Sinking of the RMS Lusitania
was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War on 7 May 1915, about off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. The attack took place in the declared maritime war-zone around the United Kingdom, three months after unrestricted submarine warfare against the ships of the United Kingdom had been announced by Germany following the Allied powers' implementation of a naval blockade against it and the other Central Powers.
The passengers had been notified before departing New York of the general danger of voyaging into the area in a British ship, but the attack itself came without warning. From a submerged position to starboard, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger launched a single torpedo at the Cunard liner. After the torpedo struck, a second explosion occurred inside the ship, which then sank in only 18 minutes. U-20s mission was to torpedo warships and liners in Lusitanias area of operation. In the end, there were only 763 survivors out of the 1,960 passengers, crew and stowaways aboard, and about 128 of the dead were American citizens. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany. It also contributed to the American entry into the war almost two years later, on 6 April 1917; images of the stricken liner were used heavily in US propaganda and military recruiting campaigns.
The contemporary investigations in both the United Kingdom and the United States into the precise causes of the ship's loss were obstructed by the needs of wartime secrecy and a propaganda campaign to ensure all blame fell upon Germany. At the time of her sinking, the primarily passenger-carrying vessel had in her hold around 173 tons of war supplies, comprising 4.2 million rounds of rifle ammunition, almost 5,000 shrapnel-filled artillery shell casings and 3,240 brass percussion fuses. Debates on the legitimacy of the way she was sunk raged back and forth throughout the war and beyond. Some writers argue that the British government, with Winston Churchill’s involvement, deliberately put the Lusitania at risk to provoke a German attack and draw the United States into the war. This theory is generally rejected by mainstream historians, who characterise the sinking as mainly a combination of British mistakes and misfortune, with claims to the contrary characterized by implausible theories, lack of evidence, and in some cases fabricated sources.
Background
When Lusitania was built, her construction and operating expenses were subsidized by the British government, with the provision that she could be converted to an armed merchant cruiser if need be. Pillars and supports were included in her design to allow the emplacement of 12 6-inch guns, and she was listed as a "Royal Naval Reserve Merchant Vessel". In the 1914 edition of Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships, its silhouette was listed for identification reasons as a civilian liner, together with Mauretania and all liners of all nations capable of over 18 knots. Brassley's 1914 The Naval Annual categorised her as a "Royal Naval Reserved Merchant Cruiser".At the outbreak of the First World War, the British Admiralty considered her for requisition as an AMC. However the Admiralty then cancelled their decision and decided not to use her as an AMC after all; large liners such as Lusitania consumed enormous quantities of coal and became a serious drain on the Admiralty's fuel reserves, so express liners were deemed inappropriate for the role when smaller cruisers would do. They were also very distinctive, so smaller liners were used as transports instead.
At the outbreak of hostilities, fears for the safety of Lusitania and other great liners ran high. During the ship's first wartime eastbound crossing, she was painted a flat grey to mask her identity and make her more difficult to detect visually. When it turned out that the German Navy was kept in check by the Royal Navy, and their commerce threat almost entirely evaporated, it very soon appeared that the Atlantic was safe for large passenger liners like Lusitania, if the bookings justified the expense of keeping them in service.
Many of the large liners were laid up over the autumn and winter of 1914–1915, in part due to falling demand for passenger travel across the Atlantic, and in part to protect them from naval mines or other dangers. Among the most recognizable of these liners, some were eventually used as troop transports or hospital ships. Although bookings were by no means strong during that autumn and winter of 1914-15, demand was sufficient to keep her in civilian service. Economizing measures were taken, however. One of these was the shutting down of her No. 4 boiler room to conserve coal and crew costs; this reduced her maximum speed from over. Even so, she was the fastest first-class passenger liner left in commercial service.
With apparent dangers evaporating, the ship's disguised paint scheme was also dropped and she was returned to her civilian colours. Her name was picked out in gilt, her funnels repainted in their usual Cunard livery, and her superstructure painted white again. One alteration was the addition of a bronze/gold coloured band around the base of the superstructure just above the black paint.
1915
The British established a naval blockade of Germany on the outbreak of war in August 1914, issuing a comprehensive list of contraband that grew to include even foodstuffs. In early November 1914 Britain declared the North Sea to be a "military area", with any ships entering the North Sea doing so at their own risk unless they obeyed specific Royal Navy instructions.By early 1915, a new threat to British shipping began to materialise: U-boats. At first, the Germans used them only to attack naval vessels, achieving only occasional—but sometimes spectacular—success. U-boats then began to attack merchant vessels at times, although almost always in accordance with the old cruiser rules. Desperate to gain an advantage on the Atlantic and define a role for the Navy, and heavily overestimating the effectiveness of the new weapon, the Admiralty under Hugo von Pohl decided to [|step up its submarine campaign]. On 4 February 1915, he declared the seas around the British Isles a war zone: from 18 February, Allied ships in the area could be sunk without warning. This was not wholly unrestricted submarine warfare, since efforts would be taken to avoid sinking neutral ships. However, the German Imperial Admiralty Staff secretly directed captains to target passenger craft, as it was thought that this would deter other shipping. As Germany started the campaign with only 21 submarines, many of which were not operational, many did not take the threat seriously. The US government warned the Germans that they would face "strict accountability" for any American deaths as a result of the campaign.
The reaction to the announcement by those on the Lusitania was characterised by confusion. At sea en route to Liverpool at the time of the announcement, American passengers urged Captain Daniel Dow to fly the US flag to dissuade attack. This led to a storm of controversy from the American authorities and Germany.
On her next voyage, Lusitania was scheduled to arrive in Liverpool on 6 March 1915. The Admiralty issued her specific instructions on how to avoid submarines. Despite a severe shortage of destroyers, Admiral Henry Oliver ordered HMS and to escort Lusitania, and took the further precaution of sending the Q ship to patrol Liverpool Bay. One of the destroyers' commanders attempted to discover the whereabouts of Lusitania by telephoning Cunard, who refused to give out any information and referred him to the Admiralty. At sea, the ships contacted Lusitania by radio, but did not have the codes used to communicate with merchant ships and thus communicated in the clear; as doing this would put his ship under substantial risk, Captain Dow gave a false position, significantly far away from his actual position, leaving the warships unable to locate him. The Lusitania continued to Liverpool unescorted.
Some alterations were made to Lusitania and her operation in view of the threat. She was ordered not to fly any flags in the war zone; a number of warnings, plus advice, were sent to the ship's commander to help him decide how to best protect his ship against the new threat and it also seems that her funnels were most likely painted a dark grey to help make her less visible to enemy submarines. There was no hope of disguising her actual identity, since her profile was so well known, and no attempt was made to paint out the ship's name at the prow.
Unknown to all, the submarine war was about to get more dangerous. On 28 March, during the Thrasher incident, a German submarine stopped the British passenger ship Falaba on the surface. Eyewitnesses reported the submarine gave the ship only around ten minutes to evacuate before torpedoing the vessel, resulting in the first American death of the war. On 1 April, Admiral Gustav Bachmann, head of the German Admiralty Staff, sent a memo to Kaiser Wilhelm II. This detailed the woefully small number of ships sunk so far, and Bachmann argued this showed that the submarine war can only really be effective if U-boats were completely unrestricted, and so could attack without determining the identity and nationality of ships. With the encouragement of Tirpitz, the Kaiser sent out secret instructions on 2 April to discourage the common tactic of surfacing to attack vessels and emphasized the danger of doing so. This created what historian Arthur Link terms "an operational twilight zone" in which mistakes would be more easily made. There was no improvement in the number of ships sunk following this instruction, but 6 out of the 17 vessels sunk in April were neutral. The Germans convinced themselves that Americans were toothless. "The policy of the American Government is dominated by the one thought of not becoming involved in any complications whatsoever. 'We want to stay out of everything' is the single rule." In late April/early May there were German attacks on two additional American vessels, Cushing and Gulflight, the former an air attack that caused no loss of life, and the latter a submarine attack on a tanker where three died. President Woodrow Wilson had not made a formal response to any of these incidents before events overtook him.
Captain Dow, apparently stressed by operating in the war zone, left the ship; Cunard later explained that he was "tired and really ill." He was replaced with a new commander, Captain William Thomas Turner, who had commanded Lusitania, Mauretania, and before the war. On 17 April 1915, Lusitania left Liverpool on her 201st transatlantic voyage, arriving at New York on 24 April.
In mid-April, German ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, who had long had concerns about the legality of the February submarine campaign, and believing the Americans to be underestimating the dangers, consulted a group of representatives of other German administrative departments. He decided to issue a general warning to the American press. This notice was to appear in 50 American newspapers, including those in New York:
!
intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk.
Washington, D.C. 22 April 1915
The notice was intended to appear on the Saturdays of 24 April, 1 May, and 8 May, but due to technical difficulties did not appear until 30 April, the day before Lusitania sailed, appearing in some cases adjacent to an advertisement for the return voyage. The juxtaposition was a coincidence, but the warning led to some agitation in the press, annoyance from the American government, and worried the ship's passengers and crew.