Sinking of RMS Lusitania

Painting of the sinking, from the German Federal Archives
Date	7 May 1915
Time	14:10 – 14:28
Location	Celtic Sea, near Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland
Coordinates	51°25′N 8°33′W
Cause	Torpedoed by German U-boat U-20
Outcome	1,197 of the 1,960 people aboard (61%) killed (including 4 after the event)[1] Turned international opinion against Germany. Temporary end of unrestricted submarine warfare.

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 11 nautical miles (20 kilometres) off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. The attack took place in the declared maritime war-zone around the UK, 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 700 m (2,300 ft) to starboard, U-20 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.^{[2][3]: 429}  The U-20's mission was to torpedo warships and liners in the Lusitania’s area. In the end, there were only 763 survivors (39%) out of the 1,960 passengers, crew and stowaways aboard,^[1] and about 128 of the dead were American citizens.^[4] The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany. It also contributed to the American entry into the War two years later; images of the stricken liner were used heavily in US propaganda and military recruiting campaigns.^{[3]: 497–503}

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.^[2] At 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.^[5][6] Debates on the legitimacy of the way she was sunk have raged back and forth throughout the war and beyond.^[7]

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. At the outbreak of the First World War, the British Admiralty considered her for requisition as an armed merchant cruiser (AMC), and she was put on the official list of AMCs.^[8]

The Admiralty then cancelled their earlier decision and decided not to use her as an AMC after all; large liners such as Lusitania consumed enormous quantities of coal (910 tons/day, or 37.6 tons/hour) 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. Lusitania remained on reserve in the official AMC list and was listed as an auxiliary cruiser in the 1914 edition of Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships, along with Mauretania.^[9] All British and German liners capable of at least 18 knots were listed.^[10]

At the outbreak of hostilities, fears for the safety of Lusitania and other great liners ran high. During the ship's first eastbound crossing after the war started, she was painted in a drab grey colour scheme in an attempt 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 seemed that the Atlantic was safe for ships 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 damage due to mines or other dangers. Among the most recognizable of these liners, some were eventually used as troop transports, while others became hospital ships. Lusitania remained in commercial service; although bookings aboard her were by no means strong during that autumn and winter, demand was strong enough 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 25 to 21 knots (46 to 39 km/h). Even so, she was the fastest first-class passenger liner left in commercial service.^[11]

With apparent dangers evaporating, the ship's disguised paint scheme was also dropped and she was returned to civilian colours. Her name was picked out in gilt, her funnels were repainted in their usual Cunard livery, and her superstructure was 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.^[12]

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, and 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.^[13][14]

The German pre-war submarine fleet at harbour in Kiel. U-20 is second from left

By early 1915, a new threat to British shipping began to materialise: U-boats (submarines). At first, the Germans used them only to attack naval vessels, and they achieved only occasional—but sometimes spectacular—successes. 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.^[15] However, the German Imperial Admiralty Staff directed captains secretly to target passenger craft, as it was thought that this would deter other shipping.^[16] As Germany started the campaign with only 21 submarines, many of which were not operational, many did not take the threat seriously.^[17] The US government warned the Germans that they would face "strict accountability" for any American deaths as a result of the campaign.^[18][19]

The reaction to the announcement by the Lusitania was characterised by confusion. At sea en route to Liverpool at the time of the announcement, Captain Daniel Dow flew the US flag to dissuade attack, at the urging of his American passengers. This led to a storm of controversy from the American authorities and Germany.^[20]

In the 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 Louis and Laverock to escort Lusitania, and took the further precaution of sending the Q ship Lyons to patrol Liverpool Bay.^[21] 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 so communicated in the clear. As doing this would put his ship under substantial risk, Captain Dow refused to give his own position except in code. He gave his position significantly far away from his actual position, and leaving the warships unable to locate him, continued to Liverpool unescorted.^{[3]: 91–2 [22][23]: 76–7 [20]}

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.^[24][25]

Unknown to all, the submarine war was about to get more dangerous. On 28 March, during the so-called Thrasher incident, a German submarine stopped a British passenger ship, the Falaba on the surface. Eyewitnesses reported the submarine gave the ship only around 10 minutes to evacuate before torpedoing the vessel, resulting in the first American dead of the war. On 1 April, Admiral Gustav Bachmann, head of the German Admiralty Staff, sent a memo to the Kaiser. 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 emphasize the danger in 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."^[26] In late April/early May there were German attacks on two additional American vessels, the Cushing and Gulflight, the former (29 April) an air attack that caused no loss of life, and the latter (1 May) a submarine attack on a tanker where three died. President Wilson had not made a formal response to any of these incidents before events overtook him.^[27]

Captain Dow, apparently suffering from stress from operating his ship in the war zone, left the ship; Cunard later explained that he was "tired and really ill."^[28] He was replaced with a new commander, Captain William Thomas Turner, who had commanded Lusitania, Mauretania, and Aquitania in the years before the war.^[29] On 17 April 1915, Lusitania left Liverpool on her 201st transatlantic voyage, arriving in New York on 24 April.

The official warning issued by the Imperial German Embassy about travel to the UK, appearing on 30 April next to the Lusitania voyage advertisement

In the middle of 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, and decided to issue a general warning to the American press.^[30] This notice was to appear in 50 American newspapers, including those in New York:^[31]

NOTICE!
TRAVELLERS 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.
IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY
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 the Lusitania sailed, appearing in some cases adjacent to an advertisement for the return voyage. The juxtaposition was a coincidence,^[30][32] but the warning led to some agitation in the press, annoyance from the American government, and worried the ship's passengers and crew.^[33]