Today in History—May 7: The Sinking of the Lusitania

Historic black-and-white photo of the RMS Lusitania ocean liner at sea, shown from the side before its sinking during World War I. — May 7, 1915: A luxe passenger liner, a German submarine, and the day the rules changed

Off the coast of Ireland on the morning of May 7, 1915, Capt. William Turner slowed his swift ship near shore as fog closed in.

It was a grave mistake. He had no idea an enemy lurked below.

Turner’s Lusitania was a luxury British ocean liner, packed with nearly 2,000 passengers and crew and nearing the end of her journey from New York to Liverpool.

Months earlier Germany had declared that the waters around Britain—home to the largest and most powerful navy in the world—were a war zone. At first, at the start of World War I, they’d been playing by traditional rules of watery warfare: German U-boats (“undersea boats”) would surface before attacking to give crews and passengers time to escape.

But the Brits wised up and started disguising their warships as innocent-looking merchant vessels. U-boats were only lightly armored, so surfacing meant risky exposure.

By February 1915, all bets were off: Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare, and civilian ships would no longer be exempt as targets. A warning to that effect ran in 40 American newspapers the very morning the Lusitania set sail.

At 2:10 pm a single torpedo from the U-20 hit the Lusitania’s hull on the starboard side, in the middle, just below the waterline. The ship took only 18 minutes to sink, hastened by a second internal explosion—possibly from munitions in the hold or coal dust suddenly meeting oxygen and fire.

Fun Fact

Captain Turner intended to go down with his ship, climbing atop the sails as the Lusitania sank, but he was rescued after spending hours in the frigid water.

It was chaos. Many lifeboats were launched empty—fault was later found with the launching system. The ship sank so rapidly that most passengers were lost in the panic.

The U.S.—despite immense public outrage—did not immediately join the war effort. Pres. Woodrow Wilson issued a strongly worded diplomatic communiqué to Germany about the sinking.

Germany claimed that the Lusitania was transporting war materiel. Also, it said, it had issued plenty of clear warnings.

But the country did step down its unrestricted submarine warfare campaign.

It resumed in 1917. That time the U.S. declared war.