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Remembered Today:

Dive to recover Lusitania artefacts


archangel9

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Funny that, Daniel went back and reread what I had wrote in it's full context and seemed quite happy with what I had said, others seem to have been able to understand what I was saying as well !!

Grant

... people participate in open discussion on a basis of fairness and clarity. If I misinterpreted your post, I apologise...

Edited by Kate Wills
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Guncotton exploded by seawater? Where on earth did that come from?

Since nitrocellulose requires a violent shockwave, as from a 'proper' detonator, to make it explode, how was this to be achieved?

The book, which I read with great interest and surprise about 20 years ago, clearly stated that there are two varieties of guncotton, and one explodes spontaniously upon contact with "seawater"; it did not state "water". I am a mechanical engineer, but not a chemist, and only took 2-3 courses in chemistry at university. If this is true, I would think that the second would have been less popular, and all the more so across time, when guncotton, once a popular explosive, seems not to be in wide use anymore. This is one of several major assertions in this book that I think could be easily proven or disproven, if anyone wanted to bother.

What was the objective of packing it within an inch of the trigger medium when ships, then as now, occasionally ran aground and created hull ruptures with no belligerent action involved?

The clear implication is that whomever was behind this was either massively stupid, or intended that, if hit by one of the puny torpedoes in use at the time, the ship would almost surely sink. (Without the second massive explosion, the one torpedo strike would probably only entailed a few weeks in drydock, and no loss of life.) The book also has a number of other assertions that suggest that it was intended to have the ship struck, like radioing it to proceed over a known U-boat location, failing to provide an escort for such a major vessel, and ordering the captain to not zig-zag; and then, after these curious orders, immediately destroying the logs of the wireless transmissions, not knowing that an over-zealous operator kept his own set of unofficial logs. Running aground was a possible threat, but I rarely have heard of an ocean liner in that era running aground; I would think that, especially with such a cargo, the liner would have left NY port with a pilot and half a dozen tugs.

How was 350 tons of it packed in without detailed plans, and logisitcs involving hundreds of workers at multiple levels of skill?

That is the sort of task that was done, every day, by thousands of skilled and semi-skilled longshoremen, all over the world. Technically it would seem to be a really simple project, if true, the bales were probably a one man load, and easily carried to the desired spot. I don't think that plans were needed; if they were, I doubt that they would have survived long, perhaps not more than a few hours. And if prepared, and if preserved, I am sure that they would be parked somewhere very secure, along with thousands of deep, dark secrets of Her Majesty's Government. Not likely to be published on the Internet any time soon.

Forgive my bluntness, but it sounds to me like conspiracy theorists' paranoid fantasy.

Indeed. The book was by a recognized author, who, I noticed in abebooks, was also the author of a second WW I naval history that I might pick up, and was widely distributed, judging by the great number of copies available on abebooks, many for $1 a copy. As I said, I have mentioned this book once or twice before, on the GWF, and never raised any apparent interest, to my surprise. The British have always been very clever with ingenious conspiracies in the service of the state; generally the Germans seem to have been much less so. We all know of a number of very curious and disturbing and usually successful conspiracies, which sometimes involved the loss of considerable "friendly" life.

The coaldust explosion theory for the second blast is about ten thousand times easier to believe.

Again, indeed.

Regards,

MikB

Bob

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Forgive my bluntness, but it sounds to me like conspiracy theorists' paranoid fantasy.

Regards,

MikB

I see it the other way round: why does HM not disclose the Lusitania files. We date 2011 right? This is what I call paranoia unless there is something terrible to hide.....

This non-disclosure drives conspiracy theories. They could be easily silenced if......

Forgive MY bluntness again, I am getting more and more curious about the Lusitania 90 ton mystery, the rancid butter and dairies designated for the Royal Navy Weapons Testing Establishment in Essex!

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I see it the other way round: why does HM not disclose the Lusitania files. We date 2011 right? This is what I call paranoia unless there is something terrible to hide.....

This non-disclosure drives conspiracy theories. They could be easily silenced if......

Forgive MY bluntness again, I am getting more and more curious about the Lusitania 90 ton mystery, the rancid butter and dairies designated for the Royal Navy Weapons Testing Establishment in Essex!

There may well be things HMG doesn't want to declare, but I wouldn't easily believe they would deliberately have put the ship and its passengers so deep in harm's way as a cynical exercise to drag Uncle Sam into the war - and if they did, they wouldn't have sacrificed whatever secret material they may've trying to bring over covertly. The 2 aims would contradict each other.

Despite Bob's claim that the contemporary torpedoes were 'puny', they were probably much the same as those that put the 3 Cressy class cruisers on the bottom and many other ships beside. Schwieger had every reason to think his torpedo would put the ship in danger, and he cannot have been unaware that it was carrying large numbers of civilian passengers. One of the reasons the sinking of the Lusitania stands out in history is that this event, along with the Zeppelin bombing of civilian populations, let a djinn out of a bottle with respect to 'civilised' warfare which has not been put back since.

Regards,

MikB

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Having read Colin Simpson's book on the Lusitania, I have to say that it is pretty poor fare,easily the worst of the books I have on the sinking. Many of the claims in it are hardly better than the sort of sensationalist rubbish that you would find in a Sunday tabloid. My favourite quote about the book comes from an author of another book on the Lusitania forum who wrote that he wouldn't line his birdcage with Simpson's book! If anyone's interested you could try Bailey & Ryan's The Lusitania Disaster: An Episode in Modern Warfare And Diplomacy which deals with and dismisses many of Simpson's claims. Alternatively you could look at the Lusitania Controversy website (http://www.gwpda.org...al/lusika00.htm) which provides some useful information and contradicts Simpson.

Nowadays the second explosion on the Lusitania is generally believed to be the result of one of three occurrences, namely a coal dust explosion or a main steam pipe fracturing or a boiler exploding. The latter two theories would incidentally also explain the almost immediate lost of power that the Lusitania suffered after the torpedo exploded. However whilst there are areas of debate about all three theories, the issue is almost certainly a moot one as the second explosion was NOT the cause of the Lusitania sinking so quickly. Rather as David Ramsay points out in his book Lusitania: Saga And Myth:

The second explosion seems to have led to the loss ofpower but it was not the deciding factor in the loss of Lusitania. The liner would have sunk quickly even if there had never been a second explosion. The breach, approximately 200 square feet, torn in her hull by the impact of the torpedo, was nearly seventeen times as extensive as the gashes which sufficed to sink Titanic. The heavy list which Lusitania developed immediately after she was hit is evidence of the massive instability due to asymmetrical flooding in her forward boiler rooms and the adjacent bunkers, exacerbated by the in rush of water through the open portholes as high as B deck.

There are numerous other examples of passenger ships sinking quickly following torpedo attacks - for example the Arabic and Persia actually sank less than 10 minutes after being hit. The simple fact of the matter is that passenger ships were/are not designed to deal with such attacks.

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This is just the sort of response I was hoping for, criticism of specific points, suggestion of a source which discusses Simpson's book, comment from someone who has actually read the book, etc. My impression, upon reading the book 20 years ago, having little prior info on the sinking, but being a mechanical engineer and having a general superficial knowledge of things nautical (as a young lad I read many books about things nautical, as a special interest); as I knew that my father had met Count von Luckner twice (once at a party in Germany, once walking two poodles on New York City's Park Avenue), I read his books and some others on commerce raiders. I felt that Simpson had raised important questions, and had seemed to source and document them well. I am in my seventies, I am working in fits and starts on several book projects, and intensely with a partner on an important project, and I cannot divert and get into this deeply.

Having said that, and hoping not to offend anyone, the allegations in Simpson's book suggest deep dishonor on the part of British leaders, and I would expect strong reactions to his allegations. I was puzzled by an almost blanket disinterest; I have posed this topic once or twice before; to a thundering silence, much to my surprise.

I can hardly believe that a steam pipe fracture or even a boiler explosion could pierce the inner hull, expand into the enormous expansion chamber, hundreds of feet long, formed by the uncompartmented space between the inner and outer hulls, and then have enough impact and energy to seriously fracture the outer hull, against both the strength of the steel hull, and the external water pressure. I spent years studying thermodynamics, and working with multi-dimensional steam property tables; for years I carried a book of these tables about with me. Even if steam ruptured both hulls, emerging into the cold seawater, the steam would almost instantly condense. What caused the enormous visible explosion that stunned the U-boat captain?

But coal dust, and even flour dust, is very explosive. Here we go to questions of where the coal was bunkered, and where the second explosion occurred. I can't answer that.

Bob

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I have removed two posts which add absolutely nothing to this Topic.

Roy

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There is a mystery about other submarine sightings

The second submarine

There were several sightings of submarines which cannot have been Schweiger's U20. Patrol vessel no 47, a motor yacht, the Seagull, owned by the Shakelton family was lent to the Navy in September 1914. Though only 42 foot and 15 tons it was based in Baltimore as a patrol vessel. A letter dated 11-5-1915 describes an encounter between the yacht and a submarine. Cope, who may have commanded the yacht, wrote to his father a GWR station master in Wolverhampton describing the encounter. " we played a very active role in the last murder. (I enclose a cutting from the Cork Examiner which leaves one with a vague impression) We had been chasing an elusive submarine for several days without getting a glimpse of the bounder, in spite of being hot on his track. On Friday morning about 9.55 a.m. we saw a surfaced submarine. On sighting us about two or three miles off they made for us at top speed. They were greeted with a shot or two from my rifle which must have had the effect of making them smile , so futile was it. From then on matters became exciting . They had the legs of us by about eight or nine knots (nearly twice our speed) but our handy little boat was able to hold her own.2 They succeeded in keeping the German vessel in sight for twenty minutes before the submarine submerged. The Seagull got into Baltimore at 11.15 and the signal about the sighting was broadcast by 12.00. The Seagull was built by Percy See at Fareham in Hampshire in 1911 and still sails on the river Shannon. This sighting off Cape Clear is quite a mystery since it would be 30 miles from the Old Head of Kinsale and therefore three hours journey from the Lusitania sinking at 2 p.m. The mystery is that the U 20 was coming from the East while this sighting was to the West. The signal to the MFA Helespont to proceed to Queenstown leaving the escort Scadaun to search for a submarine also points to a sighting other than U 20 being taken seriously.

Coast watchers on a headland overlooking the sea reported a surfaced submarine at 1.40 and made a report to Queenstown. But a submarine in close to land cannot have attacked the Lusitania because she was attacked from seaward. These observers were official coast watchers and so their report must be considered reliable.

Passengers aboard the Lusitania reported sighting a submarine on the Port side at 2.00 before the Lusitania made the turn toward land. They interpreted this as the captain taking evasive action. This is significant because chart information shows that the Lusitania was directly on course for Queenstown BEFORE the evasive change of course. The alteration in course was not therefore the turn for Queenstown as some writers have indicated. It was this evasive manoeuvre thought to avoid a mystery submarine that exposed the Lusitania to the U20. Captain Schweiger in U20 attacked from the Starboard almost immediately afterward. Significantly the Admiralty removed questions 14 and 15 form the list of queries to be put to witnesses at Lord Mersey's inquiry. These referred to submarine sightings and confirm that there was some evidence for mystery sightings.

Lookouts on the Lusitania say they saw two torpedoes but Captain Schweiger of U 20 fired only one. This is explained by the track of the torpedo being slightly away from the track of bubbles as observed from a height. Bubbles take several seconds to rise from the torpedo depth and therefore "strike" the ship well aft of the torpedo.

Apart from U 20 and U30 to the North of Ireland en route to Germany, the next nearest German submarine activity was the sinking of a large number of trawlers between Aberdeen and Hartlepool. Even British submarines which became active in later years in the vicinity of Fastnet were considered. The nearest two recorded are training craft logged as tied up at Pembroke and Devonport. Their logs survive at the Public Records Office at Kew. Fleet dispositions are not necessarily free from misleading information as the battleship HMS Audacious is listed though she had been sunk. Q ships were never listed. Altogether some seven sighting Point to the existence of a mystery second submarine which cannot be explained. Conspiracy theorists believe that an unnamed British submarine was on location to ensure that the Lusitania was sunk

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Readers will find this article useful and quite comprehensive shedding light on many of the topics mentioned above

http://www.gwpda.org/naval/lusika00.htm

"Gaelgoir" (is that Gaelic? My wife has a good deal, I not a word.) has presented material which makes a robust refutation of a lot of what Simpson asserted. As I said, I had mentioned Simpson's book once or twice before, and never got any sort of response, which I found odd. I don't have enough life left (or interest) to really sort this out, but at least we have a refutation of substance.

But I could point out examples where British intelligance has sacrificed, frankly in a treacherous fashion, numbers of innocent and brave people to further the larger purpose. (But I will be not doing so, I would be "off rules".) But not, I admit, 1200 people, merely some dozens at a pop. If the US became truly neutral, the Allies would have almost certainly lost the war, even before the US formally entered the war. For one thing, experts assert that the French government and economy would have collapsed without massive US loans. "Gaelgoir"'s sources mention that one US company, Dupont, provided 40% of the explosives used by all of the Allies.

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