*Frohman was forty-seven.
*Twenty-four-by-fifty.
*The pair of Regal Suites, on either side of the Promendade Deck, catered to the creme de la creme of transatlantic travellers; each suite offered a dining room, two bedrooms, a bath and toilet, and sitting rooms for maids and valets.
*Of the seventy-seven positions he had attempted to fill, Staff Captain J.C. Anderson managed only forty-one.
*As he reports it, Van Dine has organized the tour in a fashion that suits his literary intentions; but he perhaps gives a false impression of the geography of the ship. The upper decks, A and B, were shared by the first and second classes, and Decks C and D were shared by the first, second and third classes. Only Deck E was exclusively third class (cabins only). Segregation of classes was accomplished in various ways; the Saloon dining room on D Deck, for example, was separated from the Second Cabin dining room by a network of galleys and pantries.
*A typical example would be a piece of hollow lead tubing with a circular disc of copper dividing it into two chambers, one filled with pitric acid, the other with sulfuric acid; a wax plug at either end would make the mini-firebomb airtight. The thickness of the copper disc could act in effect as a timing device, determining whether within days or hours when the acids would meet, and combust.
*Van Dine’s sense that the liner had reduced speed was correct, though by mid-morning of Sunday, May 2, the fog had cleared, and the order for “full astern” again was given. By noon, the Lusitania had logged only 501 nautical miles, putting her south of Nova Scotia-meager progress for a ship that had once set a record of 617 miles in a day. With a reduced number of boilers operating, and the battery of 192 furnaces only three-quarters fired, the ship was capable of little more.
*The suites had been decorated by various well-known English firms in such styles as Empire, Georgian, Queen Anne, Sheraton, Louis XV, Louis XVI and Colonial, with panelling and furniture utilizing satinwood, mahogany, sycamore and walnut. Suites and “special cabins” had modelled ceilings, ornamental lights and gilt fittings on doors and furniture.
*Van Dine’s somewhat snide opinion aside, for Vanderbilt this was a meaningful act. The millionaire always exhibited his horses at Olympia, and had transported twenty-six horses, sixteen coaches and a team of grooms and assistants across the Atlantic.
*The Titanic took four hours to sink; the Lusitania, by some accounts, as little as fifteen minutes.
*Even with the Cameronia passengers, the Lusitania was underbooked. While second class was over capacity with 600 passengers, third class had 367 bookings out of a possible 1,186; and first class had 290 where 552 could be accommodated. Still, Turner was in a sense correct, as the 1,257 aboard represented the largest number of passengers on a single crossing since the start of the war.
*Existing blueprints of the Lusitania indicate two hospital rooms for men and one for women, side by side on the shelter deck, mid-ship and somewhat aft. The brig, however, is not indicated on these plans, though it is clear from numerous sources that the ship indeed had a brig, which (according to Van Dine, at least) was one of those two hospital rooms designated for men.
*Sixty-eight feet by fifty-two feet.
*Lauriat-who played in the daily ship’s betting pool-was keenly interested in the ship’s progress; his approximation of her speed was correct, though he was surely unaware that at twenty knots, the Lusitania had hit her top speed, due to the reduced number of boilers in use.
*In addition Captain Turner had tripled his lookouts, aware he was fast approaching dangerous waters, and needing to take a fix on his position as soon as land was sighted, to begin working out the course and speed to port at Liverpool. Because of her size, the Lusitania could only cross the mouth of the Mersey at high tide. . and if he missed that, he would have to spend twelve hours steaming back and forth, a virtual target for prowling U-boats.
*In 1915, Van Dine was twenty-eight.
*McClure’s concept would eventually become the League of Nations and, decades later, the United Nations.
*Van Dine overstates: A more fair characterization would be that the Lusitania was primed to become an armed auxiliary cruiser.
*The mastheads rose 216 feet; the ship was 785 feet long, extending beyond the wharf into the Hudson River (which had been dredged to accommodate her). The 10-million-dollar liner had 192 furnaces, 6 turbines (68,000 accumulative horsepower), and 2 massive boilers taking up four boiler rooms. In the hull were 26,000 steel plates held by 4,000,000 rivets. The rudder alone weighed 65 tons.
*Forty-one first- and second-class passengers transferred from the Cameronia to the Lusitania; three hundred third-class passengers were forced to wait almost a week to board another ship, the Transylvania.
*The passenger list of the Lusitania included 129 children, 39 of whom were infants.
*The Lusitania had seven main decks, lettered A through F, highest to lowest, with the Hold Deck at the bottom. A Deck was also known as the Boat Deck; B Deck as the Promenade Deck; C Deck as the Shelter Deck; D Deck as the Upper Deck; E Deck as the Main Deck; and F Deck as the Lower Deck.
*The author’s aversion to formal evening wear relates to his disdain of traditional, imposed values, not to any preference for casual attire; Van Dine was in fact something of a clotheshorse with a fashion sense both fastidious and stylish, particularly after his mystery-writing success.
*Van Dine was separated, though not legally; his wife, Katherine (and their daughter, Beverly), were living in Los Angeles, waiting for Van Dine to “establish himself in the literary world” and send for them. He did eventually divorce Katherine.
*Crew drills on the Lusitania invariably alternated between the same two emergency boats, Number 13 and Number 14; lowering the boats-a tricky procedure-was not part of the drill. Hard-sided lifeboats on the ship numbered twenty-two, odd numbers hanging starboard, even hanging portside; stored in cradles underneath these conventional boats were twenty-six “collapsibles,” folding boats consisting of a shallow wooden keel with canvas sides.
*Fifty-five feet by fifty feet.
*Forty-four feet by fifty-two feet.
*The telegram read, “Submarines active off south coast of Ireland.” Thinking it might be part of a longer message that was broken up, Turner wired for details; the same message was repeated.
*The severe and steadily increasing list of the ship made safe loading and launching of the lifeboats an impossibility. Boats on the portside had swung inward, many smashed to kindling; starboard, they swung out too far to safely mount and lower.