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 Sensational stories sell newspapers, they can also help
change the course of history.
When people talk of what made America finally give up her isolationist
stance and take the decision to take sides with Great Britain in the First
World War in 1917, there are many reasons given, and some are very
convoluted. One may wonder if perhaps there was a simpler, more
straightforward reason?
Before we get to that, let's go back just a little farther and stand on
the banks of the Tyne and regard the Wallsend shipyard of Swan Hunter and
Wigham Richardson, a yard as steeped in Cunard history as Liverpool or the
Clyde. It is the 27th July 1911 and you are witnessing the launch of yet
another Cunarder by the yard, the ss LACONIA. Not as impressive as the
MAURETANIA (which they built in 1907) in looks perhaps, the famous
four-stacker being significantly bigger, but she is a reminder of the
first 'modern' Cunarders CAMPANIA and LUCANIA, albeit larger and with
higher sides.
At this point you will no doubt ponder her future as you see her slip
majestically into the Tyne, but you will not be thinking how short her
life will prove to be, nor that she may rock a nation.
She was fitted afterwards with quadruple expansion engines built by
Wallsend Slipway Co and kitted out to take 2,200 in third class, 350 in
second and a very fortunate 300 would luxuriate in her 1st Class saloons
and cabins when eventually, completed and ready for her career as a
transatlantic liner she began service on 20th January 1912, leaving
Liverpool for Queenstown then across the Atlantic to New York.
If they had had the means to procure a peek at it, The Shipbuilder, Volume
II, No 22, published in the Autumn of 1911 would have furnished maiden
voyage passengers opting for the lowest price tickets with the following
encouraging overview prior to booking their passage:
"The third-class passengers are extremely well catered for, and have
provided for them enclosed cabins with berths of modern type for two or
four persons, while there are also a number of six-berth rooms for the use
of families. The main dining saloon is situated on F deck amidships and
extends the full width of the ship. It is a spacious and will lighted
apartment, and is fitted with revolving chairs. Two small dining rooms
adjoin the main saloon. The remaining third-class public rooms include a
social hall on D deck and a smoking room and ladies' room on E deck, all
comfortably furnished and well lighted. "
The excitement and glamour of these golden years of steamship travel were
not to last however. Just as we saw in Wednesday's day in history feature
about the AQUITANIA, war would
interrupt possibly the most romantic age of ocean travel in a cruel
juxtaposition, turning that excitement and glamour to dread fear and
misery.
LACONIA, like so many other liners when war broke out in 1914, had her
civilian career abruptly terminated and pressed into service as an armed
merchant ship. She performed sterling work in her role in the Indian Ocean
and the South Atlantic for two years, returning to Cunard in 1916, when
once more, she took up her station on the Atlantic, leaving from Liverpool
on the 9th September bound for New York.
 Saturday 17th February 1917 she departed New York, bound for Liverpool on
her last voyage. On board were 73 passengers and a crew of 216. Amongst
the passengers was an American journalist, a 29 year old handsome
adventurer, Floyd Phillips Gibbons who as foreign correspondent with the
Chicago Tribune had already achieved legendary status for his daring and
bravery in reporting on the Mexican border war.
Floyd Gibbons new that when he boarded the LACONIA there was every chance
she could be hit or rather, he probably hoped the chances were high. He
wanted to experience and write about how it felt to be at danger from the
German navy, what it was like for the ordinary men women and children who
braved the foe on the oceans and seas between New York and old Liverpool.
This, after all, was his job.
A week after leaving New York, on the Sunday afternoon, 25th February
(yes, it was a Sunday that year too) they were nearing the area considered
most dangerous and seeking to draw out some of the worthies in the smoking
room. He asked them what were the chances of being struck by a torpedo.
I'll let him tell you what happened...
"Well," drawled the
deliberative Mr. Henry Chetham, a London solicitor, "I should say four
thousand to one."
Lucien J. Jerome, of the British diplomatic service, returning with an
Ecuadorian valet from South America, interjected: "Considering the zone
and the class of this ship, I should put it down at two hundred and fifty
to one that we don't meet a sub."
At this moment the ship gave a sudden lurch sideways and forward. There
was a muffled noise like the slamming of some large door at a good
distance away. The slightness of the shock and the meekness of the report
compared with my imagination were disappointing. Every man in the room was
on his feet in an instant.
"We're hit!" shouted Mr. Chetham.
"That's what we've been waiting for," said Mr. Jerome.
"What a lousy torpedo!" said Mr. Kirby in typical New Yorkese. "It must
have been a fizzer."
I looked at my watch. It was 10:30 P.M.
From then on he gives a highly descriptive account, describing the efforts
to get onto boats, the confusion. The eventual, haunting loss of the liner
as she rears into the night sky and slips down, lost forever, and of the
sickeningly eerie approach of the glistening killer that had sent her to
her grave.
He writes it all down thirty hours after the event, including details of
the dead. Only twelve perished, but of that relatively small loss were
three Americans. Two
of them a mother and daughter from Chicago. The story would be
printed in the Chicago Tribune and it took America by storm.
And it was this story, the loss of the Tyne-built LACONIA on the 25th
February 1917, Floyd Gibbons would maintain, was the final straw for
President Wilson, the president who was re-elected by a narrow victory in
1916 with the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War,”
Five weeks after it was printed in the press, America abandoned neutrality
and entered the Great War.
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