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The RMS Lusitania

George Henderson was only six years old when he watched the Lusitania sink from ashore. His words to a news crew in ’94 were, “I can still sit here now…and see that great liner just sliding below the waves.” In June, 1906, the Lusitania was launched by Cunard to seize transatlantic traffic back from the Germans. She had completed more than a hundred Atlantic crossings. The Lusitania left New York for the last time on May 1st, 1915, the same day that the German Embassy had printed a warning that travelers sailing on British ships in the war zone around the British Isles did so ‘at their own risk’.[1]
The German submarine U-20 had already torpedoed three British cargo vessels off the Irish coast. Germany’s professed exclusion zone had been in effect since February, asserting emphatically that all Allied ships that invaded this zone were liable to be searched and/or attacked.[2] On May 7th, Captain Walther Schwieger, sighted a four-stack passenger liner. A single torpedo was fired, and within 18 minutes the ship disappeared beneath the waves of the Atlantic.
Not long afterwards, on the British Isles, speculation aroused that Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, deliberately sacrificed the Lusitania to draw the United States into the war. This was ludicrous for the purpose that Churchill and the First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher were preoccupied with the escalating political crisis over Gallipoli. The absence of British naval escorts for the Lusitania in the war zone reflected the commonly accepted understanding that a liner’s best defenses lay in its own speed and maneuverability.
The British Government was quite keen in concealing the presence of armaments in the Lusitania’s hold. More than four thousand cases of rifle cartridges, along with over twelve hundred cases of unfused shells, had been confirmed to be aboard on the cargo manifest. The blame was rapidly shifted onto the Lusitania’s captain, William Turner, for deliberately aiding Allies within the British barriers. The sinking of the Lusitania, carrying American tourists onboard, escalated America’s presence effusively into World War I.
The reader is adept to recognize that there are numerous, diverse acts of war throughout history. Hitherto, a solitary act of war, as unique as it is effective, is a naval blockade around a colonial country or countries. Circa 4th Century B.C.E., the Greeks and the Persians would utilize blockades as they battled along the Aegean Sea. Just as European explorers would endeavor the merciless Atlantic seeking new lands, trade, and freedom from tyranny or persecution, blockades became a militant normality as more of the Western Hemisphere was discovered and claimed, especially isles in the vast Pacific discovered via voyages of Lieutenant Wilkes[3] (1838-1842). The defiant British blockade that sunk the Lusitania is continually debated by historians as either inevitable or avoidable.
A probable conception of this particular event could indicate the Lusitania tragedy as a product of miscommunication. If the reader could refer concisely to the blockade utilized by the United States around Cuba in 1962, President Kennedy did not refer to this strategic line of defense as a “blockade”, as one act of war would send two militant superpowers into nuclear holocaust. Instead, he referred to this as a “quarantine of Cuba”, an altercation of language that ‘bent’ the guidelines of the Cold War during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Communication was imperative for survival of both encampments.
Perhaps unjustifiably, the Lusitania was provided a single warning to halt before her demise. Yet, this event reveals no historical indication of a ‘hot-blooded’, irrational miscommunication targeting neutral bystanders. This act was a clear statement of British supremacy, proclaiming who controls the sea. The need for control of the seas did not cease following the Lusitania tragedy, nor has the argument for extreme isolationism with no consideration of America’s global interdependence.
Though it would seem that a continent should not be so concerned with the rest of the world, our history is a tapestry of interdependence, either for trade or war. Abandonment of our Allies in times of trial is cowardice and appeasement that can only yield grave consequences. John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s printed Harvard thesis, Why England Slept (a perpetuation of Churchill’s famous While England Slept) can further distribute details of necessary armaments, as well as disarmaments, at sea with a bold testimony: “…if a country’s control of the sea is weakened, so the county itself is weakened.”




[1] Reynolds, David. “Too Proud to Fight.” London Review of Books, Vol. 24 No. 23: 28 November 2002: 29-31.

[2] http://lusitania.net/ “Lusitania, British Cunard liner.” Encyclopedia Americana, 1920.


[3] Philbrick, Nathaniel. Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery – The U.S. Exploring Expedition: 1838-1842. (New York, NY): Penguin Group, 2003.

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