The Sinking of the Lusitania

Patrick O'Sullivan

• Publisher: The Collins Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781848898707
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Primera Guerra Mundial

In May 1915, the RMS Lusitania, then the world's fastest liner, departed from New York. Seven days later she was torpedoed off the Irish coast with the loss of 1, 198 lives. Suspected by the Germans of carrying clandestine munitions to Britain, the great ship steamed into a fatal encounter with the German submarine U-20. One of the largest naval disasters in history, it was a factor in bringing America into the First World War. Patrick O'Sullivan presents the complete story of the Lusitania a. air, exploring the cover-ups and the theories on what caused the baffling second explosion. His meticulous research reveals the most compelling explanation to date. This is a fascinating account of one of the First World War's most reported-on atrocities.

1

Gathering War Clouds

IN EXPLORING THE STORY of the Lusitania, it is important to understand how the political and economic climate affected the events leading to the sinking of this passenger liner. The early years of the century were dominated by the Great War of 1914–18. This mighty clash of empires involved such countries as Britain, Germany, America, Belgium, France, Turkey, Iraq, Japan, Bulgaria, Italy, Austria, China and Russia amongst others. Tens of thousands of innocent neutrals were also caught in the cross-fire and suffered great hardship and loss of life. Unlike earlier wars, in which the horse played a vital role in moving men and machinery, the steamship and railroad had now been perfected and could move large armies and equipment to the four corners of the earth.

The Great War was the first to use the new means of communication: wireless telegraphy as developed by Marconi. Once at sea, naval units could now communicate with their bases or with other units at sea. The march of science and technology saw new weapons of destruction that could inflict slaughter and devastation on an unheard-of scale; the war became a consuming flame around the world, causing losses to victors and vanquished out of all proportion to the issues involved. New technology changed the methods of warfare profoundly; long-range guns had been developed which could sink ships at twelve miles distant. The newly-invented aeroplane made its debut in the Great War and evolved rapidly over the four-year period. The submarine, torpedo and mine were all new weapons. The German Zeppelins entered the arena to provide valuable reconnaissance and could bomb targets from the air. Poison gas was used to add to the horrors of the land war in the trenches of Europe; the tank also made its debut as a means of countering the stalemate in the trenches.

Land armies were millions strong, supported by entire populations who organised food supplies and munitions for the Front; able-bodied men throughout Europe were called to their armies or navies in great numbers and were replaced in the factories by women. Concern for civilian safety during shelling and bombing soon dissipated as the war plumbed new depths of horror daily until it became a free-for-all. The air offensive was the most revolutionary of all the new methods and increased in range and terror with every new month of the war; great areas of Europe were now subject to nightly attack by bombs being dropped from aeroplanes and Zeppelins. Cities such as London and Paris passed sleepless nights as the bombs burst around them; these attacks were countered by anti-aircraft guns which made an intolerable racket as they tried to shoot down the aeroplanes. Fire engines and ambulances raced through the streets to deal with fires and treat the injured and dying. The effects of this were especially distressing to the civilian population.

The land war was soon bogged down in the mud and barbed wire of the trenches in Europe as opposing armies were locked in stalemate; slaughter on both sides was inflicted daily on a relentless scale. In a single day, during the Battle of the Somme, over 20,000 soldiers lost their lives to shell and bullet. The war at sea saw the ruthless campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare bring Britain to her knees. As U-boat terror peaked in April 1917, Allied shipping was being committed to the bottom of the ocean at a rate of half a million tons per month; Britain had only six weeks of food left and was within a hair’s breadth of surrender. Throughout the four years of horror, food production had dwindled to a trickle. Various governments took possession of what remained and imposed severe rationing on the population. The year 1918 saw general world-wide shortages of food and other essentials such as clothing and housing. Factories, business and economic life were disrupted; roads and railways were ruptured or ceased to exist. As a result of the war, new frontiers and boundaries were created, cutting off traditional routes between countries.

The war ended in November of 1918 with the general mutiny of the German Navy at their base in Kiel as well as food riots in towns and cities in Germany. All parties were reduced to exhaustion and demoralisation; towards the end of 1918, the populace were dealt another major blow in the form of pestilence. Europe was enduring a partial state of famine and general ill-health when an influenza virus struck and wiped out an estimated twelve million lives world-wide compared to eight million lives lost in action during the war. The end of the war saw the loss of four great empires, namely the Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and German empires as centuries-old monarchies were extinguished. Before leaving the subject, it is necessary to look in more detail at the reasons for the war and events in so far as they concerned Germany, since it was Germany’s actions which precipitated the building of a series of great British four-funnel liners, including the Lusitania.

There were a myriad of reasons for the First World War, many stemming from centuries-old antagonisms, rooted in religious, economic, social, territorial and trade conflicts. While the war burst forth in 1914, it was expected as far back as the 1870s. Germany had suffered an extended period of economic difficulties from 1870 to 1890, and noted that countries like Britain and France were adept at spinning the globe and usurping large unnamed countries, mainly in Africa and Asia, and usually taking the lion’s share.

The twentieth century was to be the era of colonial empire-building, and Germany wished to be in on the act. The German Kaiser wished to have his ‘place in the sun’ and expand his meagre overseas possessions. Even as early as 1890, Germany felt she had already missed the boat in the game of empire building. One politician in the German Reich warned that if it did not act soon the only land available would be on the moon. Many felt that the failure of Germany to acquire a sizeable bloc of colonies spelt disaster for her future; without an empire of its own, Germany’s industry would always be dependent on other great powers. These other nations might introduce protectionist policies, and exclude Germany from their markets, or discriminate against it in other political ways, as free trade was already in decline in the world market-place. As Germany’s markets were controlled politically by others, great concern was felt by its industrialists. Germany felt a great need to adopt a global policy that would take it into the world market. It saw little alternative to the notion of expand or suffocate. History had shown that the status of a great colonial power required a great navy to back it up; Germany did not have such a navy in spite of having one of the greatest land armies in Europe. Without a navy, Germany could not assert itself in international politics and could not rise to world power status. The German Secretary of State, Alfred Von Tirpitz, calculated that Britain, with the finest navy in the world, was a stumbling block that threatened German aspirations. Without a navy, Germany could not acquire new territories without the tacit approval of the British. Von Tirpitz also stated in 1909 that Germany could not expect fair play from Britain until its navy was in place. The Royal Navy could force Germany to abandon her political demands or face defeat in war. Without a navy, Germany could not take countermeasures and her industrial power and wealth appeared to be built on sand as long as Britannia ruled the waves. Germany was vexed also by potentially dangerous internal and external problems; the building of a new navy, as well as a global policy, was seen as a panacea for all Germany’s domestic and foreign problems and would also secure the survival of the monarchy. Such a navy could be used as a political lever against other nations to help extract territorial concessions as well as providing a safeguard for existing possessions. It was also believed that it would revive patriotism of the classes and fill them with loyalty to their emperor and country.

With the active backing of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Von Tirpitz’s campaign to secure support from the public for his new navy finally bore fruit. Huge sums of money were provided by the German Reich for a new armaments policy. A ship building tempo was set which was to extend for twenty years. This announcement was welcomed by capitalists and industrialists keen to exploit every opportunity; jobs would be created, trade and industry stimulated and suppliers’ order books would be fattened to meet the demands of shipbuilding yards throughout Germany.

The new navy proved to be numerically inferior to Britain’s by about fifty per cent but was superior in many other ways. German battleships had better guns, more modern firing control, better side armour protection, better optics, better shells, and better flash protection in the event of an enemy shell striking near the magazine. By contrast, the British battleships had some shortcomings in these areas. British shells were unreliable and often broke up on impact or failed to explode. It was observed at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 that some British shells thudded against the sides of German battleships and fell uselessly into the sea without exploding. Britain relied too much on the integrity of various armaments manufacturers to ensure quality control and reliability; explosive propellant for their shells was often unstable and weaker side armour was evident on their battleships. Flash protection to their powder magazines also was not up to German safety standards. A well-placed enemy shell hitting an unprotected magazine could have disastrous consequences and cause a ship to explode in a cataclysmic fire-ball; the problem was aggravated by the British habit of leaving their magazine doors open in order to speed the rate of fire in battle conditions. As early as January 1898, voices of concern were heard in London arguing that if Germany implemented her new naval plan it would upset the balance of power. Britain began to consider her own position and was forced into a programme of increasing her own naval strength; in effect the arms race between the two countries had begun.

By 1904, detailed plans of war operations against Germany were drawn up by the Admiralty. In that year, Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher became First Sea Lord of the Admiralty and as such the professional head of the Royal Navy. His motto was the three Rs – ruthless, relentless and remorseless. He was full of energy and determination and was to become Von Tirpitz’s greatest opponent. He had the following comments to make at the Hague Peace Conference of 1899: ‘… Hit your enemy in the belly, and kick him when he is down, and boil his prisoners in oil – if you take any – and torture his women and children. Then people will keep clear of you …’ One wonders what he might have said at a war conference? Fisher was the man credited with revitalising the Royal Navy.

In 1911, Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty and thus became the political head of the Royal Navy. The Royal Navy had been the world’s finest for hundreds of years and had a long tradition of great sea battles and numerous victories; Lord Nelson, after all, had defeated the combined navies of the French and Spanish at Trafalgar in 1805. Battle strategy was always about taking an offensive role and charging out to victory; it may have been this tradition of victory that caused naval architects and designers of British warships to overlook these elements of protection and thus leave their ships vulnerable under attack conditions. Britain had hoped for a great sea battle and a second Trafalgar by annihilating the German Navy, and confidently predicted that the war would end in a month. The Germans were aware of the fact that they were outnumbered by two to one in terms of battleships and had no intention of risking their fleet in an all-out confrontation; instead they considered wearing down the Royal Navy whenever the opportunity arose with sorties and skirmishes. The Germans took great pride in their Imperial Navy, to such an extent that the Kaiser was furious to learn that the armoured cruiser Blücher was lost as a result of Royal Navy action at the battle of the Dogger Bank in January 1915. The Kaiser promptly sacked his chief-of-staff, Von Ingenohl, for allowing the loss to occur and replaced him with Admiral Von Pohl in February 1915. All things considered, including their great land army, the Germans were also optimistic of an early victory by spring of 1915.

However as May 1915 dawned on the southern coast of Ireland, the Great War still seemed very remote from its inhabitants. For some, joining the British Army promised new career opportunities; for others it promised adventure and an escape from poverty at home. About 160,000 Irishmen responded to the call to enlist and signed up – 49,000 were killed while fighting for the British. Irish nationalists who joined for ideological reasons believed that their efforts in participation would prompt Britain to grant Home Rule to Ireland. Many believed the war would last only a month. However, other Irishmen fomented rebellion against Britain and colluded with Germany as they planned an event that culminated in the Easter Rising of 1916. Unionists pledged their full support and ironically welded very close bonds of friendship with their fellow nationalists as they fought a common enemy in the trenches of Europe.

Fishermen on the southern Irish coast got a firsthand glimpse of the war at sea as they toiled daily in their small fishing boats. They witnessed the sinking of merchant ships on a regular basis as they fell victim to torpedo or mine. The luckless victims and dripping survivors of these calamities were mainly non-nationals and deemed to belong to a faraway war. Coastal fishermen held submarines in great awe and trepidation and felt a great need to be ashore before darkness each evening in case one should be encountered. In the main, Germany was perceived as the nation that ravaged Belgium and slaughtered innocent neutrals in towns and cities on her way to war. As early as August 1914, some expressions of anti-German sentiment were evident; in particular the citizens of Cork city were incensed by the outrages perpetrated in Belgium. Prisoners who were seized from a captured German ship were marched through Cork and triggered an anti-German demonstration by their presence. Correspondents warned against the dangers of employing Germans or Austrians in the country and of complacency towards aliens and spies masquerading as musicians.

While Ireland adopted a neutral stance, this neutrality leaned heavily in favour of Britain and her Allies, as Germany was perceived to be the nation that started the war in the first place. Recruiting meetings were a regular occurrence in Cork city and often attended by large crowds, sometimes as many as 5,000 people. At these meetings, the horrors of war were not mentioned, but rather the danger to the country, the reasons for fighting and the ideals at stake. Some meetings were enlivened by the attendance of brass bands or the showing of magic-lantern war pictures. The romantic concept of war was yet to be shattered by the horrific meaningless slaughter at the Front.

However, the drab reality was slowly percolating home as grieving Irish mothers and wives received dreaded telegrams conveying the loss of their loved ones in the mud and barbed wire of the Western Front. The crippled and the maimed were also returning to stunned relatives. Some had been subjected to poison gas and were little better than invalids, their emaciated bodies racked by continuous coughing and congested lungs.

The concept of a distant war was suddenly shattered by a German U-boat attack and rapid sinking of the Lusitania on 7 May 1915, only twelve miles off the Old Head of Kinsale. The full savagery and horror of war was delivered to Ireland’s doorstep with the mindless slaughter of 1,198 innocent civilians, including mothers with babes-in-arms. It seemed a diabolical barbarity that 2,000 non-combatants should be attacked without warning, that not even a minute’s grace was allowed for the passengers and crew to take to the boats, that the murderous thrust was given in the full knowledge that it would mean the slaughter of hundreds of women and children and that this butchery was the act of a government which was, until recently, assumed to lead a civilised and humane nation. It was wrongly believed at the time that a second torpedo was discharged at the Lusitania, thereby reducing still further any chance of escape by her innocent passengers. Many people who saw the bodies of the Lusitania dead laid out in Queenstown (now named Cobh) over the next few days were filled with pity, horror and revulsion. Consternation was created among all classes on the southern Irish coast as the incident was strongly condemned and a greater determination to defeat Germany was proclaimed. On the day of the Lusitania’s departure from New York, the German Embassy issued a notice in the American press, warning passengers that vessels flying the British flag were liable for attack. This lent credence to the belief that the crime was premeditated and that the murderer expected to be acquitted of his foul deed for having warned his victim in advance of his intentions. To the people of southern Ireland, the apex of horror of the Great War had been reached. The world was shocked in 1912 by the loss of the Titanic to an iceberg, but the shock bore no parallel to that felt by the loss of the Lusitania, which was needlessly sacrificed to the insatiable gods of war.

2

Merchant Ships at War

THE DAWN OF WAR IN 1914 saw Britain as the world’s foremost maritime nation with every reason to sing ‘Britannia Rules the Waves’. Both her merchant ships and passenger liners dominated the seven seas and made up one-sixth of all shipping afloat. Britain’s achievements over the centuries were largely due to her predominance as an ocean power. Her great Empire and Colonies were created by her merchant fleets and the navy that guarded them. Britain’s Merchant Navy was established with a great tradition long before the Royal Navy was spawned.

In 1600, a consortium of London merchants founded the legendary English East India Company and were granted a royal charter to trade in the East Indies and Asia. From humble beginnings, the company grew to staggering proportions and traded for 270 years with such countries as India, Persia, Egypt, the Mollucas, Java, Siam, Borneo, Indonesia, Japan and ports on the China Sea. They dealt mainly in the importation of pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and various spices as well as raw silk from China, Indian calico, cotton, sugar and saltpetre to make gunpowder. Many of their imported goods from the East were later re-exported from England to all parts of Europe, from ports on the Baltic to Venice on the Adriatic. Outward-bound East India ships were largely empty except for provisions and limited amounts of woollen goods, tin, lead, quicksilver, iron goods as well as substantial amounts of silver bullion and, to a lesser degree, gold bullion to pay for purchases abroad. By 1620 this energetic company had seventy-six ships and had established shipbuilding yards on the Thames at Deptford and Blackwall to build their own ships with a staff of 500 shipwrights. Ironworks, foundries and forges were also established at the Thames shipyards where the company’s blacksmiths manufactured chains, anchors, nails and various implements. A multiplicity of buildings and warehouses surrounded the shipyards and incorporated sail-making lofts, cordage spinning sheds, and rope walks. Abattoirs were also attached where live cattle were slaughtered on the hoof and their flesh salted and pickled to provision the long voyages ahead. To man the fleet, 2,500 mariners were employed at sea, in addition to agents staffing their various and scattered trading stations in the East.

At this time the East India Company was London’s biggest employer of labour and was granted permission by the government to mint its own currency. The East India Company was founded at a time when Britain was facing something of an oak crisis, due to rapid depletion of its forests in the latter half of the sixteenth century to meet the demands of shipbuilding and charcoal fuel making. Ireland, by contrast, had abundant forests of top quality oak awaiting exploitation. This natural resource attracted the East India Company to southern Ireland in 1610, where they established a 300-strong settlement at Dundaniel on the Bandon river, in County Cork. Several thousand acres of land were purchased or leased and tree felling commenced immediately. A shipbuilding dock was constructed and warehouses, sheds and forges were erected. Prime pieces of timber were felled for shipbuilding and lesser pieces were used to make barrel staves and charcoal. By 1613, two ships of 600 tons burden were built on the Bandon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• About the author
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Hymn to the Lusitania
• 1 Gathering War Clouds
• 2 Merchant Ships at War
• 3 The Majestic Era
• 4 A Damned Un-English Weapon
• 5 The Codebreakers
• 6 A Sinister Silence
• 7 The Town of the Dead
• 8 The Sham Tribunals
• 9 Munitions and Explosives
• 10 The Aftermath
• 11 The Mysteries Unravel
• Archival Sources
• Bibliography
• Imprint page
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