The Lusitania
The Lusitania
5/23/2013 The Lusitania, was at 32,000 tons, the largest passenger ship on transatlantic service, left New York harbor for Liverpool on 1st May, 1915. It was 750ft long, weighed 32,500 tons and was capable of 26 knots. On this journey the ship carried 1,257 passengers and 650 crew. The U20 (German Submarine) was sailing already for 7 day and had take down two ships and had two torpedoes left. As, the captain of the U20 watched the Lusitania, ordered to fire one torpedo from a distance of 700m. He didn't throw a 2nd torpedo because he knew that Lusitania was going down. The Lusitania sunk within 18 minutes. Even though they were many lifeboats for all the passengers the tremendous deviation made most of the lifeboats being not launched properly. But, in boiler room #3 had a small amount of water The people who were inside the boiler room 3 made it and climbed to Lusitania's deck while room #4 was already empty. After some seconds from the hit of the torpedo... a large explosion happened. Why? Well the effect of the torpedo was the force of the explosion to blow the lower deck and the bunker. But certainly no boiler room exploded from the impact. After the sinking of Lusitania, Americans were angry finding out that 128 U.S. civilians were killed in the ship and in a war that America was neutral at that period. Members in patriotic organizations grew and voices supported to be prepared for a new war found new listeners. One of these voices was ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. The German government apologized for the incident, but claimed its U-boat only fired one torpedo and the second explosion was a result of a secret cargo of heavy munitions on the ship. If this true, Britain was guilty of breaking the rules of warfare by using a civilian ship to carry ammunition. British authorities rejected this charge and claimed that the second explosion was caused by coal dust igniting in the ship's almost empty bunkers. The sinking of the
5/23/2013 The Lusitania, was at 32,000 tons, the largest passenger ship on transatlantic service, left New York harbor for Liverpool on 1st May, 1915. It was 750ft long, weighed 32,500 tons and was capable of 26 knots. On this journey the ship carried 1,257 passengers and 650 crew. The U20 (German Submarine) was sailing already for 7 day and had take down two ships and had two torpedoes left. As, the captain of the U20 watched the Lusitania, ordered to fire one torpedo from a distance of 700m. He didn't throw a 2nd torpedo because he knew that Lusitania was going down. The Lusitania sunk within 18 minutes. Even though they were many lifeboats for all the passengers the tremendous deviation made most of the lifeboats being not launched properly. But, in boiler room #3 had a small amount of water The people who were inside the boiler room 3 made it and climbed to Lusitania's deck while room #4 was already empty. After some seconds from the hit of the torpedo... a large explosion happened. Why? Well the effect of the torpedo was the force of the explosion to blow the lower deck and the bunker. But certainly no boiler room exploded from the impact. After the sinking of Lusitania, Americans were angry finding out that 128 U.S. civilians were killed in the ship and in a war that America was neutral at that period. Members in patriotic organizations grew and voices supported to be prepared for a new war found new listeners. One of these voices was ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. The German government apologized for the incident, but claimed its U-boat only fired one torpedo and the second explosion was a result of a secret cargo of heavy munitions on the ship. If this true, Britain was guilty of breaking the rules of warfare by using a civilian ship to carry ammunition. British authorities rejected this charge and claimed that the second explosion was caused by coal dust igniting in the ship's almost empty bunkers. The sinking of the