"All the passengers must have heard the explosion," Captain Turner replied.
Captain Turner, in answer to another question, said he received no report from the lookout before the torpedo struck the Lusitania.
Ship's Bugler Livermore testified that the watertight compartments were closed, but that the explosion and the force of the water must have burst them open. He said that all the officers were at their posts and that earlier arrivals of the rescue craft would not have saved the situation.
After physicians had testified that the victims had met death through prolonged immersion and exhaustion the coroner summed up the case.
He said that the first torpedo fired by the German submarine did serious damage to the Lusitania, but that, not satisfied with this, the Germans had discharged another torpedo. The second torpedo, he said, must have been more deadly, because it went right through the ship, hastening the work of destruction.
The characteristic courage of the Irish and British people was manifested at the time of this terrible disaster, the coroner continued, and there was no panic. He charged that the responsibility "lay on the German Government and the whole people of Germany, who collaborated in the terrible crime."
"I propose to ask the jury," he continued, "to return the only verdict possible for a self-respecting jury, that the men in charge of the German submarine were guilty of wilful murder."
The jury then retired and after due deliberation prepared this verdict:
We find that the deceased met death from prolonged immersion and exhaustion in the sea eight miles south-southeast of Old Head of Kinsale, Friday, May 7, 1915, owing to the sinking of the Lusitania by torpedoes fired by a German submarine.
We find that the appalling crime was committed contrary to international law and the conventions of all civilized nations.