The Lusitania's sinking. Not all it seemed to be?

I wasn't sure where to put this, so mods please move it around as necessary.

In my history class today, we were talking about how WW1 affected the Labour Party's growth, and the Liberal's decline etc etc all lovely stuff.

Anyway, we were got on talking about how the Lusitania (a Cunard passenger ship) was sunk by a German U-Boat in May 1915. Our teacher reckoned that Winston Churchill (who was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time) was wanting to have the ship sunk by the German's. This is because the ship had American passengers onboard, the point being that if American civilians were killed, America would join the war.

So, word never reached the RMS Lusitania that there was U-Boat activity off the south-west coast of Ireland, and it ran at half power, and didn't zig-zag. The ship was torpedoed and sank in 20 minutes. 2 years later, America joined the war.

Is there any evidence to back this claim up?

I was listening to something about this just the other day. Apparently a warning went out that passenger ships shouldn't be crossing over the Atlantic, but the warning was only printed in one little U.S. newspaper in Missouri or something and of course was missed.

According to this historian (who lecturers on the history of money and banking cartels), this was the way of bringing the U.S. in the war as the people were highly against it until some of their own citizens were killed. Then they were gungho.

Interesting stuff, good work.



[edit on 15/2/05 by AlwaysLearning]

Originally posted by AlwaysLearning
I was listening to something about this just the other day. Apparently a warning went out that passenger ships shouldn't be crossing over the Atlantic, but the warning was only printed in one little U.S. newspaper in Missouri or something and of course was missed.
[edit on 15/2/05 by AlwaysLearning]

what my teacher said was that all Britain's main passenger ships were acquired by the navy for their use, except the Lusitania.

Purportedly a luxury cruise liner, Lusitania also contained 6 millions rounds of ammunition -- a munitions cargo for Britain, making it a warship and a legitimate target for attack.

I think your history teacher is a little off course.

At 11.55 there was a knock on Turner's door.
It was the messenger with another signal from the Admiralty;
he broke off from his decoding work to read it.

It said:

"SUBMARINE ACTIVE IN SOUTHERN PART OF IRISH CHANNEL,
LAST HEARD OF TWENTY MILES SOUTH OF CONNINGBEG LIGHT VESSEL.
MAKE CERTAIN LUSITANIA GETS THIS."
source





[edit on 27-2-2005 by xpert11]