This brought him nearer to the Irish Coast, and he shortly afterwards sighted the old Head of Kinsale. Having identified this, at twenty minutes to two, he altered his course back to S.87.E. and, having steadied her on that course, began ten minutes later to have a four point bearing taken, and this was being carried out when the ship was torpedoed.
This occurred at a quarter past two, when the Lusitania was steaming some ten miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, the atmosphere having then cleared and the sea being smooth. A seaman, Leslie N. Morton, seems to have been the first person on board actually to have seen the wake of the torpedo, and he reported it at once to the Second Officer, who in turn reported it to Captain Turner, then on the port side of the lower bridge. Captain Turner looking to starboard saw a streak of foam travelling towards the ship, and immediately afterwards the Lusitania was struck full on the starboard side, between the third and fourth funnels, the explosion breaking to splinters one of the lifeboats. Almost simultaneously a second torpedo also struck her on the starboard side, the two having been fired apparently from a distance of from two to five hundred yards. No warning of any kind had been given. Immediately on being struck the Lusitania listed heavily to starboard, and in less than twenty minutes she had sunk in deep water, carrying to their graves no less than 1,198 men, women and children.
Torpedoing of the “Thracia”
Perhaps the most lucid, and, since he was an American, the most impartial account of the occurrence was that afterwards given by Mr. James Brooks of Bridgeport, Connecticut, one of the saloon passengers. Mr. Brooks, who was making the voyage to England for business purposes, had, in common with most of the other American passengers, read the warning notice issued by the German Embassy, to which we have already referred. Like most of his fellow-countrymen, however, he had decided to ignore it. “No one in America,” he said, “ever dreamed that the Germans would dare to carry out their terrible threat to destroy such a magnificent vessel, and with it hundreds of the lives of innocent men, women and children.... A good many passengers were still at lunch when, on Friday afternoon, the attack came in reality. I had just finished a run on deck and had reached the Marconi Deck, when I glanced out over the water. It was perfectly smooth. My eyes alighted on a white streak making its way with lightning-like rapidity towards the ship. I was so high in that position above the surface of the water that I could make out the outline of a torpedo. It appeared to be about twelve feet long, and came along possibly three feet below the surface, its sides white with bubbles of foam. I watched its passage, fascinated, until it passed out of sight behind the bridge, and in another moment came the explosion. The ship, recoiling under the force of the blow, was jarred and lifted, as if it had struck an immovable object. A column of water shot up to the bridge deck, carrying with it a lot of debris, and, despite the fact that I must have been twenty yards from the spot at which the torpedo struck, I was knocked off my feet. Before I could recover myself, the iron forepart of the ship was enveloped in a blinding cloud of steam, due, not, I think, to the explosion of a second torpedo, as some thought, but to the fact that the two forehold boilers had been jammed close together and ‘jack-knifed’ upwards. This I was told by a stoker afterwards.
Officers, nurses and R.A.M.C. orderlies of H.M.H.S. “Aquitania”
“Homeward Bound”
“We had been in sight of land for some time, and the head of the ship, which had already begun to settle, was turned towards the Old Head of Kinsale. We must have been from twelve to fifteen miles from land at the time the ship was struck. All the boats on the ship had been swung out the day previous, and the work of launching them was at once commenced. The attempt in the case of the first boat was a tragic failure. The women and children were taken first and the boat was practically filled with them, there being only a few men. The boat was lowered until within its own length of the water, when the forward tackle jammed, and the whole of its occupants, with the exception of three, were thrown into the water. The Lusitania was then on an even keel. On the decks of the doomed vessel absolute coolness prevailed. There was no rushing about, and nothing remotely resembling panic. In just a few isolated cases there were signs of hysteria on the part of the women, but that was all.