Original subtitles

Twelve miles off the coast of Ireland,

the world's finest passenger liner, Lusitania,

has entered the war zone.

On board, nearly 2,000 men, women and children.

Hidden beneath the waves,

German submarine U-20 fires a single torpedo...

That will change the course of history.

It will be branded one of the world's first war crimes

and pull America into the fight.

Based on first hand-accounts,

this is the true story of twelve people

whose lives now hang in the balance.

From the moment of impact,

Lusitania will survive for just 18 minutes.

18 minutes that will decide the fate of thousands.

9:30 in the morning.

Six days before the Lusitania's sinking.

The finest passenger liner in the world

is preparing to embark on the 3,000-mile voyage

from New York to Liverpool.

There would have been sightseers

coming to see the Lusitania off.

There would have been bands.

There would have been flags flying.

The Lusitania was a celebrity ship.

It was a major event.

There were politicians, there were socialites,

people saying goodbye or people saying hello.

There would have been first-class passengers

arriving by carriage or by car,

their luggage being carried on board for them.

Other less well-off passengers struggling on the quayside,

lugging their suitcases with them.

There was always a sense of occasion,

a sense of a party, if you like,

when the Lusitania was in town.

787 feet long,

Lusitania is one of the world's largest ships.

Her seven decks accommodate over 2,000 passengers,

from 260 luxurious first-class saloons...

To the more modest cabins down in third class.

Among the third-class passengers sailing today

are 47-year-old George Hook and his children.

The Hook family were originally from Kent.

George Hook and his wife

had taken their two children to Canada.

Unfortunately, in 1908,

his wife contracted pneumonia and died,

leaving him a widower.

Now, on the gangplank

of what they simply called "the big ship,"

young Elsie and Frank Hook

are returning home to england with their father.

And the whole family is just a little nervous.

Elsie was quite tall for her age.

She was a year too old to be classed as a child,

but George had booked her a child ticket,

and she had to duck as they boarded the ship

to make herself look slightly younger.

The 601 second-class passengers

include nettie and Walter Mitchell

from the north of Ireland.

Childhood sweethearts,

they had immigrated to America

when Walter was offered a job in a flax mill.

When he was offered this job

in Newark, New Jersey,

he just said to nettie, "will you come with me?"

And she said yes.

They got married just after Christmas,

and that was in December 1912.

They really seem to have loved America.

Three years later,

nettie and Walter have decided to return home to Ireland

with their 10-month-old son.

They also called him Walter Dawson Mitchell, too,

so he's baby Walter.

And there's this one here

that shows the baby looking out of his basket,

and on the back it says,

"rowing for the shore

at 16 weeks old."

Traveling with the Mitchells

is nettie's brother, John,

who immigrated to Connecticut five years ago.

During the Mitchells' time away from home,

the world has seen a cataclysmic change.

While America remains neutral,

Britain and Germany are at war.

Their armies are locked in stalemate

on the battlefields of the western front.

Casualties have reached more than half a million.

At the end of 1914,

the British impose a total sea blockade,

preventing even food from reaching Germany.

This blockade was surely felt in Germany,

so the German public as well as the German military circles

asked for something in order to retaliate on the British.

The German high command's response

comes in the form

of a new, relatively untested war machine:

The U-boat.

The German government decided

that it would declare a war zone around the British Isles,

and in that war zone

ships could be torpedoed on sight.

As the Lusitania prepares to sail,

the German attack submarine U-20 is headed for the war zone.

To destroy any British vessels in its path.

At 12:28, Lusitania weighs anchor.

Settling into his saloon-class cabin on the promenade deck

is New York theatre producer Charles Frohman.

Charles Frohman was one of the leading

theatrical impresarios of his day.

He was a great friend of j.M. Barrie.

He was the first person

to perceive that a play like "Peter Pan"

could be a huge success.

He bought the rights and staged it.

Frohman is among those who read the notice

placed in the American press by the German embassy:

A warning to all passengers

that British ships entering the war zone

do so at their own risk.

But he just sort of shrugged all this off.

When one friend said, you know, "do you fear the U-boats?"

He said, "I'm not afraid of U-boats.

I'm only afraid of ious."

Thousands of people

would have been there

even on a normal crossing,

but this was not a normal crossing.

People knew they were going into a dangerous situation.

Many more people even than usual

had come to see the Lusitania depart,

lots of press men, lots of photographers

rather macabrely taking photographs of people,

saying, "look, if anything happens to you,

at least we've got your picture, haven't we?"

Leaving pier 54 and America behind,

Lusitania embarks on her voyage...

Carrying the hopes and dreams of 2,000 people

across the Atlantic...

Into the danger zone.

Day two of Lusitania's 202nd crossing of the Atlantic.

No one on board is aware

that this is destined to be her last.

New York theatre producer Charles Frohman

spends most of his time in his first-class cabin,

accompanied by piles of scripts.

Frohman was a real workaholic.

That's probably what had made him such a success,

but he suffered quite badly from rheumatism.

He walked very slowly, leaning on a stick,

a stick which was so closely attached to him,

he called it his wife.

So he wasn't often seen out and about the ship.

Frohman was pleasantly surprised to discover

that a close personal friend is also traveling in first class.

Two decks below, in cabin d15,

star of the silent screen,

25-year-old French actress Rita Jolivet.

She had in fact, in spite of the warning,

only bought her ticket that morning.

She had a brother who was in France

who she believed was about to be posted to the western front,

and she wanted to go over to France to see him

before he got involved in the fighting.

During the crossing,

the flagship passenger liner lives up to her nickname,

"greyhound of the seas."

Driven by four giant Parsons turbine engines

producing 68,000 horsepower,

Lusitania's unrivaled top speed of 25 knots

has already made her the pride of her country.

The Lusitania

represented Britain's maritime might

in recapturing the speed record from the Germans

after the Germans had had it

for ten previous years.

It made her world-famous.

Overseeing this massive floating powerhouse

is the ship's second engineer,

44-year-old father of three, Andrew Cockburn.

Being an engineer on the Lusitania

was the pinnacle.

Everyone wanted his job,

but you had to earn it.

Cockburn was a senior and very experienced engineer.

He'd been with cunard for 22 years,

he was obviously a very skillful man.

His nickname apparently was "wizard of the seas."

He was ridiculously competent.

Even with one boiler shut

due to war economies,

Lusitania maintains an impressive 21 knots.

At this speed,

she will make landfall in just under six days...

A speed considered fast enough to keep her safe.

U-boats were designed to attack slow-moving targets.

So speed is the best defense

against submarine attack.

3,000 miles away,

the German attack submarine U-20

has begun its patrol of the war zone.

At the periscope, eager to make a kill,

captain Walter Schwieger.

Schwieger joined the imperial German Navy

in 1903,

so by the start of the first world war,

he was an experienced and well-respected officer.

Deep in the German military archives

lies a remarkable hundred-year-old document,

written aboard the U-20.

This document contains all operational information,

with times and positions.

It gives even the ideas and the thoughts

of the commanding officer towards an individual action.

Ok, this is what we are looking for.

In German it is called "kriegstagebuch."

This war diary

will outline in extraordinary detail

Schwieger's personal account

of the course of events over the next five days.

He probably had no idea

about the historical significance of his report.

Five days from now,

U-20 will change the outcome of the war.

On Lusitania's bridge,

U-boats are the last thing on the mind

of second officer Percy Hefford.

For him, the chance to serve on a ship as grand as this

is the realization of a long-held dream.

He was hard-working, reliable.

He was sober as well, which is noted,

so I suspect that not everybody else was.

He'd just got married.

He'd been married for three months.

And way back in 1907, he had seen the Lusitania

just after her launch

when she was being fitted out in Glasgow,

and he turned to the friend next to him and said,

"I'd give my soul to serve in a big modern ship like that."

In the third-class dining hall,

the Hook family enjoy a hearty lunch of roast beef

with mashed potatoes, plum pudding, and sauce,

all served on white China plates.

Third-class accommodation on the Lusitania

was better than what you would have found

on a lot of transatlantic liners.

Even things like the bedding in third class

was of a higher standard than you'd see elsewhere.

The next three days of Lusitania's voyage

pass without incident.

Inside the U-20 submarine it's a very different story,

as captain Schwieger begins to carry out his mission.

The first ship he encountered

was a very small sailing ship

which he sank on the 5th of may.

On the next day, early in the morning,

he found another ship, a small British merchant ship,

and he was able to sink it.

The next vessel was a British merchant ship, centurion,

late on the 6th of may.

He sank this ship also with torpedoes.

Three ships sunk.

That was average.

But of course he was, like any other commander,

eager to achieve more.

But Schwieger's patrol is almost at an end.

The U-20 is low on fuel, with just three torpedoes left.

On the evening of may 6th, off the coast of Ireland,

Lusitania enters the war zone,

alone.

There was some concern amongst the passengers

as to why there was no escort.

Any ship that's going to be released

for that kind of duty is going to slow her down

if she has to keep speed with it.

So actually the best thing for her was to just go in alone.

Sailing at full speed,

Lusitania would be in Liverpool within the day.

Unfortunately, the morning brings with it

a thick blanket of fog,

making full speed impossible.

Captain Turner had been obliged to slow his ship,

to sound the foghorn,

and because of the fog, it left Turner uncertain

of his precise position off the Irish coast.

Turner was looking for a land fix on his position

to fix it exactly,

making sure exactly where he is.

What we're looking towards here

is the old head of kinsale,

which passengers on board the Lusitania

on the morning of 7th of may

would have seen as the fog lifted.

They would have been able to see

that green smudge of land on the horizon

that was the old head of kinsale.

They knew they were very close

to the coast of southern Ireland.

That made many of them feel a lot safer.

Nettie always said how happy they were.

That morning they saw Ireland for the first time,

and it must have been so exciting

'cause they were heading home.

They were going to see all the parents

and their brothers and sisters,

and they were going to show off their grandson

for the first time.

One o'clock in the afternoon.

The U-20 surfaces before beginning its journey home.

In the distance,

captain Schwieger thinks he can just make out

the four stacks of a steamship.

And here he states

that the ship is identified as a large passenger liner.

And this electrified the crew instantly.

It's exactly the prize Schwieger has been waiting for.

Around the same time,

captain Turner receives a telegram

from the British admiralty,

warning of a U-boat somewhere in the Irish Channel.

When you consider

there had been heavy fog that morning

and that for some of the day

he hadn't actually been sure where the Lusitania was himself

and had had to alter course to try and get a bearing,

quite how this was going to be effective

I can't really see.

To minimize the danger,

Turner orders the ship to increase speed

and resume course for Liverpool...

A decision that will prove fatal.

The passenger liner was turning its course

to run along the Irish coast,

which brought the passenger ship

into an ideal position for attack.

He simply had to wait in his position

to fire the torpedo.

At two o'clock,

the hooks have a rendezvous on the third-class promenade deck.

They were standing there

waiting for a young man to come by

and give Elsie Hook a rose

that he had promised her earlier that day.

While Elsie was waiting for the young man,

a lady asked her if she would mail a letter for her.

Well, not wanting to miss the man

who was going to give her the rose,

Elsie took the letter

and started running toward the mailbox.

Schwieger observed the target

constantly through the periscope.

He was preparing his boat for attack.

The torpedo was made ready.

The rest of the crew on board was waiting for his orders.

It was such a beautiful afternoon.

Charles Frohman was strolling out on deck,

and he was smoking his cigar.

750 yards away,

Schwieger is about to attempt the impossible.

And it is recorded in here,

"target estimated to run at 22 knots."

No other target before had been hit

that was running at a speed like this.

It needed just one single order to fire the torpedo.

"Torpedo los!"

Traveling at 40 miles an hour,

the torpedo will strike its target

in less than a minute.

Nine minutes past two.

The torpedo fired by the U-20

closes in.

Lusitaniais just seconds from disaster.

On the bridge,

Percy Hefford receives an urgent call from the lookout.

Hefford was the senior officer

on the bridge of Lusitania

when the lookouts reported

there was a torpedo coming.

He repeated what he heard...

There is a torpedo coming.

By the time he rushed to the starboard side,

he didn't have time to see it.

He would have felt the impact before he'd seen anything amiss.

At ten minutes past two,

the torpedo punches a hole just below the waterline,

behind the bridge on the starboard side.

From the upper deck,

Charles Frohman gauges the situation

with typical composure.

Frohman took his cigar out of his mouth,

and he remarked to a friend of his standing next to him,

"this is going to be a close call."

Elsie Hook has almost reached the ship's post box

when she feels the impact.

She had no idea what it was,

so she ran back up the stairs onto deck

and found her father and her brother Frank.

George decided to make for the top decks,

where the lifeboats were, with the children.

And while Elsie was running,

she looked down and saw a wad of money,

so she bent over, picked it up, showed it to her father,

and her father said, "throw it away, girl.

It might cost you your life."

Below, in her cabin,

Rita Jolivet grapples with an agonizing decision.

She was so terrified of drowning

that she actually had with her a small pearl-handled revolver.

She planned to shoot herself if the worst should come.

The captain rushes up to the bridge

and takes charge of any kind of countermeasures

that can be taken.

Just off duty,

engineer Andrew Cockburn had been on the upper deck.

And his immediate response

was a highly professional one...

Let's go down and check that these doors

were in fact closed, according to orders.

As far as he could see, they were.

Less than a minute after the torpedo strikes,

lusitaniais about to receive a second blow.

In his war diary,

captain Schwieger records that, very much to his surprise...

There was a secondary explosion,

much stronger than his torpedo explosion.

He says. "There is a fire,

and smoke is coming out of the ship."

Lusitaniais carrying a secret cargo of war munitions,

but this is not the source of the explosion.

It is almost certainly caused by a ruptured steam pipe.

Schwieger says he could observe

that the ship was blowing off steam,

and eventually he could see the name Lusitania

on the stern in golden letters.

Thousands of gallons of sea water

are now pouring into the ship,

causing it to list to starboard.

As the ship began to sink,

so the second officer would call out the degree of list,

and that degree began to get more and more and more.

Lusitania is only twelve miles from land.

Captain Turner orders the ship hard a starboard

in a desperate attempt to reach the coast.

Unfortunately, there was no steam to make it happen.

As vainly as they tried to turn the ship,

she just carried on going

in the previous direction she was set to,

under her own momentum.

On the promenade deck,

Charles Frohman is still remarkably untroubled

by the unfolding disaster.

One of his friends who was standing by him at the rail

got hold of a lifejacket

and said, "look, Charles, you had better put this on."

But he looked at it, he refused,

he gave it away to a woman who didn't have one.

Rita Jolivet rushes from her cabin

to join Frohman on the deck,

looking distinctly less calm.

Charles Frohman, I think,

must have seen how frightened she was.

She said that he gave her directions

as calmly as if he was directing her on stage,

saying to her, "hold on to the rail.

Save your strength 'til we know what to do."

Rita didn't tell him

that she was carrying the little revolver.

Three minutes since the attack.

With two warheads left,

Schwieger and his crew continue to observe.

Schwieger says,

"on the ship there's obviously great panic.

There are signs of confusion.

The boats were being lowered,

and the occupants are spilt out into the sea.

It has the appearance the ship is likely to turn over

in a very short period of time."

Nettie and Walter Mitchell make it up to the deck

and join the mass of people rushing to get to the lifeboats.

Nettie and Walter didn't have lifejackets,

but they got into a lifeboat which was launched successfully.

In the meantime, John got into a lifeboat

that overturned as it was being launched.

He held on to a rope at the side of the upturned lifeboat,

and people were jumping down on top of him

as he was holding on to the rope.

Deep in the heart of the ship,

engineer Andrew Cockburn battles to get to the engine room,

seven decks below.

His route takes him past a group of ship's butchers,

equally desperate to get up to the lifeboats.

Although lunch had just finished,

they were already preparing meat for the evening meals.

One of them made a run for the stairs.

The others decided they would try something different,

and they thought they could get out faster

if they crowded themselves into a service lift

that usually carried meat up several decks

from the preparation area

to the galleys, where it was cooked.

So they jumped into the lift and tried to make it out that way.

Then, at 2:14...

Disaster.

The power went off.

The lift stopped.

Both the passenger lift,

which contained first-class passengers,

and also the meat lift,

which contained the butchers,

who thought that was a good way out,

and sadly they were all trapped.

Engineer Cockburn was hearing these screams.

The butchers must have come to a pretty dreadful end.

Lusitania has a total of 70 lifeboats and rafts...

More than enough for everyone on board.

But the severe listing

makes launching them almost impossible.

The ship was tilting right down towards the water,

baby carriages careering hither and thither,

people losing their footing,

struggling to hold on to anything

to keep themselves upright.

George Hook realized what was happening.

He could see that with the ship tilting,

heavy lifeboats were swinging in right over the deck,

and people were getting mashed

as they tried to push those lifeboats out

so they could be launched.

He can see lifeboats landing on top of each other,

lifeboats flipping and tipping everybody into the water

and then landing on top of people,

he can see them being dragged underwater.

It's not a good prospect to try and save his family.

So he said to his son and daughter,

"we're not going to get into a lifeboat.

It's too dangerous."

He lined his family up at the rail.

He said to his son and his daughter,

"we're going to jump."

By now the ship is severely listing

at an angle of 25 degrees.

But the captain hasn't given up hope.

Turner became concerned

that the hatches that led up to the bridge from the forecastle

had not shut,

and so he sent Hefford down to make sure that they were closed.

34-year-old newlywed Percy Hefford

is never seen again.

Beneath the chaos,

captain Schwieger contemplates his next move.

There's one remarkable paragraph

in this document in here,

which is usually technical and military details.

He says, "I couldn't find it in my heart

to fire a second torpedo,

in this mass of people trying to save themselves."

His mission accomplished,

captain Schwieger orders the U-20 to return to base.

His job was to sink ships,

and not to rescue people.

On the Lusitania,

Cockburn finally makes it down to the engine room.

But the situation is desperate.

Cockburn finds in fact

that all the machinery's out of action,

water's flooding in.

He has a quick consultation with the chief engineer

and can just make him out in the darkness.

Hearing the water in the engine room,

one of the largest compartments in the ship,

Cockburn said, "there's nothing we can do."

They'd lost all power,

all control.

There was no way to steer the vessel.

There was no hope.

Inside the ship,

as everything's tilting

and the walls become floors

and the staircases become impassable,

it's terrifying,

and your natural instinct would be to get out.

Sixteen minutes since the impact.

The deck where the Hook family clings to the railing

is almost in the water.

Elsie stood at the rail,

looked at the water, and prayed,

"please god, save me, please."

Once she had finished her prayer,

she heard two women behind her crying,

and she turned around and said,

"don't worry, ladies. God will save you."

The water reaches their feet.

It's now or never.

George tells his children to jump.

Frank was ripped away from his father and his sister,

and they lost him.

Charles Frohman saw this green cliff of water

surging up the deck towards them.

In those final moments,

Charles Frohman apparently paraphrased some lines

from his beloved play, "Peter Pan":

"Why fear death?

It is the most beautiful adventure that life gives us."

The friends were thrown into the sea,

ripped apart,

amid all that debris...

Lifeboats, bodies...

Charles Frohman disappeared beneath the water.

Andrew Cockburn is still three decks below.

It's a race for his life.

The lusitaniais nearing its final moments.

You would have felt it sinking out from underneath you.

It's plunging to the bottom at this point.

The ship was doomed, and he knew it.

You needed to get away.

Somehow, he manages to burst into daylight

at c deck, on a promenade,

and scramble up the deck.

Cockburn makes it to the rail with seconds to spare.

At 2:28,

just 18 minutes after she was struck,

the Lusitania disappears beneath the waves.

For many,

2:28 is the last minute of their lives.

For others,

stranded in the freezing waters of the Atlantic,

the horror is only beginning.

Word of the Lusitania's sinking reached land almost immediately,

but two hours later,

the rescue boats have yet to arrive.

Nobody necessarily

wanted to close the Lusitania that quickly

with a U-boat with torpedoes around.

Do you want to sink as well?

Of course you don't.

Getting sunk and more people in the water

is not going to help anyone.

Ireland is just 12 miles away...

Agonizingly close,

but too far to swim.

Hundreds of passengers and crew

are at the mercy of the freezing conditions.

The water was some 50 degrees fahrenheit,

or 10 degrees celsius.

Even those lucky enough to get into lifeboats

were shuddering with cold,

and of course the cold water took its toll,

particularly on the very young.

Only 6 of 44 lifeboats were successfully launched.

In one of them, George and Elsie Hook

desperately scan the water for young Frank.

Frank!

Still without lifejackets in another of the boats,

the Mitchells believe they are safe.

But the lifeboat didn't have a bung in it.

I presume a bung is some sort of plug.

And it sank slowly.

In the water,

survivors cling to upturned lifeboats.

They include ship's engineer Andrew Cockburn,

and despite her terrible fear of drowning,

Rita Jolivet.

Some of the survivors describe what it was like

swimming through the drifting debris and the bodies,

pushing aside the bodies of drowned children and babies,

said like lily pads on a pond.

It traumatized them, those sights,

for the rest of their lives.

Nettie says that the baby died very quickly.

The water was freezing.

She knew the baby had died.

The last thing Walter said was,

"I can't hold on anymore."

And she said "you have to keep holding on...

Holding on to the baby...

Holding on to life."

That was the last thing that she remembered.

The rescue boats did finally arrive,

three hours after the sinking.

By the following morning,

more than 700 people have been saved,

including captain Turner,

who had been swept off the bridge

as the ship went down.

But the dead will wash up on the shores around queenstown

for weeks to come.

So many bodies were brought ashore

that they're described as being stacked up on the quayside

like cord wood.

Sailors carried the bodies of the dead children ashore

in their arms as carefully

as if those children had still been living

and laid them by the sides of the adults on the quayside.

George and Elsie Hook

spend three grueling days trying to find Frank's body.

Elsie and her father

had to go from mortuary to mortuary,

inspecting the lines of bodies lying there under white sheets,

rows and rows of them,

pulling back the sheet each time,

inspecting the face underneath,

wondering whether they'd see Frank there or not.

Then a man came up to George Hook and said,

"I've heard about a boy who's in hospital outside of queenstown.

Have you looked at him to see if he's Frank?"

The boy they find has a broken leg,

caused by a falling lifeboat.

Apart from that,

young Frank Hook is completely unharmed.

And the first words out of Frank's mouth

when he saw his father were,

"gee, dad, it took you long enough to get here."

Nettie's brother John also survived.

He, too, is searching for the bodies of his family.

Among the dead, under a tarpaulin,

he found Walter and nettie's bodies.

And he thought he saw her eyelid moving.

Just a flicker of life.

Having lost her husband and baby,

nettie makes a miraculous recovery.

Three days after the sinking,

with many of the bodies still unidentified,

the mass funerals begin.

The people of queenstown line the streets in silence

as the endless procession of coffins

winds its way through the town.

At the same time,

the U-20 has almost reached its base in Germany.

Captain Schwieger receives a hero's welcome

for his great military triumph.

But it will be short-lived.

Germany was celebrating

this big military success,

but on diplomatic channels

the German government conveyed to the British

as well to the American government

that it was terribly sick about this heavy loss of life.

1,192 people perished in the Lusitania's sinking.

Among them, 128 Americans.

President of the United States Woodrow Wilson

announced his outrage in the strongest terms.

Up until the sinking of the Lusitania,

the United States was, on balance,

more anti-allied than anti-German.

The sinking of the Lusitania changed all that

in that it began to make the Germans look like the villains.

Wilson himself puts it very well.

He says, "the British are thieves.

The Germans are murderers."

Within weeks,

under growing international pressure,

Germany ceased its unrestricted U-boat campaign.

When it resumed in 1917,

America immediately entered the war,

on the side of the British.

19 months later, Germany surrendered.

World war I was over.

The name Lusitania is etched in history

as a tragedy on a global scale.

But it's also a story of people...

The passengers and crew

who embarked on a journey a century ago...

A story of those who died...

And those who lived.