Sailing into history

When the Cunard liner Lusitania sailed from New York harbor on 1 May 1915 the passengers and crew were essentially spitting into the wind. Although not a warship—not even a merchant vessel—Lusitania was steaming into hostile waters, propelled not only by her four screws but also the sort of British arrogance that fostered the conviction that no one would attack a non-combatant flying the Union Jack, not even in on open seas in the middle of a war.

In one respect, you can sort of see that—there was something in effect called “Prize Rules” (sometimes referred to as “Cruiser Rules”), which dictated that warships could stop and search any merchant ship under any flag, and if contraband (war matériel, goods destined for an enemy, etc.) was found, the vessel could be seized or sunk—with provisions made for the rescue of any crew or passengers. Which seems very 18^th Century, quaint and rather gentlemanly. But submarines can’t operate like that—their effectiveness comes from striking unseen, and they have no capabilities for transporting either goods or persons not specifically useful to their mission.

That’s actually kind of the whole point of submarine warfare, um. Germany had declared unrestricted submarine warfare as of February, and made it quite clear that “unrestricted” included firing on suspect vessels—those flying flags of the Allied Nations (France and Britain, primarily, in the Atlantic), and those under neutral flag suspected of carrying contraband to the Allies. Although passenger ships weren’t really supposed to be on that list, it’s not always easy to distinguish a cargo vessel from a liner through a periscope.

Moreover—let’s understand that the Brits had on more than one occasion run up the Stars and Stripes on their ships as they navigated the waters around the British Isles. A violation of the rules of war, and a serious pisser to the Germans.

And Lusitania was basically the prime focus of both Britain and Germany. A thumping great four-funneled behemoth just screaming “Britannia rule the waves” steaming through open seas like it was 1910 sends messages, you know?

The British Admiralty (headed by one Winston Churchill) and Cunard management both knew that the Lusitania was in danger just because. And so did anyone reading US newspapers, where the German government ran advertisements warning passengers thinking of traveling on her that they were rolling the dice. In the New York Times, this notice ran in juxtaposition to the Cunard sailing schedule.

But—in the spirit of the arrogance I mentioned above—although proclaiming her purely commercial, non-military mission of transporting the mostly well-heeled back and forth between Liverpool and New York, on this voyage (and not for the first time) Lusitania was also carrying a substantial cargo of weapons (small arms) and ammunition destined for the Western Front. Which was spirited aboard and not mentioned to US Customs or on the original shipping manifestos.

Well, everyone basically shrugged their shoulders, crossed their fingers and held their breath. And you know the rest. On 7 May, about 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale (Ireland), the Lusitania’s path intersected that of U-20, which fired a single torpedo, hitting her on the starboard bow. A few moments later there was a second explosion, which has been attributed to various causes.

(The Admiralty insisted it must have been from a second torpedo, rather than open up the can of worms of all that ammunition in her hold. U-20 only fired the one torpedo, but this did not in any way alter the Admiralty’s focus. A boiler explosion has been ruled out, as has the notion that it was any gunpowder in the military consignment—the explosion came from nowhere near that hold. Recent scholarship leans toward the explanation that the single torpedo struck a coal bunker, which kicked up a lot of coal dust, which ignited and blew the second hole in the superstructure.)

At any rate, within a matter of minutes, Lusitania had sunk, with 1,191 of the 1,962 passengers and crew lost. Papers all over the world decried the barbarity (except in Germany, where there was a vast sense of triumph). There was even a push in resolutely neutral America to join the fight (128 Americans were among the dead), but President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan managed to keep that in check.

There was an Admiralty inquiry, which toyed with the notion of blaming the disaster on Lusitania’s captain, but in the end all responsibility and opprobrium was laid entirely at the feet of U-20, and the German High Command. No mention was made at this inquiry of the military cargo or failure to fully inform Lusitania’s captain that intercepted radio traffic had made it plain to the Admiralty that subs were in the area and that she was a named target. It was just Hun frightfulness, attacking a purely civilian target.

For a while—starting in September—the Germans rescinded the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. But in the face of the strangulation of the British naval blockade that was bringing the civilians of Germany close to starvation, the High Command recommenced it in early 1917. And in April, we entered the war.

Look—there’s a whole thing about Lusitania, as you’ll have noticed. It was an appalling choice to target passenger liners (which U-boats did), particularly one as distinctive as this one. Although there was a German attempt to bluster about mistaken identity, and then a claim that she was armed and therefore fair game, it was nothing but bluster and it conflicted with all the evidence that Lusitania was in fact a prized target for the U-boat fleet.

On the other hand, the Allies used passenger ships as auxiliary cruisers and troop transports, so not always so clear-cut a thing to distinguish legitimate targets. Mauretania and Aquitania, sister ships to Lusitania, served in the Gallipoli campaign. Olympic, sister ship to Titanic, was sunk in the Mediterranean in 1916, when she struck a mine while serving as a hospital ship.

Plus—see above about the Brits swapping flags as the occasion suited. Not the same thing as firing without warning, I know—chicanery as opposed to barbarism—but certainly indicative that everyone thought the rules of war were more guidelines than actual commitments.

It’s also indicative that already—nine months into the war—both sides were starting to get desperate to find ways to break the stalemate that had emerged from the confluence of technological advances and outdated tactics. The choices they made—deploying poison gas, Zeppelin attacks on civilian targets, running guns and munitions in the holds of passenger liners, unrestricted submarine warfare—were, in retrospect, bad ones. Bad because they not only didn’t achieve the hoped-for breakthroughs, but because they opened the floodgates for expanding total war in such a way that the lines between combatant and non-combatant just disappeared.

And that’s the way they are, even today, a hundred years later.