Margaret Haig Mackworth was born Margaret Haig Thomas in Kensington, London, England, on 12th June 1883, the daughter of David Alfred and Sybil Margaret Thomas (née Haig). Her father was an influential millionaire having made his fortune from coal mine ownership and he had also been a Liberal member of Parliament for Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan, in South Wales.
She was an only child, and spent her childhood at Llanwern House, near Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales. She was educated at Notting Hill High School in London, and later at St. Leonards School at St. Andrews, Fifeshire, Scotland. She then went to Somerville College, Oxford, in 1904, to study history, but left after two terms and returned to her family home at Llanwern House and began to work for her father.
On 9th July 1908, Margaret Thomas married Sir Humphrey Mackworth in Newport, Monmouthshire, and as the wife of a knight, she assumed the title of Lady Mackworth. It was not a successful marriage, however. Des Hickey and Gus Smith in their book Seven Days to Disaster described the gulf between them and the way that she managed to fill her time: -
Margaret Thomas had led a sheltered childhood in Wales among a small circle of family and friends. She married, unsuccessfully, a neighbour, Sir Humphrey Mackworth, twelve years her senior. Their interests were at odds: he had a passion for fox-hunting, she loved books and considered hunting uncivilised. Soon tiring of her empty life in a house-hold run by three maids, a cook, a housemaid and a parlour maid, she looked for more rewarding interests. Within four months of her marriage she had joined the Pankhurst movement, the Women's Social and Political Union, espousing the cause of votes for women. She invited Mrs. Pankhurst to speak at the first meeting in Newport: she, unable to come, sent her daughter Sylvia instead. Sir Humphrey refused to allow her inside the house.
As her local suffrage branch became more aggressive, Lady Mackworth grew more daring. She burned Post Office mails, a militant strategy adopted by the movement. Not surprisingly, she was arrested and charged. As her trial drew near it became clear that she would be given
the option of a fine or a prison sentence. She discussed the options with her husband. He was strongly opposed to her going to prison, but she insisted that it would do her cause no service if she paid her fine. She was found guilty and sentenced to a month in the County Gaol at Usk. As a suffragette she was allowed to wear her own clothes and keep some books in her cell. She refused to eat the prison food and drank only water. The experience marked her and on her release she vowed, “I shall campaign for the suffrage cause until the franchise is granted to women.”
In 1914, her father had acquired considerable coal mining interests in the United States of America, and in March 1915, travelled across the Atlantic to attend to them. His daughter followed him a couple of weeks later and arriving in New York on 16th April 1915 on board the Pacific Steam Navigation Company's ship Orduña, from Liverpool, joined him at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Whilst being involved in all her father's business discussions, she was also introduced to the social scene in New York City, which she was later to admit gave her a new found confidence. In 1933, she published her memoirs under the title This Was My World and she outlined the value of her time in the great metropolis in this book: -
For one thing, for the first time in my life, when we went out together I sometimes felt myself to be almost a social success. At home my overpowering shyness had me unavoidably a liability at any social function. In New York - going as I did under my father’s wing - it was on more than one occasion clear that I was actually regarded as an asset. Those weeks of open-hearted American hospitality and forthcomingness, of frankly expressed pleasure in meeting one, did something for me that made a difference to the whole of the rest of my life. I dropped the worst of my shyness overboard on that holiday - it has never been so absolutely annihilating since. I have always been grateful to New York for that. And, finally, it was one of the last times when I consciously felt quite young. The war formed for most of my generation the bridge that separated us from our youth. And for many of us it cut off those last rays of morning sun earlier that need normally have happened. The Lusitania disaster was the apex of my bridge.
Since her father had conducted his business and could never bear to be away from his Llanwern home during the second and third weeks of May - which he regarded as the most perfect weeks of the year - he decided to return by the Lusitania, which sailed on May 1st. As a consequence, he booked saloon passage on the vessel for himself, his daughter, and his valet, Mr. Arnold L. Rhys-Evans for their return home.
Boarding the liner at her berth, Pier 54, in New York harbour, (with ticket number 46043), the three were allocated saloon rooms on ‘B’ deck - David Thomas in room B86, Lady Mackworth in B90 and Arnold Rhys-Evans in B92. The bedroom steward who had personal responsibility for these three rooms was First Class Bedroom Steward Arthur Clegg who came from Aintree, on the outskirts of Liverpool.
In This Was My World Lady Mackworth would later describe in some detail, the events of the voyage and its dreadful outcome: -
There were some two thousand people aboard altogether, counting passengers and crew. Curiously enough, there were a large number of
children on the passenger list. We noticed this with much surprise. I think that the explanation lay in the fact that a number of the families of Canadians serving in the war were coming over to join them.
My father and I made friends with our table-neighbours, an American doctor coming over on Red Cross service and his young sister-in-law who had enrolled as a nurse. We used to discuss our chances. “I can’t help hoping,” said the girl, “that we get some sort of thrill going up the Channel.”
Although elsewhere in her account Lady Mackworth describes the American doctor as Dr. F____, and his young sister-in-law as Miss C____, they were, in fact Doctor Howard Fisher and Miss Dorothy Conner, of New York.
We were due to arrive in Liverpool on Saturday, May 8th, and we had all imagined that the attempts would be made in the Irish Sea during our last night. We were wrong. On the Friday afternoon, at about two o’clock, we were off the south-west coast of Ireland, the Old Head of Kinsale was visible in the distance; my father and I had just come out of the dining-room after lunching and were strolling into the lift on ‘D’ deck. “I think we might stay up on deck tonight to see if we get our thrill,” he said. I had no time to answer. There was a dull, thud-like, not very loud but unmistakable explosion. It seemed to come from a little below us and about the middle of the vessel on the port side, that was the side towards the land. I turned and came out of the lift; somehow the stairs seemed safer. My father walked over to look out of a porthole. I did not wait.
I had days before made up my mind that if anything happened one’s instincts would be to make straight for the boat deck (it is a horrible feeling to stay under cover even for a few moments in a boat that may be sinking), but that one must control that and go first to one’s cabin to fetch one’s lifebelt and then on to the boat deck. As I ran up the stairs, the boat was already heeling over. As I ran I thought, “I wonder I’m not more frightened,” and then, “I’m beginning to get frightened, but I mustn't let myself.”
My cabin was on ‘B’ deck some way down a passage. On my way I met a stewardess; by this time the boat had heeled over very much, and as we ran along holding the rail on the lower side of the passage we collided, and wasted a minute or so making polite apologies to each other.
I collected my lifebelt, the ‘Boddy’ belt provided by the Cunard Company. On my way back I ran into my father’s cabin and took out one of his belts, fearing that he might be occupied with his papers and forget to fetch one for himself. Then I went up on to ‘A’ deck (the boat deck). Here there was, of course, a choice of sides. I chose the starboard side, feeling that it would somehow be safer to be as far away from the submarine as possible. The side further from the submarine was also the higher out of the water, as the boat had listed over towards the side on which she had been hit and the deck was now slanting at a considerable angle; and to be as high as possible out of the water felt safer too.
As I came out into the sunlight, I saw standing together the American doctor, Dr. F___, and his sister-in-law, Miss C____. I asked if I might stay beside them until I caught sight of my father which I made sure of doing soon. I put on my own lifebelt and held the other in my hand. Just after I reached the deck a stream of steerage passengers came rushing up from below and fought their way into the boat nearest us, which was being lowered. They were white-faced and terrified; I think they were shrieking; there was no kind of order -- the strongest got there first, the weak were pushed aside. Here and there a man had his arm around a woman’s waist and bore her along with him; but there were no children to be seen; no children could have lived in that throng. They rushed a boat before it was ready for them. A ship’s officer made some feeble attempt to prevent them, but there was no real attempt at order or discipline. As we watched, I turned to the American girl ... “I always thought a shipwreck was a well-organised affair”. “So did I,” said she, “but I’ve learnt a devil of a lot in the last five minutes.” Two seamen began to lower the boat, which was full to overflowing, but no one was in command of them. One man lowered his end quickly, the other lowered his out, but the boat did not capsize, and I think most of them scrambled back afterwards. I do not know. We turned away and did not look. It was not safe to look at horrible things just then. Curious that it never for a moment struck any of us as possible to attempt to get into the boat ourselves. Even at that moment death would have seemed better than to make part of that terror infected crowd. I remember regretfully thinking something of this sort.
That was the last boat I saw lowered. It became impossible to lower any more from our side owing to the list on the ship. No one else except that white-faced stream seemed to lose control. A number of people were moving about the deck, gently and vaguely. They reminded one of a swarm of bees who do not know where the queen has gone. Presently Dr. F____ decided to go down and fetch lifebelts for himself and his sister-in-law. Whilst he was away the vessel righted herself perceptibly, and word was passed around the bulkheads had been closed and the danger was over. We laughed and shook hands and I said, “Well, you’ve had your thrill all right.” “I never want another,” she answered. Soon after, the doctor returned bearing two lifebelts. He said he had had to wade through deep water down below to get them.
Whilst we were standing, I unhooked my skirt so that it should come straight off and not impede me in the water. The list on the ship soon got worse again, and, indeed, became very bad. Presently Dr. F____ said he thought we had better jump into the sea. (We had thought of doing so before, but word had been passed around from the captain that it was better to stay where we were.) Dr. F____ and Miss C____ moved towards the edge of the deck where the boat had been and there was no railing. I followed them, feeling frightened at the idea of jumping so far (it was, I believe, some sixty feet normally from “A” deck to the sea), and telling myself how ridiculous I was to have physical fear of the jump when we stood in such grave danger as we did. I think others must have had the same fear, for a little crowd stood hesitating on the brink, and kept me back. And then, suddenly, I saw the water had come over on to the deck. We were not, as I had thought, sixty feet above the sea; we were already
under the sea. I saw the water green just about up to my knees. I do not remember it coming up further, that must all have happened in a second. The ship sank and I was sucked right down with her.
The next thing I can remember was being deep down under the water. It was very dark, nearly black. I fought to come up. I was terrified of being caught on some part of the ship and kept down. That was the worst moment of terror, the only moment of acute terror, that I knew. My wrist did catch on a rope. I was scarcely aware of it at the time, but I have the mark on me to this day. At first I swallowed a lot of water; then I remembered that I had read that one should not swallow water, so I shut my mouth. Something bothered me in my right hand and prevented me from striking out with it; I discovered that it was the lifebelt I had been holding for my father. As I reached the surface I grasped a little bit of board, quite thin, a few inches wide and perhaps two or three feet long. I thought this was keeping me afloat. I was wrong. My most excellent lifebelt was doing that. But everything that happened after I had been submerged was a little misty and vague; I was slightly stupefied from then on.
When I came to the surface I found that I formed part of a large, round, floating island composed of people and debris of all sorts, lying so close together that at first there was not very much water noticeable in between. People, boats, hencoops, chairs, rafts, boards and goodness knows what besides, all floating cheek by jowl. A man with a white face and yellow moustache came and held on to the other end of my board. I did not quite like it, for I felt it was not large enough for two, but I did not feel justified in objecting. Every now and then he would try and move round towards the end of my board. This frightened me; I scarcely knew why at the time (I was probably quite right to be frightened; it is likely enough that he wanted to hold on to me). I summoned up my strength – to speak was an effort – and told him to go back to his own end, so that we might keep the board properly balanced. He said nothing and just meekly went back. After a while I noticed that he had disappeared. I don’t know what happened to him. He may have gone off to a hencoop which was floating nearby. I don’t know whether he had a lifebelt on or not. Somehow I think not.
Many people were praying aloud in a curious, unemotional monotone; others were shouting for help in much the same slow, impersonal chant: “Bo-at….bo-at….bo-at… .” I shouted for a minute or two, but it was obvious that there was not a chance of any boat responding, so I soon desisted. One or two boats were visible, but they were a long way away from where I was, and clearly had all they could do to pick up the people close beside them. So far as I could see, they did not appear to be moving much. By and by my legs got bitterly cold, and I decided to try to swim to a boat so as to get them out of the cold water, but it was a big effort swimming (I could normally swim a hundred yards or so, but I was not an expert swimmer).
I only swam a few strokes and almost immediately gave up the attempt, because I did not see how I could get along without letting go of my piece of board, which nothing would have induced me to abandon.
There was no acute feeling of fear whilst one was floating in the water. I can remember feeling thankful that I had not been drowned underneath, but had reached the surface safely, and thinking that even if the worst happened there could be nothing unbearable to go through now that my head was above the water. The lifebelt held one up in a comfortable sitting position, with one’s head lying rather back, as if one were in a hammock. One was a little dazed and rather stupid and vague. I doubt whether any of the people in the water were acutely frightened or in any consciously unbearable agony of mind. When Death is as close as he was then, the sharp agony of fear is not there; the thing is too overwhelming and stunning for that. One has the sense of something taking care of one – I don’t mean in the sense of protecting one from death; rather of death itself being a benignant power. At moments I wondered whether the whole thing was perhaps a nightmare from which I should wake, and once – half laughing, I think, I wondered, looking round on the sun and pale blue sky and calm sea, whether I reached heaven without knowing it, and devoutly hoped I hadn’t.
One was acutely uncomfortable, no more than that. A discomfort mainly due to the intense cold, but further, at least so far as I was concerned, to the fact that, being a very bad sailor, when presently a little swell got up, I was seasick. I remember, as I sat in the water, I thought out an improvement which I considered should be adopted for all lifebelts. There should be, I thought, a little bottle of chloroform strapped into each belt, so that one could inhale it and lose consciousness when one wished to. I must have been exceedingly uncomfortable before I thought of that. The swell of the sea had the effect of causing the close-packed island of wreckage and people to drift apart. Presently I was a hundred yards or more away from anyone else. I looked up at the sun, which was high in the sky, and wished that I might lose consciousness. I don’t know how long after that I did lose it, but that is the last thing I remember in the water.
The next thing I remember is lying naked between blankets on a deck in the dark. (I was, I discovered later, on a tiny patrol steamer named The Bluebell). Every now and again a sailor came and looked at me and said, “That’s better.” I had a vague idea that something had happened, but I thought that I was still on the deck of the Lusitania, and I was vaguely annoyed that some unknown sailor should be attending to me instead of my own stewardess. Gradually memory came back. The sailor offered me a cup of lukewarm tea, which I drank (we were on a teetotal vessel). There did not seem much wrong with me except that my whole body was shaking violently and my teeth were chattering like castanets, as I had never supposed teeth could chatter, and that I had a violent pain in the small of my back, which I suppose was rheumatism. The sailor said he thought I had better go below, as it would be warmer. “We left you up here to begin with,” he explained, “as we thought you were dead, and it did not seem worth while
s. “It took three men to lift you on board,” someone explained. I said that I thought I could walk, so, supported on either arm and with a third man holding back my dripping hair, I managed to get down. I was put into the captain’s bunk, whence someone further recovered was ejected to make room for me. The warmth below was delicious; it seemed to make one almost delirious. I should say that almost all of us down there (I do not know how many rescued were aboard; I can remember noticing five or six, but probably there were thirty or forty) were a little drunk with the heat and the light and the joy of knowing ourselves to be alive. We were talking at the tops of our voices and laughing a great deal.
The Bluebell was H.M.S. Bluebell, a Royal Naval Trawler under the command of a Captain John Thompson, which helped to rescue many survivors from the sinking.
At one time I was talking and laughing with some woman when a sailor came in and asked us if we had lost anyone in the wreck. I can remember the sudden sobering with which we answered. I did not know then what had happened to my father; she was almost sure that her husband was drowned. He was, she had already told me (there are no veils just after shipwreck), all she had in the world. It seemed that his loss probably meant the breaking up of her whole life, yet at that moment she was full of cheerfulness and laughter.
I can remember two exceptions to the general merriment. The captain of the Lusitania was amongst those rescued on our little boat, but I never heard him speak. The other exception was a woman, who sat silent in the outer cabin. Presently she began to speak. Quietly, gently, in a low, rather monotonous voice, she described how she had lost her child. She had, so far as I can now recollect, been made to place him on a raft, which owing to some mismanagement, had capsized. She considered that his death had been unnecessary; that it had been due to the lack of organisation and discipline on board, and gently, dispassionately, she said so to the captain of the Lusitania. She further stated her intention of saying so publicly later. It seemed to me, fresh from that incompetent muddle on the Lusitania’s deck, that she entirely proved her case. A sailor who came in to attend to me suggested that she was hysterical. She appeared to me to be the one person on board who was not.
It must have been about half-past nine at night when I came to myself on board The Bluebell. As to the interval, I heard afterwards that I had been picked up at dusk by a rowing-boat; that in the gathering darkness they had very nearly missed me, but that by some curious chance a wicker chair had floated up under me (it must have happened after I lost consciousness); that this had both helped to raise me further out of the water than I should otherwise have floated (and so likely enough saved my life by lessening the strain on me) and had made a slightly larger mark which had been noticed in the water, and they had rowed to it. The little boat had transferred me to The Bluebell. I was handed up to it along with a lot of dead bodies, but the midshipman who handed me on board said, “I rather think there’s some life in this woman; you’d better try and see.” So they did. They told me that when I recovered I went straight off to
sleep without regaining consciousness, and had slept for two hours before I came to myself on the deck of The Bluebell in the dark.
We got into Queenstown Harbour about eleven. A man (the steward who had waited at our table on the Lusitania) came on board and told me that my father had been rescued and was already on shore. When we came alongside, the captain of The Bluebell came in and asked if I could go ashore, as he wanted to move on again. I said certainly, but not wrapped in one tiny blanket. Modesty, which had been completely absent for some hours, was beginning faintly to return. I said I could do it if only I had a couple of safety-pins to fasten the thing together; but it was a man’s ship, and the idea of safety-pins produced hoots of laughter. Finally someone went ashore and borrowed a ‘British Warm’ from one of the soldiers on the quay. Clad in this, with the blanket tucked around my waist underneath it, and wearing the captain’s carpet slippers, I started for the shore. The gangway was a difficult obstacle. It was so placed that it meant stepping up eighteen inches or possible a couple of feet. I must have been pretty weak, for I had to get down on to my hands and knees and crawl on to it.
At the other end of the gangway my father was waiting. We went across the big dark quay to a tiny little brightly lit hut, a Customs Office maybe a ticket office. Inside we sat down and hugged each other.
Some men asked what I wanted, and I said brandy. The man said brandy was rather dangerous when one was exhausted, but I said I would take the risk, and I got the brandy. Without I do not know how I would have walked to the hotel though it was only a few yards away.
The hotel – I have forgotten its name – was, inappropriately enough, still kept by a German, (his sister had been interned, but for some reason he had been left at large and in control of this quay-side inn). It was by far the dirtiest place I have ever seen. My father booked a room for himself there earlier in the evening, which he now gave up to me. It was on the first floor and the steps of the stairs were shallow, but it was a big struggle to get up to it. I clung to the banisters, rested after every two steps, and felt very sick. Once in the room, I got, still wrapped in my blanket, which looked cleaner than the bedclothes, into bed. There seemed to be no food in the hotel, but in the end they bought me some biscuits and fizzy lemonade. At first I thought the skirting board round the edge of the carpet was painted white, but I discovered later that it was really black but covered inch deep in grey dust.
This hotel was almost certainly The Queen’s Hotel, still in existence today, but now called The Commodore Hotel, but no other surviving accounts describe it as being dirty as Lady Mackworth remembers it!
There was a second bed in our room, and presently a group of four or five people brought in another woman. Her son was with her and several other men. She appeared to be in hysterics, and kept on monotonously repeating that her husband at home in England didn’t know they were safe. Her son assured her again and again that he had sent him a
telegram to Liverpool the minute they landed. She did not seem to hear, but just went on repeating in a monotonous sing-song voice that Jack didn’t know they were safe. I called the son across to me and made a note of his Christian name and that of his father in case I had to spend the night trying to reassure her. However, the moment the door shut behind them she became perfectly sane and collected. She was, however, still slightly worried about her husband. “But,” said I, “that’s quite all right; didn’t you hear your son say he had sent him a wire directly you got to shore?” “Oh! I know that,” she replied, “but you don’t imagine they’ll let private telegrams through tonight do you?”
We talked most of the night, and she told me what had happened to her in the wreck. She was travelling, it seemed, with her son and her son’s friend. The son had been badly wounded at the front, and they had gone over thinking the voyage might help him to complete his recovery. They had not meant to come home so soon, but her husband got quite nervous at the increase of German submarine successes and had wired to them to come back as quickly as possible. So they had caught the first board available, which was the Lusitania.
After the ship sank, she and her son and his friend had found themselves on a raft so overloaded that it was beginning to sink. So the three of them, all strong swimmers, had gone off to a floating mass in the water, which turned out to be a piano in a packing case. They settled themselves on top of it, but presently, when a slight swell got up, the piano turned turtle at every wave and threw them underneath, and they had to climb on again from the other side. This went on for two hours and a half. Finally a small steamer appeared and came to rescue them. Its arrival made an extra big wave. The piano turned turtle as usual, and Mrs. X (I have long ago forgotten her name) was shot down into the water and hit her head against the steamer’s screw or paddle. However the steamer had luckily stopped moving and not much more damage was done. But this did perhaps account for the hysterics.
She told me another story which has stayed in my memory. She had with her some jewels which she greatly valued, and after reading the warning issued by the German Embassy on the morning the Lusitania left New York, she had determined to save them and carried them with her everywhere all through the voyage. When the explosion happened she was down at lunch, the jewels in their bag resting on the table beside her. And then for the first time during the whole voyage she forgot them. I suppose they are on that luncheon table still.
We talked until three in the morning, and then I persuaded her to try to go to sleep, which she succeeded in doing for a short while. But I was still too much excited, and never slept at all that night. At five o’clock some reporters walked into the bedroom to get our story of the disaster, which we gave them.
It has not been possible to identify the lady, with whom Lady Mackworth conversed, or her son and his friend.
One of the first people to come to see us the next morning was Miss C___, the pretty American girl. She was still dressed in the neat fawn tweed coat and skirt which she had on when I saw her step off the deck the day before, and it looked as smart and well tailored as if it had just come out of the shop. It seemed that, though she had partly unhooked it on deck, when I had unhooked mine, modesty had prevented her from undoing quite all the hooks. The result was that it had stayed on, and when she was sucked below as the ship sank, it caught on something and prevented her coming straight to the surface, so that by the time she did reach it she was unconscious. She was pulled onto a raft, but the people on it thought she was dead, and there was not room on the raft for bodies, so they were just going to throw her back into the water, when one of them, a Canadian nurse, saw a throbbing in her throat. She was kept on board to see if the nurse was right. The nurse worked at her, and in a short while she came round. And a couple of hours later, when the steamers came on the scene, the raft-load was picked up. Her brother-in-law, the doctor, had been saved too. He had come up conscious and swum to a boat – a boat in which there was an Italian surgeon, who, so he told us, operated then and there on the leg of one of the crew, which had been badly damaged by the explosion, with a pen-knife.
My father soon came in, and he and I exchanged stories. Like most of the men, expert or otherwise, on board, he had not believed that a single torpedo could sink us, and it seemed that he had thought that there could be no immediate hurry, and that was why he had strolled over to look out one of the portholes. But as the ship heeled over to port almost instantaneously, he went straight up on deck, where he looked about for me. But he, wisely, went out on to the port side, whereas I had gone out on the starboard side, (Anyhow, in that crowd of two thousand people our chances of meeting would have been small). He chose the port side, he said, chiefly because the crowd went the other way, and he never believed in following the crowd. Certainly it was the intelligent side to choose, since boats could be launched from that side right up to the moment the ship sank, whereas owing to the camber of the ship it soon ceased to be practicable to launch them from the other side.
In the end my father owed his life to the fact that he chose the port side, for he never would have survived in the water. After looking about for a bit, he realised that he had no lifebelt and went downstairs to get one. Someone (a steward I think) gave him a Gieve. He tried to blow it up, but it would not blow, and so he went down to his cabin to get one off his bed, but they had all been taken. Finally he found three Boddy belts in his cupboard (the regulation ship’s lifebelt of that date and most effective one). He came up on deck again just as the last boat, half empty, was being launched. The Lusitania ‘A’ deck was by this time level with the water, and already the boat was about a foot away from the edge of the ship. A woman holding a small child hesitated whether to dare to step over it. He gave her a shove and sprang after her himself. As the board drew away, the Lusitania slowly sank, and one of her funnels came over to within a few feet of the boat. It seemed as if it must sink it, but she was sinking by the bow as well as rolling over, and the funnel, passing within a few feet of their heads, sank just beyond them. My father had timed the
explosion, and he looked at his watch when the ship disappeared. The whole thing had taken twelve and a half minutes.
The boat, which was only half full of people, was also half full of water; however, they bailed it out and picked up a few more people, and after rowing about for two and a half hours were taken on board by a small steamer and brought to Queenstown, which they reached about six o’clock. There my father chanced on a Catholic priest, to whom I shall always be grateful, who took him off to have some dinner and plied him with brandy. My father protested that he had not tasted alcohol for fifteen years, but was in no state to withstand the reply that in any case he was going to have some now.
He confided to the priest his dilemma about my mother. He must let her know he was safe, yet he could not wire without mentioning me, and he gravely feared, though still uncertain, that I was lost. Together they composed a telegram. It ran: ‘Landed safely; Margaret not yet, but several boats still to come.’ In point of fact, no private telegrams were allowed through that day, and she did not receive it until after she knew that we had both been saved.
The next few hours must have seemed like a lifetime. Boat after boat came in with its big load of dead, its smaller load of living. He waited on the quay……
Someone who met my father just then said that his face seemed for a few weeks to have turned into that on an old man, but I noticed nothing except that for a few days his temper with strangers was rather short. I am always glad to remember, too, that it was still sufficiently out of hand to tell our hotel-keeper all he thought about his ‘damned dog-kennel’ before we left.
Later that same morning, whilst we still lay naked in our blankets in bed, a kind young woman who happened to be staying in the hotel came and made notes of our requirements (hairpins, underclothing, stockings, blouse, coat, and skirt etc.) and went off to Cork to buy them for us so that we might be able to get up. One odd thing that had happened to us all was that we were exceedingly dirty. One might have supposed that four hours in the water would have washed one clean, but on the contrary, I was covered with black-brown dirt (incidentally, why I don’t know, I was bruised from head to foot). I went to have a bath, but really the hotel bath was so filthy that it was a question whether one came out cleaner or dirtier than one went in. Then we put on the clothes from Cork – it was late in the afternoon by this time. The American doctor had advised staying in bed till then, and indeed all day, but by that time bed in that room had become boring. So we got up and went down to dinner. We four, my father and I and the American doctor and his sister-in-law, sat together and exchanged all the news that we had heard. Often and a sudden catastrophe men’s tongues are unloosed. We had heard many strange things.
After dinner my father and I went for a walk in the dark to have a look at Queenstown, a walk of which one incident recurs to me. A drunken inhabitant lurched up to us just after nine o’clock and confidingly inquired whether any pubs were still open (under war-time regulations there they were all obliged to close at nine). My father, still very irritable, gazed at him in revolted disgust: ‘No, thank God!’ he replied. The disappointed and startled drunkard vanished. I enjoyed that little interchange.
Then we came home and went to bed. The night before my father had spent with most of the other men on the drawing room floor. They had been kept awake by one of their number who got drunk and insisted on singing all night – until at six in the morning my father had got up and had taken him for a walk, leaving the others to rest in peace.
But the jewel-lady had now left (gone to Cork I imagine), and, since he badly needed rest, I persuaded my father to take her bed. Again (except for about half an hour, when I dreamt I was being shipwrecked) I could not sleep, and at about five o’clock I came to the conclusion that I was very ill. I took my temperature (someone had bought a thermometer the day before); it was 102. I decided that I was quite possibly going to die, but I decided that nothing would induce me to die in that filthy hotel. At eight o’clock my father woke up, I told him that I was sure I was very ill and that I could not bear to die in that hotel – would he please have me moved? He replied that he would see to it at once, and went off full of energy and determination.
Presently he returned. He had found two doctors. One a local man, who said that it would certainly kill me to move me; the other American doctor, who strongly shared our view of the hotel and thought that, with due precautions taken, moving might turn out to be the lesser of the two evils. My father did not believe the local doctor, of whose intelligence he had formed a poor opinion. So he had arranged for a stretcher party to come in time to carry me down to the train which left for Dublin that morning, where he had reserved a seat for me to lie on at full length. Moreover, the American doctor was going by the same train and could keep an eye on me.
Much as I wanted to get out of that hotel, I did not really want to leave it at the cost of my life, and I felt a trifle anxious lest the local doctor, in spite of my father’s poor opinion of his brains, might be right. However, by this time I was beginning to feel rather dazed and vague, and was no longer capable of making any decision for myself. Presently the ambulance men came and carried me down to the train. The Irish doctor had said that if I did go I ought to be fed all the way on teaspoons of whisky; the American doctor on the other hand, held teetotal views. We compromised on carrying with us a bottle of whisky, which was in fact never uncorked. At Dublin another ambulance met us and took me to the Shelbourne hotel, where I got between clean sheets and spent three weeks in bed with bronchial pneumonia.
Someone asked me not long ago whether the Lusitania experience had altered my view of human nature. It did not alter my opinion of human nature in general. I should scarcely, I think, have expected that even had the material for a change of opinion been there – for after those first few minutes on deck I saw very little of what happened, and once I had been under water, moreover, I was too dazed to take it in if I had. I was spared the horrors that haunted so many of the survivors.
What it did do was to alter my opinion of myself, I had lacked self-confidence. I knew that I was frightened of many things. If anyone had asked me whether I should behave as I ought in a shipwreck I should have had the gravest doubts. And here I had got through this test without disgracing myself. I had found that when the moment came I could control my fear. True, the opportunities for disgracing myself had been very small. But all the same it altered my view of myself. It combined with the American visit to increase my self-confidence. It seems to me likely enough that – given one was not caught in the infection of a panic, when I imagine that only the thoroughly disciplined or unusually strong-nerved would remain immune – an experience of the sort would have much the same effect on many people’s opinions of themselves.
Another result of the disaster was to take away my fear of water. At least, it was about then that it vanished, and I think it must have been the Lusitania that did it. In 1915 I could not swim more than one hundred yards or so, and having my head under water terrified me so much that I had never dared to learn to dive. Today I can, if given time, very much time, swim a mile, and I enjoy diving. Other causes (notably the Mediterranean in summer) have contributed to the change no doubt, but I think that this shipwreck had a good deal to do with it.
It altered me in one other respect. Curiously enough, for that is not what I should have expected, it very largely took away the fear (in my childish and adolescent days it had been a terrified horror) of death. I do not quite understand how or why it did this. The only explanation I can give is that when I was lying back in the sunlit water I was, and I knew it, very near to death. I wanted to live, of course. Life was far too exciting and pleasant and interesting to leave (indeed, when for one semi-conscious delirious moment I thought, looking up at the beautiful sky, that perhaps I was now really dead and in heaven, I felt most anxious and depressed at the idea). But death was not frightening; rather, somehow, one had a protected feeling, as if it were a kindly thing.
When one remembers that in those years men were living in the trenches for months on end, and when, from every country in Europe, they were enduring, often without apparent damage, immeasurable physical suffering and mental strain, one feels ashamed to admit that so comparatively small a thing as the Lusitania should have left any after-effects – but it did. The worst of them was that for about eighteen months afterwards I used to wake up every night very suddenly at half-past two in a sweat of terror. Every night I used to dread going to bed and to sleep, knowing that this horror must come.
This for some unknown reason, I put down, not to its obvious cause, but to the onset of old age, which, being in a mood of depression, I supposed I had now reached. I assumed, therefore, that there was nothing to be done about it. How could I seriously have supposed that everyone over the age of thirty suffered such tortures I cannot now imagine. It is amazing what the young will put down to old age. If old age were anything approaching the hell they fancy it to be, everyone would undoubtedly commit suicide at the age of thirty-five. Having decided, however, that my nightly terror was due to senility, I endured it without saying a word to anyone, or consulting a doctor. Though I do not suppose anyone could have done much about it, they might at least have put me to bed for a few weeks, which no doubt was what I needed, but did not get; for, my father having to go straight back to America on munitions business. I was left with the whole responsibility for his affairs on my shoulders, and had a good deal more work to do than usual.
Another aftermath of the Lusitania was a horror of being shut in under water. I recognised this all right as a legacy of the shipwreck, which, by the way, never directly in itself frightened me at all. I could think of it without any distress; indeed, with all the pleasure of interest and excitement – I had not, it must be remembered, seen any of the horrors, I was too much in the middle of it for that – and only once afterwards did I ever have a nightmare of a ship going down. But since my neurosis took the form of dreading beyond all things going down through the Severn Tunnel (every time I went I insistently pictured the tunnel giving way, the water rushing in, and the passengers being caught and suffocated and drowned like rats in a trap in the little boxes of carriages), and there was no other practical way of travelling between Cardiff and London except by the Severn tunnel, I just had to bear it as best I could, and that very often; for during those years half of my work lay in Cardiff and half in London, so that I was up and down twice a week or more. Another hang-over from the Lusitania – as I realised with relief when it passed off – was an unreasoning terror of air-raids. I used to try to plan to keep out of London on full moon nights (that was during the early days of the war when the Zepps used to come, and needed full moons: the later aeroplane raids always happened on moonless nights), but it was a bit difficult to think up thoroughly plausible excuses for fixing meetings on other than the full moon nights. I often failed to manoeuvre it. This period lasted only for about eighteen months, after which I more or less recovered my nerves, which was a great comfort.
These things gave me some measure of what a man whose nerves had gone must feel. If four hours danger and exposure could do all that to me, what must one feel like after months in the trenches? I still cannot understand how any of our soldiers remained sane.
In the New Year’s Honours List of January 1916, David Thomas was created Baron (later Viscount) Rhondda of Llanwern and upon his death in July 1918, as he had no heir, Lady Mackworth inherited the title by special dispensation and became Viscountess Rhondda in her own right. She then continued to run his business interests with the same measure of success that he had always demonstrated! She divorced Sir Humphrey in 1922 or 1923, and never remarried.
Amongst other accomplishments, after the Great War, the Viscountess founded and ultimately, edited the right-wing publication Time and Tide. She died on 20th July 1958, aged 75 years and as she had never had children, the title died with her.
Register of Births, Marriages and Deaths, London England Church of England Births and Baptisms 1813 – 1917, 1939 Register, New York Passenger Lists 1820 – 1957, Cunard Records, Seven Days to Disaster, This Was My World, PRO 22/71, UniLiv D92/2/379(a), Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.