On this day in 1915 the British ocean liner R.M.S. Lusitania
was torpedoed by a German submarine.
RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner, holder of the Blue
Riband and briefly the world's biggest ship. She was launched by the Cunard
Line in 1907, at a time of fierce competition for the North Atlantic trade. In
1915 she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, causing the deaths of 1,198
passengers and crew.
As German shipping lines tended to monopolise the lucrative
passage of continental emigrants, Cunard responded by trying to outdo them for
speed, capacity and luxury. Lusitania and her running mate Mauretania were
fitted with revolutionary new turbine engines, able to maintain a speed of 25
knots. Equipped with lifts, wireless telegraph and electric light, they
provided 50% more passenger space than any other ship, and the first class
decks were noted for their sumptuous furnishings.
When she left New York for Liverpool on what would be her
final voyage on 1 May 1915, submarine warfare was intensifying in the Atlantic.
Germany had declared the seas around the United Kingdom to be a war-zone, and
the German embassy in the United States had placed a newspaper advertisement
warning people not to sail on Lusitania. On 7 May Lusitania was nearing the end
of her crossing, as she was scheduled to dock at the Prince's Landing Stage in
Liverpool later that afternoon. She was running parallel to the south coast of
Ireland, and was roughly 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale when the liner
crossed in front of U-20 at 2:10 p.m. It was sheer chance that the liner became
such a convenient target, since U-20 could hardly have caught the fast vessel
otherwise. Schwieger, the commanding officer of the U-boat, gave the order to
fire one torpedo, which struck Lusitania on the starboard bow, just beneath the
wheelhouse. Moments later, a second explosion erupted from within Lusitania's hull
where the torpedo had struck, and the ship began to founder in a much more
rapid procession, with a prominent list to starboard.
Almost immediately, the crew scrambled to launch the
lifeboats but the conditions of the sinking made their usage extremely
difficult, and in some cases impossible due to the ship's severe list. In all,
only six out of 48 lifeboats were launched successfully, with several more
overturning, splintering to pieces and breaking apart. Eighteen minutes after
the torpedo struck, the bow struck the seabed while the stern was still above
the surface, and in a manner similar to the sinking of Titanic three years
earlier, the stern rose into the air and slid beneath the waves. Of the 1,959 passengers and crew aboard Lusitania at the
time of the sinking, 1,195 lost their lives that afternoon in the waters of the
Celtic Sea. Just as had been seen with Titanic, most of the casualties were
from drowning or from hypothermia. In the hours after the sinking, acts of
heroism amongst both the survivors of the sinking and the Irish rescuers who
had heard word of Lusitania's distress signals brought the survivor count to
764. By the following morning, news of the disaster had spread around the world.
In firing on a non-military ship without warning, the
Germans had breached the international laws known as the Cruiser Rules.
Although the Germans felt they had reasons for treating Lusitania as a naval
vessel, including that the ship was carrying war munitions. Lusitania was
officially carrying among her cargo rifle/machine-gun ammunition, shrapnel
artillery shells without powder charges and artillery fuses. The sinking caused
a storm of protest in the United States, as 128 Americans were among the dead.
It also influenced the decision by the US to declare war in 1917.
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Liverpool Central Library
Liverpool Records Office
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By Robert F Edwarrds