A ship of the Cunard Line of 31,500 tons, was built in 1906 quadruple screw express liner. She captured the Atlantic 'blue riband' in 1907 by crossing from Liverpool to New York at a 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 U.S.A. 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 U-boat activity in the area were not signaled to her by the British Admiraralty on 6th May 1915 as she approached southern Ireland on a return passage from New York. According to her sailing orders she should have been steering a zig-zag course and had been instructed to keep away from landfalls. These instructions were ignored and she approached the Old Head of Kinsale on a steady course at a reduced speed of 21 knots when at 2.15 p.m. on 7 May two torpedoes struck her starboard side, fired from the German submarine U.20. Great loss of life was caused by the rapidity with which she sank-she went under in 20 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.
The number of passengers and crew lost was 1,198. According to one theory by apologists for the brutal manner in which she was attacked without warning. She was struck by only one torpedo and the second explosion was caused by the detonation of contraband cargo; it was also averred that she was deliberately ordered into the path of the submarine by Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, and by Sir John Fisher, First Sea Lord, as an attempt to bring the U.S.A. into the war. There is no apparent basis for either of these allegations.
It was said, however, that the outrage felt in the U.S.A. was a factor in bringing America into the war in 1917: in the words of Theodore Roosevelt at the time it was 'piracy on a vaster scale than the worst pirates of history'. But this was an overstatement probably made under stress by the fact that 124 American citizens were among those lost. The Germans claimed that the LUSITANIA was an armed merchant cruiser carrying troops from Canada, but at the time it was stated in London that she carried no troops and no guns, and that her only war cargo was 5,000 cases of cartridges. Later evidence suggests that included in her cargo was a small quantity of fulminate of mercury fuses in addition to the ammunition.
Nevertheless, since she had no guns mounted and was not an armed merchant cruiser, it was contrary to the rules laid down at the Hague Convention of 1907 for such a vessel to be sunk without first visiting her to establish the fact that she was carrying contraband and then making provision for the safety of her passengers and crew. SG1991
Suggested further reading: "Willful Murder" by Diana Preston
Log Book March 2005