YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – On the afternoon of May 7, 1915, Jessie Taft Smith of Bazetta Township in Trumbull County was relaxing in the reading room of the British passenger liner RMS Lusitania when she heard a loud noise.
“The ship seemed to lift,” Smith recounted in testimony days later. “Shortly afterwards another explosion occurred. I went to my stateroom but was told not to hurry as there was no danger.”
There was plenty of danger, though. Smith’s story was among the first eyewitness accounts made public of the sinking of the Lusitania, the Cunard luxury liner that was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland 110 years ago today.
Within approximately 20 minutes, the ocean liner plunged into the depths of the Atlantic, taking with it 1,186 lives, including 128 Americans. Among the 771 survivors was Smith, whose firsthand account of the tragedy was transmitted worldwide in the days following the attack.
Newspapers from all over the world published her story of the sinking, an incident that would lead to global condemnation of Germany and its use of unrestricted submarine warfare during World War I. At the time, Germany had instated a submarine blockade around the British Isles with orders to sink any ship flying a British or French flag. The countries had been at war since August 1914.
The world expressed shock and outrage over the unprovoked attack on innocent civilians, and many Americans pushed for a declaration of war. President Woodrow Wilson, however, stopped short and instead received assurances from Germany that it would no longer target civilian ships. That policy lasted until 1917 when Germany, strangled by a tightened British blockade, resumed unrestricted submarine warfare.
The United States would not enter the conflict until April 1917 as Germany’s submarines once again sought civilian targets and encouraged Mexico to declare war on the U.S.
A Bazetta Resident’s Ordeal
For Smith, the transatlantic crossing meant a reunion with her husband, John, who had traveled to England months earlier to develop aircraft engines for the British. Smith, who had recently moved back to Braceville from Chicago to live with family in the absence of her husband, was asked to retrieve blueprints of his engine design and bring them to England.
On May 1, the Lusitania departed New York for Liverpool with Smith on board.
Seven days into the journey, the German submarine U-20 glimpsed the ocean liner 12 miles off the Irish coast. It was understood by the German command that French or British civilian vessels could also be carrying contraband war materiel such as artillery and munitions, and thereby classifying them as legitimate military targets. Indeed, the Lusitania’s manifest listed more than 4 million rounds of rifle cartridges, 1,250 shell casings and 18 nonexplosive fuses as cargo. Warnings to Americans traveling across the Atlantic were regularly posted in newspapers across the country.
At approximately 2:10 p.m., the U-20 fired a single torpedo into the Lusitania’s starboard side. Some 15 seconds later, a second explosion rocked the ship (perhaps ignited by coal dust, or as others have suggested but never proven, additional unreported artillery in the hold) and it began to list. Hundreds scrambled for lifeboats as the liner went down, while others abandoned ship and were cast into the freezing Atlantic.
According to her first statements – cabled to the U.S. Department of State from an American consul in Queenstown, Ireland, on May 9 – Smith was helped into a boat along with another 40 or 50 people. She had already practiced getting her lifebelt ready and was prepared when the torpedo hit.
The boat was lowered and “later we rescued two ladies and one man from the water,” Smith recalled. “I did not actually see the ship sinking. We rowed away and we were taken in tow by a fishing boat and afterwards were transferred to a patrol boat which landed us in Queenstown at 8:10 p.m. We were met on the wharf by the United States consulate.”
“I did not see any submarine,” she testified in her affidavit.
A day later, on May 10, the New York Times described Smith as “one of the coolest survivors of the Lusitania disaster,” and published a second account that added more details to her plight.
“I was in my room writing when the torpedo hit the ship,” she said, slightly revising her earlier account. “I am satisfied no warning was given. It is a surprising fact how many people were caught in their staterooms. Evidently, they shared my feelings that, if struck, the ship would stay up for a long time.”
This assumption, she said, led to the heavy losses of life among the first cabin passengers, many of whom went below to retrieve personal items. As her lifeboat pushed off, Smith estimated she was just 30 feet from the Lusitania as it sank, “leaving a mass of wreckage, swimmers, and dead bodies.” She was then taken to the home of a local doctor, where she was treated.
She was reunited with her husband on May 9. “I shall stay here as long as possible,” Smith noted.
Still, not all was well. According to Titanic International’s Voyage, issue 44, Smith suffered a nervous breakdown while living in England, and in 1916 she returned with her husband to the United States. Smith relocated to her parents’ Braceville farm and was taken care of by family members.
In 1924, Smith sought compensation as a victim of war through a claims commission staffed in Washington. According to documents, the commission at first found little evidence connecting Smith’s breakdown with the Lusitania disaster and awarded her $1,196 to compensate for the loss of her personal effects. A subsequent decision in December of that year found that Germany was obligated to pay another $2,500 in reparations to Smith. She died in 1928 at age 52 and is buried in Braceville Cemetery.
An Ellwood City Family’s Ordeal
As Smith scurried into her lifeboat – the only boat to be launched portside May 7 – Cecelia Smith Owens of Ellwood City, Pa., in Lawrence County, was frantically searching for her two sons, Reginald and Ronald. Also on the ship were her brother, Alfred Smith, his wife, Elizabeth, their daughter, Helen, and an infant son, Hubert.
The Owenses had emigrated from Swansea, Wales, around 1909. Owens’ husband, Hubert, found work in the local steel industry in Ellwood City, but her brother and sister-in-law wanted to return to Wales to live. Owens found it an opportune moment for her and the children to visit family in Swansea, while her husband elected to stay behind in Pennsylvania.
According to the Lusitania Resource, an in-depth online website with biographies of the Lusitania’s passengers and crew, along with links to primary documents, Owens allowed her two sons to play on deck with their cousin, Helen. She, on the other hand, would tend to her brother’s infant son while they packed in their cabin.
Shortly after the torpedo hit, Owens had first thought the ship had run aground, according to the Resource. Holding the infant, she raced from her cabin to locate her sons when she ran into her brother and sister-in-law on deck. After giving the infant to his parents, they began the search for their other missing children, to no avail.
Owens was thrown into a lifeboat, but it overturned as it was lowered into the water. She swam to a collapsible boat where she was rescued by a fishing trawler three hours later.
Once in Queenstown, Owens saw no sign of her children or her extended family.
Tragedy and Reunion
Hours earlier, Toronto journalist Ernest Cowper was positioned on the Lusitania’s railing when he caught a glimpse of a submarine’s conning tower approximately 1,000 yards off. “I immediately called my friend’s attention to it. Immediately we both saw the track of a torpedo, followed almost instantly by an explosion,” according to an account published in the New York Times on May 9, 1915.
In a retrospective piece published in the New York Times a year after the sinking, Cowper recalled moving about the ship’s deck, encountering the famous author Elbert Hubbard and his wife. Just days before the Lusitania sailed, according to an account in the Youngstown Vindicator, Hubbard dashed out a letter to a friend in Warren, Ohio, Dr. F. B. Rebham, thanking him for the tortoise shell eyeglasses he had sent him and that they arrived in New York safely. The letter wished Rebham well until they would meet again. Hubbard’s letter was likely the last ever written by the famed author, as he and his wife would perish aboard the Lusitania.
As Cowper maneuvered his way through the crowd of passengers, he encountered little Helen Smith, 6 years old, alone and separated from her family amid the chaos. Smith “appealed to me to save her,” the journalist recalled, “I placed her in a boat and saw her safely away. I got into one of the last boats to leave,” according to the May 9 Times account.
Cowper reconnected with Helen upon arrival in Queenstown and was looking after her when the young girl spotted her aunt, Cecelia Owens. The two reunited. The bodies of Helen’s parents and her infant brother were never recovered.
Helen would live the rest of her life in Swansea, where she died in 1993.
Owens’ husband was “stunned” to hear the news of the disaster, according to a May 8 account published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and he told the newspaper he would travel to New York to receive more detailed news of his family. He had earlier dismissed war zone warnings as “tommyrot,” according to the newspaper.
Owens would return to Ellwood City and then eventually move home to Swansea with her husband. She died in 1966, and her husband died a year later.
Owens lost both children on the Lusitania, their bodies never recovered. Her last memories of Reginald, age 8, and Ronald, age 11, were those of children being children, begging their mother for just a few more moments of playtime with their small cousin.
By then, the Lusitania was steaming through the choppy waters of the North Atlantic just south of Ireland, where the U-20 was waiting.
Pictured at top: Photo via Library of Congress.