Lusitania

Lusitania liner under British registration, sunk off the Irish coast by a German submarine on May 7, 1915. In the sinking, 1,198 persons lost their lives, 128 of whom were U.S. citizens. A warning to Americans against taking passage on British vessels, signed by the Imperial German Embassy, appeared in morning papers on the day the vessel was scheduled to sail from New York, but too late to accomplish its purpose. The vessel was unarmed, though the Germans made a point of the fact that it carried munitions for the Allies. The considerable sympathy for Germany that had previously existed in the United States to a large extent disappeared after the disaster, and there were demands from many for an immediate declaration of war. President Wilson chose the course of diplomacy and sent Germany a strong note asking for "reparation so far as reparation is possible." Germany refused to accept responsibility for the act in an argumentative reply, but issued secret orders to submarine commanders not to attack passenger ships without warning. After prolonged negotiations, Germany finally conceded its liability for the sinking of the Lusitania and agreed to make reparations and to discontinue sinking passenger ships without warning. The immediate crisis between the United States and Germany subsided. The incident, however, contributed to the rise of American sentiment for the entry of the United States into World War I, with recruitment posters two years later urging potential enlistees to "Remember the Lusitania!"

Bibliography: See studies by A. and M. Hoehling (1956), C. L. Droste (1972), C. Simpson (1973), T. Bailey (1975), D. Ramsay (2001), and D. Preston (2002).

Lusitania a Cunard liner which was sunk by a German submarine in the Atlantic in May 1915 with the loss of over 1,000 lives; the event was a factor in bringing the US into the First World War.

Lusitania was originally an ancient Roman province in the Iberian peninsula, corresponding to modern Portugal.

Lusitania, an ocean liner of just under 31,000 gross tonnage which belonged to the Cunard Line. Built in 1906, she had quadruple propellers, and the following year won the Atlantic blue riband by crossing from Liverpool to New York at an average speed of 23.99 knots. She continued monthly sailings from Liverpool to New York and back after the outbreak of war in 1914.

Before she left New York on 1 May 1915 the German authorities in the USA published warnings that she would be attacked by submarines, and advised passengers not to sail. The warnings were not regarded as serious, and it appears that warnings of German submarine activity in the area were not signalled to her by the British Admiralty. On 6 May 1915 she approached southern Ireland. According to her sailing orders she should have been steering a zigzag course and had been instructed to keep away from landfalls, but these instructions were ignored and she approached the Old Head of Kinsale on a steady course at a speed of 21 knots when at about 1415 on 7 May a torpedo struck her starboard side, fired from the German submarine U.20, the explosion of the torpedo being shortly followed by a second. Great loss of life was caused by the rapidity with which she sank—she went under in twenty minutes—and because she was listing so heavily, and was at so steep an angle bows-down when she sank, that it was difficult to get her lifeboats away. Out of the 1,959 passengers and crew aboard, 1,198 were drowned, including over 100 American citizens.

President Theodore Roosevelt called the sinking piracy ‘on a vaster scale than the worst pirates of history’. At the time the Germans claimed, quite wrongly, she was an armed merchant cruiser carrying troops from Canada. When the USA declared war on Germany in 1917 the latter's submarine warfare was given as one of the reasons for the declaration.

The ship was sunk in 90 metres (295 ft) of water and was first visited by a diver in 1935 after she had been located by echo sounder, and in the 1960s an American diver bought her remains from the British government. Over a period of time he tried to establish what exactly had sunk her, but was unable to do so. Then with the advance in diving technology, the ship's remains were explored properly in 1982 and a number of artefacts were brought to the surface as well as hundreds of military fuses. This appeared to verify suspicions that she had been illegally carrying military explosives, and that this had caused the second explosion. However, an expedition led by Dr Robert Ballard in 1993 found no proof that this was what had sunk her. She is now protected by the Irish government. Ballard, R. , Exploring the Lusitania (1995).
Ramsay, D. , Lusitania: Saga and Myth (2001).