"It was one of the points that we felt it necessary to make the Captain of the _Lusitania_ understand the importance of. The _Lusitania_ can only cross the Liverpool Bar at certain states of the tide, and we therefore warned the Captain, or whoever might be Captain, that we did not think it would be safe for him to arrive off the bar at such a time that he would have to wait there, because that area had been infested with submarines, and we thought therefore it would be wiser for him to arrange his arrival in such a way, leaving him an absolutely free hand as to how he would do it, that he could come straight up without stopping at all. The one definite instruction we did give him with regard to that was to authorize him to come up without a pilot." The tide would be high at Liverpool Bar at 6:53 on Saturday morning, May 8. Captain Turner planned to cross the bar as much earlier than that as he could get over without stopping, while at the same time figuring on passing during the darkness the dangerous waters from the entrance of St. George's Channel to the Liverpool Bar. [Sidenote: The Captain decides to work inshore.] Having thus in mind his objective, and the time approximately when he intended to reach it, the message received at 11:25 A. M. required that he should determine whether to keep off land approximately the same distance as he was when he passed Fastnet, or to work inshore and go close to Coningbeg Lightship. He determined that the latter was the better plan to avoid the submarines reported in midchannel ahead of him. [Sidenote: Taking a bearing.] When Galley Head was sighted the course was changed so as to haul closer to the land, and this course was pursued until 1:40 P. M., at which time Captain Turner concluded that it was necessary for him to get his bearings accurately. This he decided should be done by taking a four-point bearing, during which procedure the ship was torpedoed. It is urged that he should have taken a two-point bearing or a cross bearing, which would have occupied less time, but if, under all the conditions which appealed to his judgment as a mariner, he had taken a different method of ascertaining his exact distance and the result would have been inaccurate, or while engaged in taking a two-point bearing the ship had been torpedoed, then somebody would have said he should have taken a four-point bearing. The point of the matter is that an experienced Captain took the bearing he thought proper for his purposes, and to predicate negligence upon such a course is to assert that a Captain is bound to guess the exact location of a hidden and puzzling danger. [Sidenote: Testimony about the ship's speed.]