> In the defence of Turner, I will have to say that he expected some kind of similar action to be taken in such a circumstance
Which is no defense at all. One recurring theme in survivor accounts of the events of May 7th is that earlier in the day, for some reason, Turner slowed the ship down to such an extent that it had people talking amongst themselves- yet another interesting detail to be found in the L.o.L. transcripts. So in addition to his ignoring the orders to zig-zag, stay in mid channel, avoid headlands, there is also the matter of this still not-well-explained slow down in the middle of a war zone in an area where he already knew a submarine was, or submarines were. His later explanation of his horrendous judgment errors during the ship's final hour, that he misunderstood the orders, is beyond risible.
Frankly, even if the Germans had hung a banner off of the NDL pier saying "we are going to sink you on May 7th" which the passengers saw and chose to ignore, they would most likely have survived, and the crossing been as safe as Cunard assured those who asked that it would be, if the captain had followed his orders and the ship been where she should have been.
>No ship the size of
Lusitania had been SUNK by such an event, but Mauretania had a torpedo fired at her. Thanks to captain whoever's quick thinking and the ship builders competence, the missile missed by several feet
which reenforces
as of May 1st, nothing of the scale of the Lusitania torpedoing had yet happened, at least with regards to transatlantic travellers, so rationalizing away the ad (which ran on the travel page and not in the hard news section of the paper) would have been easier then than it would have been for someone reading it on May 8th.
Because anyone who who read the warning on the morning of May 1, who was aware of the event you described, would probably have interpreted it as a sign of the safety of the large Cunard ships, not of the danger of torpedoes.