Lusitania – Cunard Line, Circa 1907
Lusitania Cunard Line / Liverpool – New – York – Boston. Circa 1907
The RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner that a German submarine sank in World War I, causing a major diplomatic uproar. The ship was a holder of the Blue Riband (an unofficial accolade given to the passenger liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean westbound in regular service with the record highest speed.), and briefly the world’s largest passenger ship until the completion of her sister ship Mauretania. The Cunard Line launched Lusitania in 1906, at a time of fierce competition for the North Atlantic trade. She made a total of 202 trans-Atlantic crossings.
The ship was designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship’s name was taken from Lusitania, an ancient Roman province on the west of Iberian Peninsula, the region that is now Southern Portugal and Extremadura in Spain. The name had also been used by a previous ship built in 1871 and wrecked in 1901, making the name available from Lloyds for Cunard’s giant. Peskett had built a large model of the proposed ship in 1902 showing a three funnel design.
About the Sinking of the Lusitania
On 7 May 1915 Lusitania was nearing the end of her 202nd crossing, bound for Liverpool from New York, and was scheduled to dock at the Prince’s Landing Stage later that afternoon. Aboard her were 1,266 passengers and a crew of 696, which combined totaled to 1,962 people. She was running parallel to the south coast of Ireland, and was roughly 11 miles off the Old Head of Kinsale when the liner crossed in front of U-20 at 14:10. Due to the liner’s great speed, some believe the intersection of the German U-boat and the liner to be coincidence, as U-20 could hardly have caught the fast vessel otherwise. However, there are discrepancies concerning the speed of Lusitania, as it had been reported travelling not near its full speed. Walther Schwieger, the commanding officer of the U-boat, gave the order to fire one torpedo, which struck Lusitania on the starboard bow, just beneath the wheelhouse. Moments later, a second explosion erupted from within Lusitania’s hull where the torpedo had struck, and the ship began to founder much more rapidly, with a prominent list to starboard.
