Was the Lusitania Britain's war crime? 1,198 passengers died in 1915 when
the liner sank - but was a German torpedo really to blame?
By NIGEL JONES FOR MAILONLINE
Within seconds of the initial shock, the great passenger liner listed and began to
sink, her four funnels belching smoke.
Women and children shrieked in panic, and lifeboats half-full of people swung
drunkenly from their davits, some crashing on to the deck, crushing other
passengers.
A familiar picture – yet this is not the Titanic going down, but her lookalike, rival
trans-Atlantic liner, Cunard’s RMS Lusitania, which sank off the Irish coast with
the loss of 1,198 lives on 7 May 1915, three years after the Titanic went down.
And while the Titanic’s end had a natural cause – a collision with an iceberg – the
Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat torpedo. Or was it?
In the century since the catastrophe, debate has raged about what exactly
caused the liner, among the largest in the world, to sink in just 18 minutes – the
Titanic took almost three hours to go down.
Although the Lusitania was certainly struck by a German torpedo, survivors
reported hearing a second explosion, which caused the fatal damage. Now, as
part of a TV documentary, a diving team has visited the wreck to find out what
caused this mysterious second blast.
The Lusitania, which had left New York bound for Liverpool six days earlier with
almost 2,000 passengers and crew on board, had been known to be carrying
small-arms ammunition to supply the British Army, then grappling with the
Germans in Flanders in the midst of World War I.
But soon after the sinking, rumours circulated that the ship had also been
carrying explosives destined for the front. Endangering innocent civilians in such
a way – if proved – could constitute a war crime almost as serious as the Uboat’s targeting of the passenger liner, an atrocity that helped bring the US into
the war against Germany in revenge for the many Americans who died.
In its time, the sinking of the Lusitania had all the shock impact of 9/11. Today,
the ship lies 300ft down, 12 miles off the south coast of Ireland near the port of
Cobh.
In 1968 American businessman Gregg Bemis became a co-owner of the wreck,
which had been bought the previous year by a US diver for £1,000. Bemis, who
subsequently became sole owner, fought a long battle in the courts for the right
to dive and explore the ship, which still contains the remains of hundreds of
victims.
It also holds valuable items, but Bemis, now 83, says, ‘When I was younger it
was the monetary value that most interested me. But today it’s the history – all
the people on board had lives like you and me that were brutally cut off on that
May day.’
Bemis is certain that the Lusitania was carrying an illicit cargo of high-explosive
gun-cotton which, he believes, caused the blast that sank her so quickly.
The expedition he joins for the documentary aims to prove whether he is right.
The diving team plan to cut out a section of the liner’s hull, locate where any
explosive was stored and find evidence of what caused the second explosion.
But just getting down to the Lusitania is hard.
‘The water is incredibly murky,’ says Eoin McGarry, one of the dive team.
‘Although the Lusitania lies in much shallower water than the Titanic, which is
12,000ft down, it’s still difficult to see your hand in front of your face.’
There is also an emotional aspect to diving to the wreck, which McGarry
describes as ‘like travelling back in time to visit a graveyard’.
To add to their problems, the divers have only a narrow window of opportunity
before worsening weather forces their ship back to port.
First, they have to pinpoint the position of the liner’s magazine, the room set
aside for explosive material (the ship had been built on the understanding she
might be converted for military use, but never was), then clean off the sediment
on the exterior and cut their way into the wreck… They manage it with just
minutes to spare, and crawl deeper into the liner’s interior than anyone before.
They find the small-arms ammunition the Lusitania had been known to be
carrying – and gather enough photographic data for experts at a California lab to
make an informed guess about what caused the blast that sent the ship to the
bottom.
‘There are only three possibilities,’ says Bemis. ‘Either the torpedo ruptured one
or more of the ship’s 25 boilers, causing an explosion; or it set off a coal dust
explosion in the coal bunkers; or it triggered a gun-cotton or aluminium-powder
explosion – which would mean the Lusitania was carrying dangerous highexplosives, unknown to the passengers who died. And that would have been a
war crime on a par with the action of the U-boat that fired the fatal torpedo.’