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Remembered Today:

Lusitania


kenneth505

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This was not the first ship sunk with civilians on board so why is this ship different from all the others ,it caused a stink in the states but did not give them reason to enter the war , it was used by the press as a cause and has iconic imagery but murder I think not .

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The simple fact is that whether or not there was any ammunition on board the Lusitania is utterly irrelevant.

The U-boat captain could not have known that there was or was not such on board. He sank a passenger ship.

Later, when questioned he said, "I saw a big ship in front of me, so I sank it". He didn't make any excuses about ammunition. How could he?

Funnily enough, in Cobh the Lusitania memorial is around the corner from the Casement Square.

Anyone wanting details of the casualties should write to the Librarian at Cobh who holds full details.

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This was not the first ship sunk with civilians on board so why is this ship different from all the others ,it caused a stink in the states but did not give them reason to enter the war , it was used by the press as a cause and has iconic imagery but murder I think not .

Of course it wasn't the first - but it was the first with over a thousand non-combatant casualties. Schwieger knew they were non-combatants, and if that isn't murder I don't know what is. He may have been able to use the 'following orders' defence, I don't know, but if he could, that would only pass the buck for murder further up the chain of command, because that's what it was.

Regards,

MikB

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've not long since finished reading LUSITANIA an illustrated history J.Kent Layton. which details every single trans atlantic crossing she made. The book has many beautiful photographs of the ship throughout her career. His conclusions in short attribute the rapid sinking to the ignition of coal dust in her bunkers from the single torpedo impact; as her coal stocks were almost exhausted as she neared the end of her last fateful voyage to Liverpool. http://www.atlanticliners.com/lusitania_an_illustrated_biography.htm

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Sherman had it right: "War is cruelty and you cannot refine it."

That's usually said by those who want to justify their actions that way, and Sherman was a famous enough exponent of it.

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Yeah, famous defender of war criminals me.

I don't know you, but I just meant that 'Hard War' Sherman would say that, now wouldn't he?

And you said he had it right. But he didn't murder civilians AFAIK.

And there were also certain well-known German commerce-raiding commanders who didn't take life when they could avoid it.

Regards,

MikB

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I am being lazy, I am not hiking some distance to reach my copy of the book, to check the title (It is physically dangerous to even approach the location, and as my father fought at Gallipoli {with the Turks!} I am not a "spring chicken" and not very nimble), but two Brit investigative reporters, perhaps for the Sunday Times, write a book about 25-30 years ago, imaginatively titled something like "Lusitania", which had a great deal of seemingly documentary evidence, claiming a broad conspiracy, such as ordering the ship to not zig-zag, sending it past the known location of the U-boat, which had just sunk another ship at a known location, refusing the ship an escort, and even for a while preventing rescuers from putting out to pick up survivors so as the run up the death toll. Also that the trial of the captain was a fiasco, due to a second set of radio logs being presented, the authorities having destroyed the originals; the judge was so angry at the frame job that he supposedly stated that "I no longer wish to administer His Majesty's justice", and he resigned his judgeship.

It also detailed the ammunition on board, and also supposedly bulk explosives, the latter supposedly being several hundred tons of a form of guncotton that explodes spontaneously on contact with sea-water; this was wrapped in burlap and used to line the hull. (There was only one torpedo, everyone agrees on that, and the captain of the U-boat was astonished by the size of the second explosion, which dwarfed the first explosion.) Also that the ship was formally an auxiliary cruiser of the Royal Navy which had an armament of 6" guns, which were below decks when in port, and taken out and bolted to mounts when at sea. Claimed that the RN dove on the ship many times between the wars and cut that evidence away.

Many more details, and supposed documents.

There was a thread on this several years ago on the Forum, and I mentioned this book, and none of the participating Brits seemed to give me a straight answer. It would seem to me that these dramatic claims (made by Brits, not a Hun like myself) could be either proved or debunked. If 10% of the material in the book is true we have one large cover-up.

I have to add that the British have always been really good at clandestine operations, cloak-and-dagger stuff, etc., and have often sacrificed a small number of innocents for the greater good of a war effort. Examples on request.

Bob

PS: Have I annoyed anyone?

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Guest exuser1

Only that the book is complete rubbish full of holes and what would be described as garbage history , if there was a conspiracy to get the USA to enter the war on the Allied side it took a long time coming ,the USA could simply not afford to let the Allies lose based on the debt that was owed at that point to the American banks ect .

The ship was in a war zone belonging to a nation at war just surprised it had not happened earlier .

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...supposedly bulk explosives, the latter supposedly being several hundred tons of a form of guncotton that explodes spontaneously on contact with sea-water; this was wrapped in burlap and used to line the hull.

Bob

PS: Have I annoyed anyone?

Only with the addition of the critical proportion of Unobtainium catalyst.

I'd be annoyed if I thought you thought this conspiracy stuff was believable... :D

Regards,

MikB

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Read the book about 20 years ago, have poked into it once or twice since. So details in memory are weak. But it seemed to have lots of research, cited documents, even photos of documents like the manifests of the cargoes of ammo and explosives. (Claims that there was a system of the regular manifest, but then additional cargo could be added to a special manifest that would generally not be seen.) Even a claim that there was a Belgian officer on the ship, when it blew up he could hear and recognize the sound of crated ammunition exploding, he survived, he wanted reimbursement for his lost household effects, so he sued for the value of his possessions, and (as a Belgian officer!) was drafted into the British Army, sent right to the front in France, and was dead in a month.

One or two people did simply state that the book was rubbish, without explanation. Did these guys just invent all of this stuff?

I have more things on my plate than I will ever get done before I croak. So I don't want to put in six months or a year proving or disproving these assertions. Is this book another manifestation of UK yellow journalism, perhaps from brains inflamed by looking at page three too much?

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Well Bob (hello again by the way)

If you can get the name of that Belgian i can have a look to the veracity of that part of the story.

Carl

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I don't know very much about the Belgian, but the transcripts of Lord Mersey's Lusitania inquiry and the final report can be found here: http://www.titanicin...ania/lucy01.php

S.

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Read the book about 20 years ago, have poked into it once or twice since. So details in memory are weak. But it seemed to have lots of research, cited documents, even photos of documents like the manifests of the cargoes of ammo and explosives. (Claims that there was a system of the regular manifest, but then additional cargo could be added to a special manifest that would generally not be seen.) Even a claim that there was a Belgian officer on the ship, when it blew up he could hear and recognize the sound of crated ammunition exploding, he survived, he wanted reimbursement for his lost household effects, so he sued for the value of his possessions, and (as a Belgian officer!) was drafted into the British Army, sent right to the front in France, and was dead in a month.

One or two people did simply state that the book was rubbish, without explanation. Did these guys just invent all of this stuff?

Quite probably.

For a start, in the 1930s there was no suvh thing as "diving" as in scuba. It was all done by divers in suits attached to the surface.

You can't just 'cut away' gun mounts (especially big mounts). It would take days and even then the remains would be clearly visible.

What happened to the fire control system, the aiming system, the ammunition delivery system? Just minor details.

The cover-up must be the people who have dived on the wreck over the last 20 years or so anho have never reported anything of this.

Its very easy to fake documents when all people are going to see is a photo.

I wonder why a Belgian officer was on the ship and how did he recognise ammo exploding? I would have thought he would be more concerned, like everyone else, with leaving the ship (and remember it went down quickly).

No, conspiracy theories are usually intended to increase book sales, and nothing else.

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Even a claim that there was a Belgian officer on the ship, when it blew up he could hear and recognize the sound of crated ammunition exploding, he survived, he wanted reimbursement for his lost household effects, so he sued for the value of his possessions, and (as a Belgian officer!) was drafted into the British Army, sent right to the front in France, and was dead in a month.

I have more things on my plate than I will ever get done before I croak. So I don't want to put in six months or a year proving or disproving these assertions. Is this book another manifestation of UK yellow journalism, perhaps from brains inflamed by looking at page three too much?

So now we got three explosions, huh? The kipper, the hundreds of tons of water-triggered guncotton carefully packed in sacks to destroy the hull, and now crated ammunition with an officer who's heard the stuff explode often enough to recognise it?

Sounds like the result should've been more complete than Queen Mary, Hood, or Barham.

Myself I prefer the simpler explanation.

Regards,

MikB

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It also detailed the ammunition on board, and also supposedly bulk explosives, the latter supposedly being several hundred tons of a form of gun cotton that explodes spontaneously on contact with sea-water; this was wrapped in burlap and used to line the hull...

Chemistry was never my strong point, but if this article from an 1847 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald is anything to go by then the issue of gun cotton exploding spontaneously in sea water needs to be treated with a degree of caution:

post-85735-0-84744700-1368450861_thumb.j

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Guest exuser1

There was a Time Watch documentary many years ago on the sinking and evidence from various dives , one statement made was that the earliest dives made with scuba kit had reported evidence of earlier dives ,the thought was that the only people able to do this prior to this time was the RN but no evidence was put forward , there was I believe a Irish diver who carried out some mad cap dives in the early 1960s , dives were made in the 1980s for financial gain ,in fact a well known dealer in shipping memorabilia sold pocket watches taken from the wreck these were widely advertised at the time and were detailed in magazines at the time ,in the shady world of wreck diving many stories are circulated to cover up dodgy dealings .

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Well, I have certainly opened a can of worms. I am extremely swamped at the moment, but I will attempt to address a few points briefly, and I will attempt to put more time into this over the next couple of days.

I have to clearly state that I have no idea if the claims of the two "gentlemen" have any basis in fact; when I read the book quite a few years ago I was quite taken with the great deal of documentation that the authors seemed to present, which as I remember, included photos of documents, such as manifests showing that the ship was at least carrying limited amounts of ammunition, which may or may not have been a legal defense for the attack. Not an expert, but the rules of war as they existed in 1914-1915 were at odds with the emerging technology. I certainly feel that an attack on an ostensible civilian liner was morally questionable; my wife, more intelligent than rooms full of people in summation, laughs at such discussion, adding that all war is a crime, and quibbling about this and that act and rule is like the old arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

I am going to question a few recent assertions, but this is not necessarily a defense of this book, but more along the lines of stating that some assertions do not seem to definitively disprove the assertions of the book. Again, as it is night, I would be literally risking my life entering the office in which the book is located.

As per post # 31: From memory, the book asserts that the RN had made many dives on the wreck, starting not long after the war was over. Will report on those assertions when I retrieve the book. I like your turn of phrase: "the shady world of wreck diving", as I have done quite a bit of wreck diving in the Atlantic, perhaps 60 wreck dives over 8 years off New Jersey, a few later wreck dives during resort diving. However, aside from volumes of fishing weights stuck in my suit during the course of dives, to make up for the weight of air breathed and expelled (diving in the years before boyancy compensators), I only have taken up one artifact, an engine bearing from a ship that sunk in 1898, I think, taken on a night dive off New Jersey many moons ago. (It is quite dark 60 feet down between 10 and 12 PM. The dive boat captain tried to spook us by stating that the wreck was inhabited by a ray 15 feet across, utter nonsense. The wreck was only about three miles offshore, where there was an amusement park, with a Ferris Wheel, which looked rather exotic from offshore. Most of our dives were six to ten miles offshore. Many of the Jersey wrecks date from WW II.)

healdav, as per post # 28, as quoted below:

For a start, in the 1930s there was no such thing as "diving" as in scuba. It was all done by divers in suits attached to the surface.

Yes, when I was a kid, I was fascinated with the sea, and also with diving, and used to read a lot about "helmet diving", with the canvas suits and the spherical bronze helmets and air lines, whose use was still common until fairly lately, in the miserable conditions found in major harbors and the like. (For all I know they still may be used; commercial divers using SCUBA sometimes wear helmets, but lighter and user-friendly.) "Helmet and suit" diving was fairly well worked out in the late 19th Century, if not only their tools; ox-acetylene cutting was probably done underwater before WW I, certainly shortly after.

You can't just 'cut away' gun mounts (especially big mounts). It would take days and even then the remains would be clearly visible.

As (loosely) described, there were guns with a base dropped onto a base mounted on the deck; when the gun was mounted the two were bolted together. Cutting the bolts with ox-acetylene torches would have taken several hours of work; hard, dangerous work, but possible at that time by top divers with the best equipment, as the RN must have had. But there was no proof presented, and you are right, the work would leave evidence, which would degrade over time.

What happened to the fire control system, the aiming system, the ammunition delivery system? Just minor details.

With these deck guns the sights are simple and on the guns; the ammo would be rolled up on trollies (the 6" shell weighed about 100 lbs.); little or no fire control, perhaps a smallish optical rangefinder; not much other equipment, certainly not fixed.

The cover-up must be the people who have dived on the wreck over the last 20 years or so and have never reported anything of this.

Here we are. If that is true, with several creditable seemingly objective reporters,the whole gun matter can be dismissed. But it is hardly central to the mass of assertions. But if the ship was mounting heavy deck guns, then it clearly was an auxiliary cruiser.

Its very easy to fake documents when all people are going to see is a photo.

There again, if these alleged documents were taken from public records, they could be found again, or proven to not exist, if anyone bothered to do so.

A personal note: (One of many) I have a neat cousin in Wisconsin, a farm widow, Elsbeth. She must be 78. A great gal, as of a year or two ago, she would tear about on her tractor doing farm work, in summer clad in a bikini. As a girl of 12, she and her brother, trying to flee the Russians in 1945, were to board a civilian liner, the Gusloff (I may have that wrong), but for some reason she missed the ship, and fled overland. The liner was torpedoed in the Baltic, and 8000 or 9000 civilian refugees drowned. Her father was a deputy mayor, and worked on to evacuate his neighbors, instead of fleeing himself; the Russians put him and his wife in a camp; Elsbeth's mother starved to death, it is not known how her father died.

Simon, re: post # 30: The book, from memory, stated that there were two types of guncotton, and that one would spontaneously explode when exposed to seawater. Your article dates from 1847, 167 years ago. might possibly date to before the alleged salt-ignited guncotton was invented. A quick peek at Wikipedia might be more useful. This point might be a good test of the book's truthfulness; if that type of gun-cotton simply does not exist, that would strongly suggest that the authors were fabricating. If that sort does exist, it does not prove the allegations, certainly.

My dear Carl, re: post # 26. Once I can safely mount an expedition to my abandoned office, I will get the name of the officer, and again, we will have a piece of evidence. If the officer never existed, or was killed in an amusement park ride accident in Antwerp in 1932, the allegations of the authors will receive a serious blow. (Carl, I now owe you an e-mail or two and some information for a year or more now. I will strive to be a better person.)

Simon, re: the British inquest of 1915: The report should be very useful to anyone poking deeply into the question, but if there is some truth to the assertions, one can hardly expect an official UK report of 1915 to confirm that, for example, that Churchill and the King of England, among others, were involved on insuring the sinking of the Lusitania and in threatening to open fire on any Irish boats that attempted to sail out to the stricken ship and save some innocents.

I will try to reach the book tomorrow. I actually have been injured attempting to reach this abandoned office.

I wonder why a Belgian officer was on the ship and how did he recognize ammo exploding? I would have thought he would be more concerned, like everyone else, with leaving the ship (and remember it went down quickly).

As I remember from 20 years ago, he was moving to the US, I think, don't think it was mentioned why he was moving. He supposedly recognized the rattle of the cartridge cases hitting each other as the cases of ammunition burned and exploded. What his expertise in this sound was may not have been explained; an officer who served in combat could have easily witnessed the same occurrence.

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I think that the "revelations" that Lusitania may have carried guns that were hidden in port is a bit of a red herring. The ship was built partly by Naval finance so she could be used as an auxiliary cruiser. I would expect that hardened positions for gun mountings would have been included in the design. To the trained eye these would be visible when in port and may have raised suspicion that guns had recently been removed and hidden.

A WW1 era 6inch naval gun was a very heavy beast and would have taken considerable effort and equipment to keep removing and replacing each time the ship approached a port.

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Only that the book is complete rubbish full of holes and what would be described as garbage history , if there was a conspiracy to get the USA to enter the war on the Allied side it took a long time coming ,the USA could simply not afford to let the Allies lose based on the debt that was owed at that point to the American banks ect .

The ship was in a war zone belonging to a nation at war just surprised it had not happened earlier .

post-60941-0-71435500-1368523608_thumb.j

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Guest exuser1

As above , am about to get on a big ship ,and some one shows me the above advert , not a surprise ,to the passengers as they said in a later war "Is your journey really necessary"

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Read a short article in Wikipedia on guncotton last night, from memory, three men invented it independently in 1846. So the newspaper article in 1847 is hardly the last word. Invented when someone spilled some acid, used a cotton cloth to wipe up the spill, put the cloth aside, was mildly surprised when the cloth exploded. Seems extremely easy to make, mixture of nitric and sulphuric acid, soak cotton in it, wash really, really well. If not washed very well (hours and hours, multiple rinses), you have a dangerous product. Article made no mention of "two types", but perhaps they were well-washed, or not well-washed. It can be made more safe, say for transportation, by wetting it with fresh water. No mention of what happens when you soak it in salt water. So, based on a brief Wiki article, the "two types" story might be nonsense, or could be true.

The advert, which is very famous, can of course be taken two ways.

I think it is accepted that, formally, the Lusitania was an auxiliary cruiser; I did not know that the RN partially paid for its construction. My common-sense take would be that merely being listed on a piece of paper should not allow the ship to be sunk, but a ship with mounted heavy guns might be fair game. Cruiser law of 1915 required a sub to surface, halt a surface ship, and search it for contraband. Hard to do when a fast ship has multiple heavy guns. (German aux. cruisers usually had 4.7" or 5.9" guns, Brit 4.2" or 6", I think.) Of course the conflict between the rules of war and military necessity was a game played during the entire war, e.g., the Q-ships.

Anyone have clear statements from (hopefully) objective divers on the evidence left on the decks of the wreck? In the between-war period it would have been difficult but possible for skilled well-equipped divers, given time, to cut off and hoist away guns, but it should leave traces.

The Seeadler, von Luckner's raider, had I believe a 4.2" gun that rose up from below-decks on a platform, this on a large sailing ship. Also a dining table and section of mess floor that would drop suddenly to the next deck, to overpower a prize crew.

I agree that trundling out a 6" gun at sea would be a nasty job, but fixtures could be contrived to ease the job, like ship boats' davits that doubled as a small crane. In WW I most German naval cruisers had a few 4.2" guns in single mounts, throwing about a 35-40 lb shell, a 100 lb 6" shell would be quite a deterrent. Most German or Brit aux. cruisers of the full-blown type had 6 or 7 5.9" or 6" guns in single deck mounts. (As a boy I read about this stuff, not really interested lately.) But even a pair would be quite a weapon.

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Simon, re: post # 30: The book, from memory, stated that there were two types of guncotton, and that one would spontaneously explode when exposed to seawater. Your article dates from 1847, 167 years ago. might possibly date to before the alleged salt-ignited guncotton was invented. A quick peek at Wikipedia might be more useful. This point might be a good test of the book's truthfulness; if that type of gun-cotton simply does not exist, that would strongly suggest that the authors were fabricating. If that sort does exist, it does not prove the allegations, certainly.

re: the British inquest of 1915: The report should be very useful to anyone poking deeply into the question, but if there is some truth to the assertions, one can hardly expect an official UK report of 1915 to confirm that, for example, that Churchill and the King of England, among others, were involved on insuring the sinking of the Lusitania and in threatening to open fire on any Irish boats that attempted to sail out to the stricken ship and save some innocents.

Bob,

I guess that seventeen years (close on) of dealing with ridiculous conspiracy theories regarding the Britannic has made me a bit of a sceptic when it comes to this sort of thing. The fact is that I have seen plenty of these theories discredited by proper research in archives or properly planned dives. The Lusitania is probably no different and the fact that she was carrying small arms ammunition has never been in doubt; in this respect Lusitania was by no means unique as a good many British merchant vessels were carrying war cargoes, but I have yet to be convinced by the contraband cargo theory. Up until your post I had never even heard of the theory that the hull had been lined with gun cotton, although I do vaguely recall reading somewhere that someone had alleged that it may have been present in the cargo hold. As I said in my original post, chemistry is not my strong point but while Wikipedia might be a reasonable starting point, unfortunately I've found way too many errors on pages of which I have a more certain knowledge to take everything that I read there at face value.

Lord Mersey's report is just what you would expect it to be. Some of it was held in public and some in camera, but ultimately I don't think that the result was in doubt. As I said in a previous thread, had Schwieger sunk Lusitania according to the principle of cruiser rules, as laid down in the Declaration of Paris (a treaty to which Germany was a signatory) then the British would not have had a leg to stand on. At the end of the day, though, he didn't. He carefully planned his approach and fired without warning at a ship he knew to be carrying passengers, and which he later claimed that he only identified as the Lusitania as he saw her sinking. He only reported seeing one explosion and I have no reason to doubt him on that, but either way he would have had no idea what the ship may have been carrying in its holds so I don't think it is unreasonable to suggest that has to assume much of the responsibility for what happened. Yes, you can argue that the German Embassy published the warning, but even allowing for the "only obeying orders" factor, that warning only said that enemy vessels were liable to destruction; this wouldn't have come as much of a surprise to anyone but the key element of cruiser rules was that the attacking force had to provide for the safety of passengers and crew of merchant ships.

It took a while but ultimately Germany's policy of unrestricted submarine warfare campaign played a substantial role in bringing America into the war, even if it was nearly two years after the Lusitania incident.

S.

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As I remember from 20 years ago, he was moving to the US, I think, don't think it was mentioned why he was moving. He supposedly recognized the rattle of the cartridge cases hitting each other as the cases of ammunition burned and exploded. What his expertise in this sound was may not have been explained; an officer who served in combat could have easily witnessed the same occurrence.

If this is true, he desperately needed a geography lesson; bearing in mind that he had already been there!

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