JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — Joplin resident John Ferguson was heading home.
A native of Ireland, Ferguson, 43, had lived in Joplin since 1889, growing wealthy in the quarter-century that he called the mining town his home, according to newspaper reports. At the time of his trip, he owned at least two Joplin businesses: Club Saloon and Union Bar, as well as real estate in Texas and Oklahoma.
His father, Comack Ferguson, still lived in County Cavan, Ireland, and John was hoping to talk to him about constructing a new building in Joplin.
Having arrived in New York on the first leg of his trip back to Ireland, Ferguson sent a short note back to his Joplin attorney, J.H. Spurgeon, The Joplin Globe reported.
The date was May 1, 1915.
“I reached New York last night and have booked quarters on the Lusitania of the Cunard Line. The boat sails at 10 o’clock this morning. It is an English ship, but I guess I can get through on it all right.”
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With the sinking of the Titanic three years earlier, the Lusitania was perhaps the world’s most luxurious means of ocean travel, with every kind of amenity and service, except perhaps a couple. Passengers during a previous voyage had taken a vote to censure the shipping company “for two flagrant omissions from the ship. She has neither a grouse moor nor a deer forest aboard,” according to historian Erik Larson. His recent book on the Lusitania, “Dead Wake,” has become a best-seller since it was released in March.
The Lusitania was also the world’s fastest passenger ship in 1915. It set speed records for crossing the Atlantic on earlier voyages, of which she had made more than 200. At one point, the Lusitania made the trip from Ireland to New York City in 4 days, 11 hours and 42 minutes.
When World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, Britain’s navy took possession of the Lusitania and its sister ship Mauretania. The latter was used as a troop transport, but because the Lusitania consumed so much coal when operating, the Admiralty opted to allow Cunard to continue to use her as a passenger ship, according to Larson.
But that was no guarantee of her safety.
Germany had declared the waters around Britain an area of war, in retaliation for a British blockade, and on May 1 — the day that Ferguson sailed aboard the Lusitania — its embassy in the United States had placed ads in New York newspapers with this warning:
“Notice! Travelers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travelers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.”
Spurgeon, Ferguson’s attorney, told Joplin newspapers later that his client was eager to get to Ireland, having been planning the trip for months, and added: “I do not believe he would have been scared out by the warnings published in New York newspapers.”
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When Ferguson departed on May 1, he did so with another 1,961 passengers and crew - 189 of them Americans, noted Larson. But also on board, according to the ship’s manifest, were munitions of various sorts, including 1,250 cases of artillery shells and another 4,200 cases of rifle ammunition.
None of the passengers knew that, however.
“The British knew that made it fair game,” said Doran Cart, senior curator at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial in Kansas City. Cart said he has seen the manifest.
“We have the original on exhibit right now,” he said.
Cart said there was another person who did not know those munitions were on board: Walther Schwieger, captain of U-20, a German submarine that had departed from Germany just before the Lusitania sailed from New York. Schwieger already had sunk other ships in the region on this tour, and the Lusitania had received a warning via its new wireless system that submarines had been active in the region.
On May 7, Schwieger’s U-Boat and the unescorted Lusitania, bound for Liverpool, intersected in the Irish Sea, 11 miles off the Irish coast. It was a lucky moment for the submarine crew, catching the much faster ship at exactly the right angle. The U-20’s torpedo struck the Lusitania on the starboard side near the bridge. Cart said Schwieger didn’t know the ship’s identity until after the torpedo struck, and another of his officers was able to identify the ship according to its profile through a periscope.
Schwieger also noted in his log that there was a second explosion.
“He was pretty surprised by the second explosion,” said Cart. “He speculated that it was a boiler, coal dust or powder. He didn’t speculate as to what kind of powder it might have been.”
In the century since, there has been a lot of speculation about the source of that explosion, with many wondering if the Lusitania was carrying more than the munitions that were listed on its manifest. But subsequent investigations concluded that it was most likely either explosive coal dust in the empty coal bunkers, or the rupture of a main steam line, according to Larson.
Whatever the cause, the Lusitania sank in 18 minutes, taking 1,191 people to their deaths.
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Spurgeon noted in reports at the time that Ferguson had made five previous trips to Europe, traveling second class each time, and thought it reasonable to conclude that’s how he traveled this time.
“I am very fearful he met his death after the liner went down,” Spurgeon told the newspapers. They also reported that Ferguson’s father, Comack, sent a telegram to Spurgeon a few days later: “Cannot get any account of John.”
There is no record of what happened to Ferguson in those 18 minutes, whether he escaped the ship and drowned in the sea, or died aboard it as it went to the bottom. For days, the community waited, but word never came. Spurgeon said Ferguson left no will behind, and the attorney went before probate court and was named administrator of the estate. Ferguson’s Joplin property and other real estate passed to his family, most of whom still lived in Ireland.
Because the liquor licenses for both the Club Saloon and Union Bar were in Ferguson’s name, the businesses were not allowed to continue operating and Spurgeon had them closed on May 19, less than two weeks after the sinking.
Joplin’s city attorney at the time, E.F. Cameron, said the fact that Ferguson sailed on board the Lusitania was all the proof that was needed that he had died, and the courts could proceed. Ultimately, Ferguson’s Joplin property became the home of an eight-story bank building that was built a few years later.
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Despite the German warnings in American newspapers, despite German attacks on neutral shipping - including American merchant vessels - and despite German attacks on civilians in the first year of the war, the sinking of the Lusitania came as a shock.
Col. Edward House, who served as President Woodrow Wilson’s personal emissary to Great Britain, said the sinking of the Lusitania would propel the United States out of its neutrality.
“We shall be at war with Germany within a month,” he predicted, according to Larson.
But it was not the case.
“There was an outrage, more on the East Coast than in the Midwest,” said Cart. “It was seen as the killing of civilians, more than as act of war.”
For the majority of Americans at the time, noted Cart, the war continued to be seen as a “European war,” and despite the outrage, there was no pressure for America to get involved.
America’s entry into the war didn’t come for almost two years, but the day it did there was a loyalty parade down Main Street in Joplin - passing the club that Ferguson had owned - and it drew thousands of spectators, according to reports at the time. Joplin draftees were then given a steak dinner at the House of Lords and escorted with marching bands to the train station, according to historical accounts.
Cart said it’s important to remember that the sinking of the Lusitania was a key event in the war, even if didn’t shift U.S. opinion dramatically in favor of intervention when it happened.
“It was total war and this actually brought home the fact that it was total war.”
Cart said that what happened a century ago has been overshadowed by the events that followed, specifically World War II, but noted: “World War I was the cataclysmic event of the 20th Century and into the 21st Century.”
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Questions have continued to haunt the Lusitania in the century since it sank, such as why the British, with their knowledge of submarine activity, left the Lusitania alone as it approached its destination, failing to provide an escort. Did they deliberately expose it in the hopes it would be sunk? And what was the source of that second explosion, and how did such a ship sink so fast?
Larson notes in his book that Winston Churchill had earlier in the year told Walter Runciman, the head of England’s Board of Trade, that it was important to attract neutral shipping to Great Britain “in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany.”
“For our part, we want the traffic — the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.”
Cart dismissed the theory, however. “Anytime something like this happens there are all these conspiracy theories. I just think the Germans were in the right place at the right time. Things just happen in wartime.”
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Information from: The Joplin (Mo.) Globe, https://www.joplinglobe.com
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