The tide would be high at Liverpool Bar at 6:53 on Saturday morning, May 8. Captain Turner planned to cross the bar as much earlier than that as he could get over without stopping, while at the same time figuring on passing during the darkness the dangerous waters from the entrance of St. George's Channel to the Liverpool Bar.
The Captain decides to work inshore.
Having thus in mind his objective, and the time approximately when he intended to reach it, the message received at 11:25 A. M. required that he should determine whether to keep off land approximately the same distance as he was when he passed Fastnet, or to work inshore and go close to Coningbeg Lightship. He determined that the latter was the better plan to avoid the submarines reported in midchannel ahead of him.
Taking a bearing.
When Galley Head was sighted the course was changed so as to haul closer to the land, and this course was pursued until 1:40 P. M., at which time Captain Turner concluded that it was necessary for him to get his bearings accurately. This he decided should be done by taking a four-point bearing, during which procedure the ship was torpedoed. It is urged that he should have taken a two-point bearing or a cross bearing, which would have occupied less time, but if, under all the conditions which appealed to his judgment as a mariner, he had taken a different method of ascertaining his exact distance and the result would have been inaccurate, or while engaged in taking a two-point bearing the ship had been torpedoed, then somebody would have said he should have taken a four-point bearing. The point of the matter is that an experienced Captain took the bearing he thought proper for his purposes, and to predicate negligence upon such a course is to assert that a Captain is bound to guess the exact location of a hidden and puzzling danger.
Testimony about the ship's speed.
Much emphasis has been placed upon the fact that the speed of the ship was eighteen knots at the time of the attack instead of twenty-four, or, in any event, twenty-one knots, and upon the further fact (for such it is) that the ship was not zigzagging as frequently as the Admiralty advised or in the sense of that advice.
Upon this branch of the case much testimony was taken, (some in camera, as in the Wreck Commissioners' Court,) and, for reasons of public interest, the methods of successfully evading submarines will not be discussed. If it be assumed that the Admiralty advices as of May, 1915, were sound and should have been followed, then the answer to the charge of negligence is twofold: (1) that Captain Turner, in taking a four-point bearing off the Old Head of Kinsale, was conscientiously exercising his judgment for the welfare of the ship, and (2) that it is impossible to determine whether, by zigzagging off the Old Head of Kinsale or elsewhere, the Lusitania would have escaped the German submarine or submarines.
As to the first answer I cannot better express my conclusion than in the language of Lord Mersey:
Lord Mersey's opinion.