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Old 04-02-2017, 06:43 AM
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Question Sinking the Lusitania, Part 2: Death and Blame, May 7, 1915

Sinking the Lusitania, Part 1 & 2: Death and Blame, May 7, 1915
By:By Dan Schlenoff on 4-2-17
RE: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...me-may-7-1915/


(Part I)

Sinking the Lusitania, Part 1: Civilians Die in "Wicked" Atrocity, May 7, 1915
Reports and opinions in Scientific American on a key tragedy in World War I that had lasting repercussions
By: By Dan Schlenoff on May 1, 2015 1
RE:https://blogs.scientificamerican.com...ty-may-7-1915/

Editor’s note (4/2/2017): This week marks the 100-year anniversary of the U.S. entry into the First World War. Scientific American, founded in 1845, spent the war years covering the monumental innovations that changed the course of history, from the first tanks and aerial combat to the first widespread attacks with chemical weapons. To mark the centennial, we are republishing the article below and many others. For full access to our archival coverage of the Great War sign up for an All Access subscription today.
Reports and opinions in Scientific American on a key tragedy in World War I:
May 1, 2015

On May 7, 1915, the British civilian ocean liner Lusitania was hit by a torpedo fired by German submarine U-20, just off the coast of Ireland. Within 18 minutes, the ship sank; 1,193 people died, including 128 Americans, leaving 767 people, mostly civilians, stranded in lifeboats or floundering in the cold water. The outrage at this act was immediate and long-lasting. The editorial in the first issue of Scientific American to be published after the sinking shows clearly the tenor of the popular feeling:
“The horror following the sinking without warning of the ‘Lusitania’ only emphasizes the shocking character of the situation. Has this ceased to be a war of army against army and degenerated into a war against civilians and women and children, no matter of what nationality? This is the first instance in the history of mankind where a regular transatlantic liner, filled with civilians of many nationalities, has been deliberately sunk on the high seas, and this act was committed, not after allowing innocent women and children to escape in lifeboats, but wantonly and wickedly without allowing the victims of the weapon of destruction any chance for their lives.”
“It cannot be claimed that this act was the irresponsible whim of the commander of the submarine, for an advertisement appeared in the American press prior to the sailing of the “Lusitania” warning passengers against sailing on the high seas; It would seem evident from this warning that this horror is the result of the deliberate policy of the imperial will. During the first months of the war the imperial government sent its apologists to this country to try and explain away the crime against Belgium and the wanton destruction of some of the choicest works of art of Europe; but their arguments and pleas failed to convince, because our people felt that such matters could not be solved by the thumb rule of a lawyer’s brief.”
“Our people do not accept as a mandate the claim that ‘war is war.’ They have the highest respect for and belief in the justice of international law, but such a code has limitations which do not harmonize with the ideals of the American people, who realize that there is a higher law–the law of humanity and civilization which is being outraged and trampled upon. And it is for that reason, and in spite of the calm and generally neutral attitude of the American press, that underneath there has been a strong current of opinion among the American people, which absolutely condemns the methods of war now being conducted by the Teutonic allies.”

“The SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN wishes to enter its protest against these acts. It fears for the future of civilization if such acts are accepted under any plea which does violence to the accepted codes of warfare.” [Scientific American, May 15, 1915]
The Imperial German government begged to differ: Its foreign minister pointed out that Lusitania‘s construction had been subsidized by the British Admiralty as an auxiliary cruiser (which is true–the British government subsidized the design of large liners to ensure they could be more easily converted to auxiliary cruisers in wartime); claimed that the ship was armed (not true although gun mounts were built into ships such as Lusitania to make it easier to convert them to auxiliary cruisers); and pointed out that the ship was carrying munitions in its cargo (which is indeed true).
That the last point is true should not cloud the fact that trade between a neutral country and a belligerent country was completely legal. Passenger ships were allowed to carry arms and ammunition (U.S. restrictions stated that such material could not be a danger to the ship or crew; cargo such as guncotton was therefore prohibited). On the manifest of the Lusitania there were more than 4,000 cases of military small arms ammunition: rifle cartridges made by Remington in .303 British caliber. At a thousand rounds a box, that’s over four million rounds (the U.S. shipped a total of about one billion rounds of small arms ammunition to the U.K. during the war, mostly in cargo ships). There was also a load of about 4,000 rounds of shrapnel shells, filled with chunks of shrapnel but not explosives. All perfectly legal. In addition there were other materials likely to be used for military purposes, such as brass sheeting that could be made into shell casings, copper wires, bronze powder and aluminum (probably powder and also sheets). All legal, but “destined for the destruction of brave German soldiers,” as the foreign minister put it [you can read on FirstWorldWar.com his response on behalf of the German government here]. The German Embassy in New York had been so sure of these facts that it placed advertisements in newspapers warning about the risks of sailing on the Lusitania before it left port. Germany, too, could legally buy and ship the same kind of armaments abroad. Except that the British Royal Navy had imposed a blockade that was vastly more effective than the occasional hazards created by the German submarine blockade, so trade to belligerents across the Atlantic was heavily in favor of the Allies.
The U.S. public, however, looked at the event as the unprovoked murder of 128 Americans and was most unsympathetic to the German claims, according to this editorial in the issue of May 22, 1915:

“The sinking, on sight, of the ‘Lusitania’ is the latest and most atrocious instance of this relapse to that gratuitous cruelty which we all thought had been relegated to a bygone and far-distant age. There are two features which render this crime peculiarly abhorrent to the civilized world: The first is its magnitude; the other is the cold-blooded premeditation and careful deliberation with which it was planned. One of the most remarkable psychological phenomena of the present war is the specious sophistry with which Germany has attempted to justify her multitudinous breaches of the above-mentioned humanitarian laws of war; and surely the most amazing instance of this is the fact that to-day, at this very hour, Germany is justifying this slaughter of innocent non-combatants by stating that she gave them full warning that she was going to perpetrate the deed. This is a new philosophy, indeed! Our laws in America have never considered that, because a gunman gave warning to a citizen that he was armed and was going to shoot him on sight, the slayer was thereby absolved from all responsibility. On the contrary, such warning is considered by the law as evidence of criminal intent.”
But there are twists in the story that have resulted in questions that linger. Large ships that are torpedoed sometimes do go down quickly. HMS Hawke, a British protected cruiser, was hit on October 15, 1914, by a single torpedo and capsized within 10 minutes. The French armored cruiser L?on Gambetta was hit with one torpedo by an Austrian submarine on April 27, 1915, and that, too, sank within 10 minutes. Other ships went down faster if their ammunition magazines were hit. Some crewmen on the Lusitania claimed to have seen two torpedoes coming at the ship. There were, in fact, many witnesses who heard two explosions: a loud initial one and a more muffled second one right afterward. But out of those frantic 18 minutes between the time the torpedo hit and the ship sank, questions have arisen. Our concluding installment next week will look at these questions and their related accusations, and see what Scientific American had to say about them.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Part II)

Editor’s note (4/2/2017): This week marks the 100-year anniversary of the U.S. entry into the First World War. Scientific American, founded in 1845, spent the war years covering the monumental innovations that changed the course of history, from the first tanks and aerial combat to the first widespread attacks with chemical weapons. To mark the centennial, we are republishing the article below and many others. For full access to our archival coverage of the Great War sign up for an All Access subscription today.

Reports and opinions in Scientific American on a key tragedy in World War I
May 8, 2015

When the German submarine U-20 torpedoed the British civilian ship Lusitania on May 7, 1915, the grand ocean liner sank in only 18 minutes. Behind the outrage caused by the death of 1,193 people, including 128 Americans, there were questions. The ship sank so fast that only 767 people survived: why did it go down so fast? In the diplomatic furore that followed, the German government claimed that the disaster had occurred not because of their one torpedo, but because military stores being carried by the ship had detonated, bolstering their assertion that the Lusitania was really a munitions-carrying naval ship masquerading as a peaceful civilian ocean liner. The editorial in Scientific American in the May 29, 1915, issue, vehemently disagreed on technical grounds:

“In its endeavor to becloud the issue, official Germany has claimed that the ammunition carried by the ‘Lusitania’ contributed largely to the swift sinking of that great ship. Now this is a technical question, and to anyone who is technically qualified to judge the matter, the explanation offered is, on the face of it, absurd. This war has proved over and over again that one submarine torpedo of the German type, carrying 420 pounds of high explosive, is sufficient to sink a warship–even a battleship which, exclusive of the double bottom deck, is divided into no less than two hundred and fifty separate watertight compartments, big and small.” - [Scientific American, May 29, 1915]

Despite this stern editorial rebuke it is evident that doubts abounded. The ship was, after all, acknowledged to be carrying 4,000 cases of rifle ammunition (at a thousand rounds a case) made by Remington. Trade in such military materiel was legal between a neutral country and a belligerent, but perhaps there were questions on whether all that ammunition had contributed to the disaster. Five weeks after the sinking, an article with a more thorough treatment of what can happen with all that live rifle ammunition: even with 4 million rounds, not much:

“We have shown in a previous issue that a single submarine torpedo because of its enormous charge of explosive was quite sufficient to sink the ‘Lusitania’ in the short period of time which elapsed between the blow of the torpedo and the disappearance of the ship. The German government has suggested that the rapid disappearance of the ship was due, in part at least, to the explosion of the cargo of ammunition which it carried. To a military man, or indeed to anyone with a fair knowledge of explosives, the suggestion is ridiculous; for the ammunition in the hold of the ship consisted of unloaded shells, and of small-arms ammunition packed in cases which cannot be exploded by any known means. Some years ago the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, in order to prove that small-arms ammunition could be transported with perfect safety, undertook a series of severe tests to show that such ammunition packed in the ordinary cases was incapable of being exploded either by shock or flame; and we publish herewith a series of photographs of the ammunition as it appeared after passing through the test.”
[Scientific American, June 12, 1915]

Germany saw streams of cargo–ammunition, guns, food–being shipped to their enemies while they themselves suffered behind the British Royal Navy’s blockade, and until the beginning of 1917 followed a vacillating policy on submarine warfare. The editorial in Scientific American of July 31, 1915, has a strong reaction to these policies. It also shows that none of the anger about the Lusitania had dissipated (bear in mind that the Allies benefited greatly from such anger about the submarine attacks by the Central Powers, and have often been accused of stoking it):

“The warning issued by the German Ambassador before the sailing of the ‘Lusitania’ indicates quite clearly what the intention of the Imperial government was with reference to this act. That Germany has no intention to depart from its crusade against passenger steamers is evidenced by the attempts that have been made against the ‘Orduna.’ Owing to the fact that no lives were lost in the attack upon this steamer, comparatively little attention has been directed toward the significance of the act. Although this vessel escaped the fate of the ‘Lusitania,’ the crime against humanity was almost greater than in the disaster to the latter. Practically the only excuse which has been made by German apologists for the destruction of the ‘Lusitania’ and the loss of so many hundreds of lives, was the charge that she carried guns, which has been disproved, and that she carried ammunition, which has been admitted, but in the case of the ‘Orduna’ no such reasons have been given, and the act stands forth, therefore, in its flagrant nakedness. Not only have the officers on the watch testified to the fact that they saw the torpedo, but it was only by the narrow margin of ten feet that the German submarine failed to expose the Americans on board the ‘Orduna’ to the same fate as befell our citizens on board the ‘Lusitania.’”
[Scientific American, July 31, 1915]

The United States declared war on Germany on April 4, 1917. One of the many reasons was the German policy of submarine attacks on neutral ships–the most prominent example of which was the Lusitania. Even after the war ended, justification for hostilities was still being found in the Lusitania sinking:

“An act of outrage and terrorism like the destruction of the Lusitania, with its awful loss of life, did more to rouse and stiffen American feeling than any single measure that could have been conceived. As Joseph Fouch? [minister of police under Napoleon Bonaparte] said, it was more than a crime; it was a political fault, and that of the most egregious kind. The extravagant jubilation with which the crime was everywhere hailed in Germany was the finishing touch to the episode, and greatly intensified the wrathful indignation that and disgust of civilized humanity. It was significant that the American troops should go into action with the battle-cry of ‘Lusitania!’”
[Scientific American, May 10, 1919]

But if the sinking of the Lusitania is one of the key events that prompted the entry of the U.S. into World War I on the side of England, France and Russia, then it has also been a lightning rod for conspiracy theories for a century, turning on the question of the second muffled explosion and whether the blast proves that Germany was justified in claiming that the ship was carrying more munitions than were listed on the cargo manifest. There have been rumors that some of the cargo that was listed as “cheese” or “oysters”, perhaps, was in truth explosives, carried aboard with a “nod and a wink.” In fact as late as 1982 there were individuals at the United Kingdom’s Foreign & Commonwealth Office who thought that it was possible that the wreck of the Lusitania on the ocean floor might contain still-dangerous explosives, and warned salvage divers of that fact. Then again, there were witnesses who thought they saw two torpedoes fired at the ship. The German submarine’s captain, crew and log say they only fired one torpedo. Unless they fired two and–with “a nod and a wink” and a dire threat of severe punishment–they were warned not to say anything else.

But it seems silly to conjure conspiracy theories from the murk of wartime propaganda, nationalist sentiment and even amid the current Internet-fueled enthusiasm for such theories: the cargo manifest lists 50 barrels of aluminum powder and 50 barrels of bronze powder. Both of these powders, if fine enough, and thrown into the air, say, by a torpedo explosion, present an explosion hazard. This from the Aluminum.org Web site: “In the case of aluminum, explosions can result if ignition occurs while particles are suspended in the air as a dust cloud, as the burning extends from one particle to another with extreme speed.” The same with bronze powder. And when these powders come into contact with water (perhaps, say, seawater rushing in through a gash in a boat hull), they both give off hydrogen gas, which, as we remember from the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, is explosively flammable. It seems likely that a few barrels of ordinary cargo and common chemistry helped one torpedo sink this grand ocean liner. But arguments about cause aside, the loss of this ship full of civilians still ranks as one of the many tragedies of the Great War for Civilization.
__________________
Boats

O Almighty Lord God, who neither slumberest nor sleepest; Protect and assist, we beseech thee, all those who at home or abroad, by land, by sea, or in the air, are serving this country, that they, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore in all perils; and being filled with wisdom and girded with strength, may do their duty to thy honour and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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