When the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was launched by the Cunard Line in 1906, she represented the pinnacle of maritime engineering and luxury, a symbol of British commercial and technological supremacy at sea. Her sinking on May 7, 1915, struck by a German torpedo just off the southern coast of Ireland, shocked the world, killed nearly 1,200 people, and set in motion events that would eventually draw the United States into the First World War.
Lusitania was built as part of a deliberate effort by Cunard to recapture the Atlantic passenger trade from German competition. German shipping companies had dominated transatlantic crossings in the early twentieth century, holding the coveted Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing. Cunard, with financial assistance from the British Admiralty, commissioned two new vessels of exceptional speed and luxury: Lusitania and her running mate RMS Mauretania. Both ships were powered by steam turbines capable of sustaining a service speed of 24 knots, faster than any competing vessel. They were equipped with lifts, wireless telegraph systems, and electric lighting, and offered fifty percent more passenger space than any other ship then afloat. First-class accommodations were particularly celebrated for their sumptuous furnishings. In 1907, Lusitania claimed the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing, ending a decade of German dominance in the category.
An important condition attached to the British Admiralty's financial support was that both vessels would be available for military duty in time of war. During construction, gun mounts for deck cannons were installed in both ships, though Lusitania never actually carried guns in service. The understanding was that she could be converted into an armed merchant cruiser if wartime necessity demanded it.
When the First World War began in August 1914, the naval dimensions of the conflict rapidly escalated in ways that made commercial shipping increasingly hazardous. The Royal Navy imposed a blockade on the German Empire, cutting off supplies by sea. Germany responded by mining shipping lanes and eventually by declaring the waters around the British Isles a war zone in which all Allied ships were liable to be sunk without warning. Britain in turn declared food imports bound for Germany to be contraband. When German submarines initially struggled to sink large numbers of Allied merchant vessels, German naval authorities loosened the rules of engagement governing U-boat operations. The stage was being set for a confrontation that would have enormous consequences.
On May 1, 1915, Lusitania departed New York Harbor bound for Liverpool carrying 1,960 people, including passengers and crew. On that same day, the German embassy in the United States had placed fifty newspaper advertisements in American papers warning passengers that sailing on a British ship in the declared war zone was dangerous. The advertisements ran alongside notices for the Lusitania's departure. Despite these warnings and despite the known presence of German submarines in the waters around Ireland, the voyage proceeded.
On the afternoon of May 7, the German submarine U-20, commanded by Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger, spotted Lusitania eleven nautical miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, along the southern coast of Ireland. At 14:10, the submarine launched a single torpedo that struck the starboard side of the ship. The torpedo detonation was immediately followed by a second, more powerful internal explosion, the exact cause of which has been debated for over a century but likely involved coal dust, steam, or munitions in the cargo hold. The combined effect was catastrophic. Lusitania listed sharply to starboard and sank within eighteen minutes of being struck, an extraordinarily rapid sinking that left almost no time for organized evacuation. Only six of several dozen lifeboats and rafts were successfully lowered. Of the 1,960 people on board, 763 survived and 1,197 perished. Hundreds of bodies washed ashore along the Irish coast in the days that followed, but most were never recovered.
Among the dead were 128 American citizens, a fact that produced an immediate surge of outrage in the United States, a country that was at that point officially neutral in the European war. The German government attempted to justify the sinking by pointing to the 173 tons of declared war materials in Lusitania's cargo, including a quantity of .303 rifle ammunition, and by making false claims that the ship was secretly an armed warship carrying Canadian troops. These justifications were widely rejected. The sinking, combined with other provocations including Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 and the intercepted Zimmermann Telegram proposing a military alliance between Germany and Mexico against the United States, contributed to the American decision to enter the war. The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917.
The wreck of Lusitania lies at a depth of about 93 meters on the seabed off the Irish coast and has been the subject of numerous diving expeditions since the 1960s. The exact nature and quantity of the cargo she carried, including the question of whether she transported additional munitions beyond the declared manifest, has remained a matter of ongoing historical and legal debate. In the years following the First World War, successive investigations in Britain addressed questions of responsibility and the adequacy of safety measures taken before and during the voyage.
