The Lusitania, along with her sister ship Mauretania, was Cunard’s answer to the German domination of the North Atlantic over the past decade.

Since 1902 Cunard had been making plans for a pair of giant liners which were to be equipped with even more powerful reciprocating engines driving triple screws. However, the early success of Parson’s turbines meant that a great deal of thought was given to this new method of propulsion as a means to capturing the Blue Riband. Just as it had done in 1862, when it was a question of paddle wheels versus screws, the Cunard company arranged for two ships to be built as a way of testing the two technologies.

These two ships were the Coronia and the Carmania, identical apart from their engines; the Coronia had conventional quadruple expansion engines, while the Carmania had triple screws and turbines. After a number of exhaustive tests and trials the turbines proved to be not only faster but also more economical to run, and so the decision was taken to build the new record breakers with turbines.

Lusitania was built by John Brown & Co. on the Clyde and was launched in June 1906 weighing 20 145 tons. She was 786ft long and had a tonnage of 30 396 gross, with a double bottomed hull 5ft thick and watertight bulkheads throughout. She had four huge propellers, which helped her to her record breaking speed of 25 knots, although on her initial trials she managed to reach 26.45 knots. She tool the record from the North German Lloyd on her second run by racing across from New York in 4 days, 22 hours and 53 minutes, the first time the Atlantic had been crossed in less than five days.

Along with her sister ship she then settled down to a friendly rivalry, swapping the record virtually every trip, until a year later when both ships were taken out of service, returning a few weeks later after mechanical adjustments that proved to make them even faster. yet another example of this fine tuning took place in 1909 when, after being fitted with newly designed propellors, Lusitania made 25.57 knots on an eastward crossing and made even better times when the intermediate stop at Queenstown was finally dropped in 1913.

In April 1915, Germany warned that the seas around Britain were no longer neutral and that British vessels entering this danger area would be attacked and sunk. On 3 May that year Lusitania left her berth in New York on her normal weekly crossing and on 7 May approached the war zone. Lusitania was considered quite capable of outrunning the much slower U-boats but with all watertight doors closed and a double lookout set she ran into fog and was forced to reduce speed to 15 knots. Just as the fog began to clear in the early afternoon and speed was returning to normal, she was struck by a torpedo midships on the starboard side and immediately afterwards a second ripped into her hull. At 2.36, just 26 minutes after the first strike, Lusitania lifted her stern and, tantalisingly within sight of the Irish coast, plunged to the bottom of the Atlantic, taking with her 1,198 people, many of them American citizens, and changed the course of history.

Although the Commander of the U20, Kapitan Schweiger, was awarded a medal for his heroic deed, the real reward was the decision by America that it could no longer remain neutral and their entry into the conflict undoubtedly helped to bring down the German war machine.

"You are the still grandeur of the Lusitania,
Before she tripped over the torpedo,
And laid a World War of American dead,
At the foot of the Blarney Stone."

Roger McGough

Click picture for full screen version.

Click picture for full screen version.

Click picture for full screen version.