SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA

BY
BENJAMIN GALINDEZ
 Lusitania

• On May 1, 1915, the Lusitania left port in New York for Liverpool to make her 202nd trip
across the Atlantic.
• She was a gorgon of a ship, 785 feet long, with a beam of 85 feet, four boiler rooms, four
propellers, designed for 2200 passengers and a crew of 850.
• The Lusitania could go twenty-five knots, and after it was launched in 1906, it was the fastest
passenger vessel afloat, being able to cross the Atlantic in just under five days.
• Burned 1,000 tons of coal a day.
• Had four smokestacks, one of which was fake: the more funnels, it was thought, the faster
the ship.
• She was built by the Cunard Company, who had been transporting people across the Atlantic
since 1840.
• She was named by a Professor G. G. Ramsay who recalled the "evocative names of such ships
as the Umbria, Etruria, Campania, and Lucania." Cunard named the Lusitania after Roman
Portugal.
 Lusitania
An Epic Tragedy

• The disaster occurred in 1915, as a result of being hit directly mid-ship by a torpedo fired by a
German U-Boat (officially the U-20).
• Of the 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 died of injury, drowning or exposure, including 49
children.
• Unfortunately, on May 7, 1915, Captain William Thomas Turner slowed the Lusitania down
because of fog and traveled in a predictable line.
• At the time, the Allies thought the Germans had launched two or three torpedoes to sink the
Lusitania.
 INTERESTING FACTS
• The Lusitania sank in eighteen minutes.
• Compared with daily casualty figures at the Front, the Lusitania fatalities were tiny. But world
reaction to what had occurred off the Irish coast Friday 7 May 1915 was enormous.
• Sinking occurred within fifteen miles of the coast, it took rescue boats almost four hours to
arrive.
• The lowering of the lifeboats constituted as much a disaster as the torpedo.
• There had been no lifeboat drills, and many of the mariners who were in charge of lowering
the boats were trapped below decks by the explosion of the torpedo and shortly after, one of
the boilers.
• At 1:40 p.m., the U-boat launched a torpedo.
• The torpedo hit the starboard (right) side of the Lusitania. Almost immediately, another
explosion rocked the ship.
• Many believe the second explosion was caused by the ignition of ammunition hidden in the
cargo hold.
 THE FINDING OF THE LUSITANIA
• In 2008, divers explored the wreck of the Lusitania, situated eight miles off the coast of
Ireland.
• On board, the divers found approximately four million U.S.-made Remington .303 bullets.
• The discovery supports the German's long-held belief that the Lusitania was being used to
transport war materials.
• The find also supports the theory that it was the explosion of munitions on board that caused
the second explosion on the Lusitania.
 WHAT THE AMERICANS DID
• To placate the Americans, the Germans gave an informal assurance to President Wilson of
America, that there would be no repeat of the Lusitania and the 'sink on sight' policy was
called off on September 18th 1915 - though it was re-introduced on February 1st 1917.
Trench warfare occurred when a military revolution in firepower was not matched by similar advances in mobility, resulting in a grueling form of warfare in which the defense held the
advantage. In World War I, both sides constructed elaborate trench and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire. The area between
opposing trench lines (known as "no man's land") was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides. Attacks, even if successful, often sustained severe casualties as a matter of course.