlantic. Five days later, he sailed out of the River Mersey on board the liner as she left Liverpool for the last time.
Homeward bound to Liverpool, this trimmer-man would almost certainly been below-decks, somewhere in the engine room shovelling, transporting or delivering coal, when the torpedo struck and very soon after a second explosion (likely caused by the combustion of a cargo of aluminium fine powder being transported with other armaments on board) ripped the ship's side open.
The damage was so great that just eighteen minutes later the Lusitania sank; undoubtedly the most formative eighteen minutes in my great-grandfather's life, that day when 1,198 lives were lost in the Irish Sea, civilian victims of Britain's war with Germany. I am here today because John survived the liner's sinking, was rescued from the sea and landed at Queenstown (now Cobh). He owed his life to having boarded a lifeboat; he and other crew members tried to pick up several others from the sea.
Three weeks later, he gave an interview concerning his experiences to a reporter of The Cork Examiner, which was published on Monday 10 May. There he revisited 'The parting scenes,' involving the chaos of people frantically trying to launch and board lifeboats on a rapidly and radically listing vessel. These 'were worse to see even than the sufferings which came later - the desperate cry for life and the despairing cry of the drowning one,' he is reported to have said.
John's story of survival and his recollections of the trauma of the day are on record in the Merseyside Maritime Museum archives. It reassures the family to read there a quote from the Bootle Times of Friday 21 May 1915, about our great-grandfather's actions in the crisis: 'Mr. Davies was instrumental in rescuing a number of people, whom he took into his boat, including several children.'
But for the rest of his life silence surrounded John Davies. The family would never learn from him whether he held in his memory any unreported acts of heroism, or whether his story was one of shame - for many accounts of the disaster suggested that in the chaotic scramble for safety a proportion of crew members looked after themselves first. All he left us with was the mystery of a lock of young woman's hair, retrieved on that fateful day, which he kept in a box in the attic, and questions about whether this was a macabre memento of a rescue bid gone wrong, or a reminder of a voyage's (illicit) love never requited.
Trying now to read the report from the Cork Examiner in the context in which it was written, I can't help wondering about the extent to which the journalists tailored John's raw reaction to what had happened, to the political exigencies of wartime:
'No more sea for me,' said Davis. 'I have finished with it. My place in the future is in the trenches to find and punish the race of hell hounds who were responsible for the most cruel, cowardly, and most dastardly outrage on record.' His sentiments were heard and shared by others about his table and from yesterday's work [2], there will be many new soldiers in the ranks.
Silence still surrounds officialdom when questions about the Lusitania are asked, as they are being again on this centenary day. That civilian passengers lives were put at serious risk in the data-and-mouse game being played between the German submariners and Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, is indisputable. That a cargo of arms and explosives sufficient to kill thousands of Germans were onboard the ship, undoubtedly made the Lusitania a great prize for U-20 commander Walter Schwieger. It is increasingly acknowledged that British intelligence, which might have saved the Lusitania had it been clearly and efficiently communicated, was so bound up in secrecy that it was useless. One day perhaps a government will release documentation of the five vital signals which the Admiralty sent to Captain Turner during the last two days of the Lusitania's final voyage, which may serve to exonerate him, who the authorities quickly made the scapegoat for the liner's loss.
The sinking of the Lusitania involves the silence of John Davies - who for the remainder of his life carried a form of what we might now call post-traumatic stress disorder, and the silence of the Admiralty and their successors in government - who perpetuate an official cover-up of the sort with which we are too wearily familiar [3]. In the clamour of an election day and amid the noisy flag-waving of this week's VE Day commemorations, it's good to see that a few voices are sharing the Lusitania story today. It is to be hoped that one day the silences which can be broken, will be, and the psychological traumas felt by the victims and survivors, eyewitnesses and officials, and the generations of their families who followed, might be healed.
Notes
[1] Patrick O'Sullivan, The Sinking of the Lusitania, p.29. Thanks to Barrie Carter, engaging historian of Corton Denham, for gifting me this book last week; it is a timely and engrossing read.
[2] 'From yesterday's work' - I'm unsure what this means: maybe John and other crew survivors were targets of a military recruitment drive as they recovered in the bars of Queenstown? Or perhaps the story was filed on 8 May, making 'yesterday's work' the work of Walter Schwieger and his crew.
[3] eg, Hillsborough: Police cover-up 'known for years', BBC News, 15 September 2012 - of the other major national disaster which has directly and lastingly affected my life and community.
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