By: Erik Larson
Mining Suspense ( A note to reader)
First of all I started reading about the Lusitania on a whim, promiscuously. I learned both charmed and horrified me also. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the incident, but, as so often happens when I do deep a research on a subject, I quickly realized how wrong I was. Above all, I discovered that buried in the muddle details of the affair- deliberately muddled, in certain aspects— was something simple and satisfying: a very good story.
A word about time: To avoid confusing myself and readers, I’ve converted German submarine time to Greenwich Mean Time. Thus an entry in Kptlt. Waltber Schwieger’s War Log for 3:00 P.M. becomes 2:00 P.M. instead.
So lets go to first part of the story.
PART 1: “BLOODY MONKEYS”
THE OLD SAILORMAN
The smoke from ship and the exhalations of the river left a haze that blurred the world and made the big liner seem even bigger, less the product of human endeavor than an escarpment rising from a plain. The hull was black; seagulls flew past in slashes of white, pretty now, not yet the objects of horror they would become, later, for the man standing on the ship’s bridge, seven stories above the wharf. The liner was edged bow- first into a slip at Pier 54, on the Hudson, off the western end of fourteenth street in manhattan, one of a row of fours piers operation by the Cunard Steam-ship company of Liverpool, England, From the two catwalks that jutted outward from the ship’s bridge, its “wings,” the captain could get a good look along the full length of the hull, and it was here that he would stand on Saturday, May 1, 1915, a few days hence, when the ship was to set off in yet another voyage across the Atlantic.
Despite the war in Europe, by now in its tenth month- longer than anyone had expected it to last- the ship was booked to capacity, set to carry nearly 2,000 people, or “souls” of whom 1,265 were passengers, including an unexpectedly large number of children and babies. This was, according to the New York Times, the greatest number of Europe- bound travelers on a single vessel since the year began. When fully loaded with crew, passengers, luggage, stores, and cargo, the ship weighed, or displaced, over 44,000 tons and could sustain a top speed of more than 25 knots, about 30miles an hour. With any passenger ships withdraws from service or converted to military use, this made the Lusitania oil-fueled the fastest Queen Elizabeth -class battleships, could move faster. That a ship of such size could achieve so great a speed was considered one of the miracles of the modern age.
From the first, the ship became an object of national pride and affection. In keeping with Cunard’s custom of naming its ships for ancient lands, the company had selected Lusitania, after a Roman province on the Iberian Peninsula that occupied roughly the same ground as modern-day Portugal. “The inhabitants were warlike, and the Romans conquered them with great difficulty,” said a memorandum in Cunard’s files on the naming of the ship. “They lived generally upon plunder and were rude and unpolished in their manners. In popular usage, the name was foreshortened to “LUCY”.
The ship’s beauty belied its complexity. From the start, it needed a lot of attention. In its first winter, woodwork in the first-class writing room and dining saloon and in various passageways began to shrink and had to be rebuilt. Excess vibration forced Cunard to pull the ship from service so that extra bracing could be installed. Something was always breaking or malfunctioning. A baking oven exploded, injuring a crew member. Boilers needed to be scaled and cleaned. During crossings in winter, pipes froze and ruptured. The ship’s lightbulbs failed at an alarming rate. This was no small problem: the Lusitania had sic thousand lamps. The ship endured. It was fast, comfortable, and beloved and, as of the end April 1915, had completed 201 crossings of the Atlantic.
Hey guys you want me to continue this story? The Dead Wake?
Just give me motivation, upvote or what else and I am gonna write the continues story about this😊
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Marz hello