RMS Lusitania - Sinking and Outcome

Sinking and Outcome

On 7 May Lusitania was nearing the end of her crossing, as she was scheduled to dock at the Prince's Landing Stage in Liverpool later that afternoon. 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 2:10 p.m. It was sheer chance that the liner became such a convenient target, since U-20 could hardly have caught the fast vessel otherwise. Schwieger gave the order to fire one torpedo, which struck the Lusitania on the starboard bow, just beneath the wheelhouse. Moments later, a second explosion erupted from within the Lusitania's hull where the torpedo had struck, and the ship began to founder in a much more rapid procession, with a prominent list to starboard.

Almost immediately, the crew scrambled to launch the lifeboats. While the Lusitania carried more than enough lifeboats for all on board, the conditions of the sinking made their usage extremely difficult, and in some cases impossible due to the ship's severe list. In all, only six out of 48 lifeboats were launched successfully, with several more overturning, splintering to pieces and breaking apart. Eighteen minutes after the torpedo struck, the bow struck the seabed while the stern was still above the surface, and in a manner similar to the sinking of the Titanic three years earlier, the stern rose into the air and slid beneath the waves.

Of the 1,959 passengers and crew aboard the Lusitania at the time of the sinking, 1,195 lost their lives that afternoon in the waters of the Irish channel. Just as had been seen with the Titanic, most of the casualties were from drowning or from hypothermia. In the hours after the sinking, acts of heroism amongst both the survivors of the sinking and the Irish rescuers who had heard word of the Lusitania's distress signals brought the survivor count to 764. By the following morning, news of the disaster had spread around the world. While most of those lost in the sinking were either British or Canadians, the loss of 128 Americans in the disaster outraged the United States, and would play a crucial role in the American entry into World War I against Germany two years later.

Germany continued to sink merchant shipping heading for England particularly after the Battle of Jutland in May 1917. When in January 1917 the German Government announced it would conduct full unrestricted submarine warfare, United States President Woodrow Wilson was furious and on 6 April 1917 the United States Congress followed Wilson's request to declare war on Germany. Its build up of participation was at first slow, but with the German Spring Offensive in March 1917 which at first went well for the Germans, the Allies barely holding the lines, the arrival by April of two million American troops, changed the situation in favour of the Allies.