On the seventh of May, 1915, due south of the Irish coast, a German U-Boat torpedoed and sunk the RMS Lusitania. 1,195 souls were lost including 120 Americans. The event did much to influence U.S. public opinion regarding whether or not we should be involved in Europe’s War.
In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson was staunchly committed to keeping the U.S. out of World War I. However, Britain was one of America’s closest trading partners, both an economic and strategic relationship. The Germans knew the Americans were providing much needed supplies to Great Britain and suspected these supplies included munitions. In light of these suspicions, the Germans announced unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters around Britain.
In early May 1915, the German Embassy placed ads in several New York newspapers warning that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. Incidentally, the ad appeared in one newspaper on the same page as an advertisement for the Lusitania’s return trip to Liverpool. In light of the concerns, the British Admiralty had warned the captain to avoid the area or take evasive action, such as zigzagging to make it more difficult for the U-boats to plot a vessel’s course.
Despite the warnings, the Lusitania left New York on May 1, 1915. Seven days later, due south of the Irish coast, German U-Boat U-20 commanded by Walther Schwieger torpedoed and sunk her.
Francis Stephens was a wealthy Canadian, who despite the warnings, chose to book passage on the ocean liner. She was one of the 1,195 who perished in the frigid waters of the South Irish Sea. Her remains were later recovered but rather than allow her to be buried in Irish soil, the family arranged for passage back to Canada. Four months after the sinking of the Lusitania, Mrs. Stephens’ remains were loaded aboard the RMS Hesperian for the trip home to Canada.
On September 4, 1915, Commander Schwieger was cruising just west of the Emerald Isle in U-Boat 20, when again he spied a British ship in his periscope––the Hesperian. Schwieger fired a torpedo into the ship’s starboard side before descending to the safety of the murky depths. The damaged ship managed to stay afloat until the following day and was being towed to port when the Hesperian, along with the casket containing Francis Stephens, slipped beneath the waves.
Francis Stephens was not a spy, nor a munitions manufacturer, she was simply a Canadian citizen who logged passage on a doomed ship. World War I claimed the lives of over twenty million people. But considering it from all angles, the circumstances of Stephens’ death and her final resting place are facts far better than any fiction.
(For more on the intriguing story of the Lusitania, and her ill-fated passengers, explore Erik Larsons’s book, Dead Wake.)