The Lusitania Murders

by Max Allan Collins

  Still deadly calm, she said, “I think it is.”

  The handful of other passengers in the cafe had noticed it, as well, and were making similar comments—no one panicking, everyone strangely still, as if waiting for that foamy, frothy wake, arrowing inexorably toward us, to reveal its intentions.

  Which it did: The shock of the impact was surprisingly mild if distinct, making a heavy, somewhat muffled roar, the ship trembling momentarily under the blow’s force. Miss Vance was on her feet, and in my arms—we were holding each other tight when a second, more severe explosion rocked the vessel, and all of us, the deck itself seeming to rise, then settle.

  Instinctively, we looked toward the explosion’s source, and a geyser of coal and steam and debris erupted between the second and third funnels, a skyward shower of deck planks, boats, steel splinters, coal dust and water, quickly followed by the hard rainfall of gratings and other wreckage clattering and scattering on the decks and splashing into the sea, forward of us.

  Grabbing on to Miss Vance’s shoulders, I pulled her back deeper into the shelter of the cafe, as wreckage descended on the deck like ghastly hailstones. The canvas awning, stretched across the cafe’s entrance, sagged under the weight of water and ruins, and seemed about to split apart.

  Taking her by the hand, I dashed out onto the littered deck, the rain of rubble apparently over, and away from the cafe, heading forward.

  “That second explosion . . .” I began, over the hissing of ruptured steam pipes.

  “The son of a bitch had planted a second bomb,” she said through her teeth. Her pretty face was freckled with soot. “And that U-boat torpedo detonated it!”

  “We should gather our belongings,” I said, “and get our life jackets, and find our way to a lifeboat.”

  She agreed, and we continued forward along the deck, among other passengers who were displaying a surprising and altogether admirable lack of panic. Perhaps, despite all of the denials, everyone had suspected the ship might be hit, even expected it, and now reflex action had taken over, and passengers were moving in a fairly orderly manner up toward the lifeboats.

  Near the entry to the deck’s Grand Entrance area, we were startled to see Elbert Hubbard and his wife; standing at the rail, the husband’s arm around the wife’s waist in an affectionate fashion. They seemed frozen, or perhaps dazed.

  I knew their cabin, like mine, was a deck below, on that same portside corridor, and I said, “You need to get to your stateroom, and get your life jackets—straightaway!”

  In a soft, almost placid voice—barely audible above the hissing and clamor—Hubbard said, “There may not be enough boats. Someone must sacrifice.”

  I grabbed on to his arm. “Spout your aphorisms another time, you fool—this is life and death!”

  That the boat was already listing seriously to the right was all too apparent.

  He jerked his arm away and glared at me—the only time I’d ever witnessed any expression on that face that evinced anything like anger—and he said, “Mind your own business.”

  “Is that the best you can do for your famous last words?” I asked bitterly.

  The hell with him. Taking Miss Vance by the arm, I headed into the Grand Entrance, which was thronged with people moving up the stairs and out onto deck. Signs of a gathering frenzy were now indeed in evidence, and understandably.

  The elevators were out of the question—the electricity had gone, and the lifts were trapped halfway between floors, filled with passengers coming up from lunch. They were screaming down there, trapped like rats, rattling their cage.

  At the top of the companionway, I suggested she wait for me, here.

  “No! I’m coming with you.”

  “No need—give me your key, and I’ll fetch our life jackets. What else of yours is vital?”

  Reluctantly, she was accepting my decision, handing me her room key. “My passport’s in the top drawer of the bureau. . . . Nothing else.”

  I held her by her arms and kissed her on the mouth; she returned the kiss with desperate enthusiasm.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  “I’ll be here,” she said, as frightened passengers, many soot-smeared, rolled by in a human tide.

  As I took the stairs, many more were coming up than going down, a swarm of hysterical second-class passengers surging up from belowdecks, lacking the outward composure of those of the first class who were resolved not to be caught up in a sordid stampede. I had to lower myself to their level and elbowed my passage with no thought of common courtesy. At the bottom of the stairs a steward was urging passengers to be calm, and handing them life jackets—many ignored both his good advice and valuable gift.

  I suppose I could have worked my way over to him, and snatched up two of those life jackets, but I had enough sense of decorum and decency to realize I should fetch the ones I knew to be in our cabins. The passageway was jammed with fleeing passengers, mostly second-class I would venture, and I could only imagine the sheer panic of the lower decks—third class and, God help them, the “dirty gang” down in the boilers.

  The starboard list was unmistakable but not extreme, and, other than pushing through the crowd, I had no trouble making my way to the forward portside corridor. While many were heading for the deck, a few other self-composed first-class passengers were doing as I was, seeking their valuables and life jackets in their cabins.

  The torpedo’s impact must have affected the structure of the ship more than was readily apparent, for I discovered my cabin door was badly jammed, and it took three swift kicks to rudely open it.

  With the ship’s electricity gone, and no porthole, my cabin was as dark as a cave. I lighted a match, and quickly found my life jacket on its shelf in the wardrobe, and from the nightstand gathered the leather pouch with my passport, various other papers and folding money. The list of the ship had increased, in this short time, rather alarmingly.

  It was necessary to kick open Miss Vance’s bedroom door, as well—it occurred to me a great deal of money was somewhere in this bedroom, but I did not know where . . . nor had she requested it. Perhaps Madame DePage and her friend Houghton had already retrieved the funds—or abandoned them, if the bulk made such impractical. Using another match, I recovered Miss Vance’s passport from the bureau and her life jacket from its wardrobe shelf.

  As I exited, the ship lurched further starboard, a severe tilt now, and the sounds of chaos on the decks above, trampling feet, excited voices, betrayed an absence of discipline, to say the least. The passage was now empty, and dim—the only light filtering in from way down the corridor, at the Grand Entrance area, adjacent to the portside and starboard promenades. The starboard list was so extreme, in fact, that I as walked toward the entry light, I had one foot on the floor and the other on the wall.

  Moving along the dark passageway, clutching close to me the pair of bulky, fiber-filled life jackets, I noted that—down some of the cross passages, leading to staterooms—the portholes were gaping open . . . and the water was eagerly lapping at those portals, like the tongues of hungry beasts. Soon the sea would come rushing in, in all its inexorable coldness. The ineptitude of Turner and, yes, Anderson was outrageous—that these had not been closed and sealed, as we steamed through the war zone. . . .

  When I reached the Grand Entrance, the wicker furniture overturned, crushed, discarded, potted plants spilling their soil on the linoleum, the mounting horror unequivocal. Passengers down in those stalled elevators were shrieking, beating desperately on the grille gates; the water would have them soon. Panic-stricken, white-faced third-class passengers were streaming up the companionways, scrambling up the stairs, climbing over one another with no compunction.

  A well-dressed woman and her daughter were standing to one side of the wide but human-clogged stairway, tucked against the slanting wall, the child saucer-eyed and clinging to the dark-haired, blue-eyed mother, whose chin was high.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked the woman.

/>   “No, thank you,” she said proudly. “There is nothing you can do. . . . We will wait for these . . . people . . . to pass, before taking our turn.”

  “That’s probably wise,” I said, with a movement of my eyes that was meant to convey to the mother that her child would not fare well in that struggling mob.

  “The captain says the ship cannot sink,” she said, like a Christian convinced of Heaven. “We have no intention of becoming alarmed.”

  I was standing there—the incline so steep now that I had to work to regain my balance, especially amid all the jostling—like a boy waiting for the right moment to hop a carousel. Only a few seconds had gone by when a bloody-faced figure in stewards’ whites stumbled into me, coming up from the shelter deck, and I grabbed on to him, because he seemed barely conscious, and would otherwise have fallen and been trampled.

  It was Williams, the master-at-arms!

  I dragged the sturdy fellow from the crowd, and positioned myself against the wall, supporting him. He’d suffered a terrible blow or had taken a fall, his forehead bloody, one of those thick black eyebrows badly cut, and streaming blood.

  “Get your breath,” I said, “and we’ll get you up to the Boat Deck.”

  “Mr. . . . Mr. Van Dine . . .” he said, eyes wide with recognition and . . . what else? Humiliation? “I was a fool, a damned fool!”

  “Williams, what—”

  “I tried to do the right thing, sir, the humane thing . . . but the bastard took advantage! Jumped me, goddamn him!”

  I asked, but I already knew. “Who did this?”

  “That bastard Williamson—he was my responsibility, and I couldn’t leave him to drown, could I?”

  “Of course not,” I said, though I could have, easily.

  “That’s not the worst of it, sir! He . . . he’s got my revolver!”

  Time was too precious for recriminations, so I merely hauled the bloody fool up the companionway; he seemed to have regained a clear enough head, and his balance, and he disappeared off toward the deck, muttering that he would find “the blighter.”

  The Boat Deck’s Grand Entrance area, like the one below, had its furniture and potted plants upended; but the passengers were no longer thronging the area, having found their way to the decks.

  And then my heart sank, because there was no sign of Miss Vance—I had been gone too long, apparently, or she had been swept up in the melodrama.

  As I looked around, I saw something that at first struck me as quite absurd: Alfred Vanderbilt and Charles Frohman were seated side by side in wicker chairs, and they were surrounded by a pile of life jackets and five wicker baskets filled with slumbering babies! They were tying the life jackets to the baskets, and Frohman was bending to do so, and his discomfort must have been considerable.

  I was not surprised to find Frohman staying aloof from the mass of hysteria—with his severe rheumatism, how could he hope to survive? But what in the hell were they up to? As I went over to them, Vanderbilt’s imperious valet, still in full livery, materialized with a basket in either hand, a slumbering infant in both.

  “This is the last of them, sir,” the valet said.

  “Good—now see what other kiddies you can round up, and we’ll help them into the lifeboats.”

  “Very good, sir,” and the valet again disappeared.

  I stood before this preposterous tableau—amazingly, not a child was awake and squalling!—and asked, “What in God’s name are you up to, Vanderbilt?”

  “Ah,” Vanderbilt said, as casual as if he were attending a race at Ascot, “Mr. Van Dine—I’ve had my man Ronald raid the nursery. Moses’ baskets—they should float nicely.”

  “Gentlemen, I don’t believe this steamer could be far from her final plunge—”

  The millionaire stayed at his work, tying a life jacket to a basket. “Mr. Van Dine, it’s a wonderful irony, isn’t it? I have a white marble swimming pool at my farm, but I’ve never been in for a dip. All my time’s gone to my horses, and of course the ladies. . . . Never did learn to swim.”

  “Let me help you get these out kids out on deck, and we’ll get you into a lifeboat, then.”

  “No, Charles, Ronald and I can manage—we need to keep this precious cargo away from that rattled rabble out there . . . when the water comes up, we’ll drop the wee ones in.”

  I turned to Frohman. “C.F.—can I help you onto deck?”

  “No, I prefer to stay with my friend Albert,” he said, grunting as he worked. “This will be a close call—we’ll have a better chance here than by rushing to the lifeboats.”

  I had no time to argue; such choices were for each man to make for himself. “Have you seen Miss Vance?”

  “Why, yes,” Vanderbilt said. “A lot of these fools had their lifebelts on incorrectly—heads through armholes. upside down around their waist and the like. Last I saw her . . .” He pointed toward the starboard exit onto the deck. “. . . she was helping as many of them as she could, in putting them on correctly.”

  “Some,” Frohman said, “scurried away—must have thought she was trying to take their life jackets! Cowards.”

  “You have enough for yourselves?” I asked, meaning the life jackets, feeling somewhat guilty bearing a pair of them myself, for Miss Vance and me.

  “Certainly,” Vanderbilt said cheerfully. “Good luck to you, man!”

  “Mr. Frohman—C.F.? I can help walk you along—we are moments away from . . .”

  He smiled up at me, that homely face a beautiful thing. “ ‘Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.’ ”

  “What’s that, a Hubbardism?”

  Frohman seemed a little offended. “Hardly! James Barrie—Peter Pan.”

  And the froggy producer returned to his slumbering infants in their Moses’ baskets, who unknowingly awaited far worse perils than mere bulrushes.

  Disturbed though I was to have lost track of Miss Vance, I had confidence in her competence—her cool head and professionalism would rise well above the mad scramble. Or so I told myself, to hang on to hope and sanity. On the promendade, however, the rush was over, confusion replacing panic—people were milling, thronging the deck waiting for a discipline or order to be imposed upon them. . .which seemed unlikely to be provided.

  The Hubbards were nowhere to be seen—they had vacated (or been pushed away from) their position at the rail. In the undiscriminating mix of passengers from all three classes, I saw the occasional familiar face. Miss Pope and her Friend dove from the deck, choosing not to get involved with the lifeboats at all. Madame DePage, I noted, was bandaging the wounded with strips of cloth torn from her own dress; Dr. Houghton was aiding her. No sign of Miss Vance, though.

  The lifeboat situation was hopeless.* Crewmen and male passengers were striving without luck to lower the boats, and were placing women and children into them. Horror-struck, I realized these boats would never be cleared, and would go down with the steamer . . . which surely would make her final plunge any second now. Better to leave these poor souls on the deck, where they might have a chance, might find a piece of wreckage to use as a makeshift raft, a table, a deck chair, a wooden grating.

  A bit aft of the main entrance, a lifeboat filled with women and children—Miss Vance not among them—waited patiently for help that would probably never come. No one was even attempting to free the craft from its davits. With the steamer sinking so rapidly, the boat would have to be cleared at once, if they were to be saved.

  Staff Captain Anderson—in his shirtsleeves, his affable manner replaced by a tense grim demeanor—was doing his best to supervise the ill-advised launching of the boats. I went to him and suggested that the ship was sinking so fast, they might be better off waiting till the water reached the ship’s keel, and simply cut the ropes, and simultaneously knock the snubbing chains loose.

  He was ahead of me; he pointed to a boat nearby where seamen were poised to do exactly what I’d suggested.

  And at this moment a man in white who was not a
crew member approached one of those seamen, and was speaking to him.

  “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!