Lusitania Sinks: US Turns Against Germany

The torpedo struck the starboard side just below the bridge at 2:10 in the afternoon, and a second, larger explosion followed almost immediately. The RMS Lusitania, one of the fastest and most luxurious ocean liners afloat, sank in eighteen minutes off the southern coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard, including 128 American citizens. The sinking outraged the neutral United States and began the slow shift in American public opinion toward entering the war against Germany. The German Embassy in Washington had published newspaper warnings on the morning of the Lusitania's departure from New York, advising travelers that ships flying the British flag in the war zone around the British Isles were "liable to destruction." Most passengers dismissed the notice as bluster. The Lusitania was fast enough, they assumed, to outrun any submarine. Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger, commanding U-20, spotted the liner through his periscope at 1:20 PM and fired a single torpedo from 700 meters. The torpedo's detonation was followed by a much larger internal explosion whose cause has been debated for over a century. The ship was carrying 4.2 million rounds of rifle ammunition and other war materiel listed on its cargo manifest, leading to theories that munitions caused the secondary blast. More recent research suggests a coal dust explosion in a nearly empty bunker. The rapid sinking, with a severe list to starboard, made launching lifeboats nearly impossible. Only six of the 48 lifeboats were successfully lowered. Many passengers drowned in the cold water before rescue vessels arrived from Queenstown (now Cobh). The dead included Alfred Vanderbilt, the American millionaire, and Elbert Hubbard, the writer and publisher. Germany defended the attack as a legitimate act of war against a vessel carrying military contraband through a declared war zone. American protests were fierce. President Woodrow Wilson sent a series of diplomatic notes demanding that Germany abandon unrestricted submarine warfare against passenger vessels. Germany temporarily complied, but resumed unrestricted U-boat warfare in January 1917, a decision that brought the United States into the war three months later.