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Fifteen minutes after he had fired his torpedo, Schwieger noted in his war diary:
"It looks as if the ship will stay afloat only for a very short time. [I gave order to] dive to 25 metres (82 ft) and leave the area seawards. I couldn't have fired another torpedo into this mass of humans desperately trying to save themselves." There was at the time and remains now a great controversy about the sinking, over whether Lusitania was smuggling contraband war material to England and over the number of torpedoes Schwieger fired.
Before he got back to the docks at Wilhelmshaven for refuelling and resupply, the United States had formally protested to Berlin against the brutality of his action.
KaiserWilhelm II wrote in the margins of the American note, "Utterly impertinent", "outrageous", and "this is the most insolent thing in tone and bearing that I have had to read since the Japanese note last August." Nevertheless, to keep America out of the war, in June the Kaiser was compelled to rescind unrestricted submarine warfare and require all passenger liners be left unmolested.
On 4 September 1915 Schwieger was back at sea with U-20, 85 nautical miles (157 km) off the Fastnet Rock in the south Irish Sea. This rock held one of the key navigational markers in the western ocean, the Fastnet Lighthouse, and any ships passing in and out of the Irish Sea would be within visual contact of it.
RMS Hesperian was now beginning a new run outward bound from Liverpool to Quebec and Montreal, with a general cargo, also doubling as a hospital ship, and carrying about 800 passengers. She was attacked off the Fastnet, a landmark islet in the north Atlantic, off the south-west coast of Ireland. The "Only a few days before, Count Bernsdorff, the German Ambassador, had assured the United States government that passenger liners will not be sunk without warning and without ensuring the safety of the non combatants aboard providing that the liners do not try to escape or offer resistance."
This time, Schwieger was received with official disgust upon his return to Wilhelmshaven. Ordered to report to Berlin to explain himself, he was required to apologise for having sunk another passenger liner in defiance of a direct order not to do so again. He complained about his treatment in Berlin thereafter.
After his death in 1917, his submarine having struck a mine off the Frisian Islands, Schwieger was forgiven in Berlin. He received Germany's highest decoration, the Pour le Mérite. At the time of his death, Schwieger had sunk 49 ships with 183,883 tons-with three submarines on 34 missions. He was the Sixth most successful commander of WWI.[wiki] The Hesperian sank over a day after being torpedoed, on 6 September 1915, while being towed to Ireland. Thirty-two people were killed when a lifeboat upset while lowering. Hesperian was also carrying the body of Lusitania victim Frances Stephens on her last voyage, with Mrs. Stephens being sunk twice by the same submarine and commander. The body of Mrs. Stephens was still aboard as well. Mrs. Stephens’ casket, presumably still in Hesperian‘s hold, now lies not far from the Lusitania wreck which took her life. http://www.rmslusitania.info/people/saloon/frances-stephens/ The Hesperian sank over a day after being torpedoed, on 6 September 1915, while being towed to Ireland. The survivors were rescued during the night by several wary British ships in the vicinity and taken to Ireland. One man who had been blinded on the Western Front had his sight restored by the shock of the explosion. A boy had been left behind, sleeping in his bunk, throughout the sinking. The ship’s watertight bulkheads kept the ship afloat; the vessel was evacuated in less than an hour. Only the captain and several officers had remained on board as a skeleton crew. Captain Main hoped to beach the Hesperian or have her towed to Queenstown. The ship never made it. On 6 September 1915, Hesperian succumbed to the waves, sinking some 37 miles from land and not far from the Lusitania wreck.
Fastnet Lighthouse: Both a beacon and a deathtrap. U-20's notorious hunting ground.