The Lusitania's 100 Year Secret Our World

# Last call now for those going abroad! #

They people were ordinary people like ourselves.

Some were on board because they thought it was their duty to

If they were going to travel on any ship across the Atlantic,

the Lusitania was particularly a safe bet.

# Last call now for those going abroad! #

Fast, luxurious and consumed by a century of mystery.

The Lusitania was the super liner of her day.

But why was she targeted and why did she sink so quickly?

There was no alternative for getting from America over to Britain.

It was 1915, the Lusitania was about to leave New York for Liverpool,

the passenger ship supposedly safe from German U-boats.

Up until the sinking of the Lusitania, there had not been any

There was a threat made, but many people thought it was an idle

threat because the Germans had not carried through on any of these

But German U-boat tactics were about to change.

We know that the Germans put advertisements in New York

newspapers before the ship left, warning people not to get on the

Lusitania, that it was carrying arms which were against the laws of the

sea at that time, and therefore the ship was subject to attack.

They got on board that ship and they must have been worried,

For those who boarded, the final journey was about to begin.

# They called it the Greyhound of the Sea.

# The biggest, fastest ship of her day.

# For her speed, size and power, 25 knots an hour.

# She was known as the Greyhound of the Sea.

With 2,000 passengers and crew on board,

But as she neared Ireland, the British Admiralty began issuing

Passengers were told not to light their cigarettes on deck for fear

They'd heard the rumours that they were going to be torpedoed but the

crew weren't afraid, because they didn't believe it. They thought

the ship was too fast and too modern and nothing could catch it.

The following morning, the Admiralty sent this.

But it seems what the Lusitania's Captain William Turner didn't

know was that the Admiralty would not or could not be more specific.

It did not want to reveal it had broken German naval codes.

There had been thick fog that morning but by lunchtime, it had

cleared. It was a lovely spring morning. Very still.

Another message arrived shortly after.

The south-east coast of Ireland was sighted.

Turner thought the fog had saved them.

The ship came closer inland and changed direction.

Unbeknownst to them at this point, they were being watched by U-boat

This is U-20, a German attack submarine.

It was captained by Walther Schwieger, an ambitious 30-year-old

he gave the order to fire one torpedo.

There is no footage of the actual attack.

What followed was later recreated in this extraordinary 1918 animated

The German U-boat commander was watching,

Shot struck starboard side close behind the bridge.

An extraordinarily heavy detonation followed,

Billy Burrows was just 15. He was the ship's bellboy.

He was about three floors down in the washroom, I believe.

He heard this explosion and all the lights went out.

Robert Leith was the Lusitania's wireless operator.

When the torpedo hit, my grandfather was in the dining room.

I think it was the second-class dining room.

He immediately went to the wireless-operator room

The ship was going too fast for the crew to launch some lifeboats.

One that has never been fully explained.

Fred Russell was a waiter in first class.

I helped to lower one boat on the port side. You could do

nothing on the starboard, she had such a list. And not

fancying staying too long, I beat it down to the lower deck, thinking to

Able seaman Joseph Parry was among the crew members who scrambled

The lifeboat snagged and did not end up in the water.

The next thing, he was thrown into the water with the ship tilting.

I am told by my mother that one of the people he pulled out

of the water was a lady who he pulled out by her hair.

The radio operator, Robert Leith, kept sending SOS messages

The power failed and there was some sort of emergency

And I gather, really, he stayed until the very last minute.

The 15-year-old bellboy, Billy Burrows, waded into a life raft.

He pulled quite a few people into the boat, even

They got to about 50 yards out, and they heard this whoosh

It took just 18 minutes for the Lusitania to go down here, some 11

Those who managed to get their life jackets on lasted two or

But those that didn't, or couldn't, only survived a few minutes

More than half the 2,000 people on board the Lusitania were killed.

The lifeboat crew from Courtmacsherry rowed from 11 miles

It took three hours, because it was six o'clock, you can see.

Brian O'Donovan's great granduncle, Timothy Keohane,

But they simply couldn't get there in time.

If they'd had a bit of wind on the night they probably would

have felt they could have got there sooner, and might have been able to

But I suppose it is a big thing, too, to even be able to recover

Survivors who reached shore wandered around Cobh and other towns,

But as Ireland reeled from the tragedy, information filtered

With no television or radio, it took hours for news of the

disaster to reach the Lusitania's home port here in Liverpool.

But when the details of the tragedy did emerge, it was met by a

I've come here today to see the exhibition.

Liverpool's Maritime Museum has captured the city's stunned reaction

in the family accounts from people like David Knowles.

His grandfather, Joseph Parry, was an able seaman on board.

He saved a lady and her baby, and in the lifeboat, at one stage, she

was so grateful that she gave my grandfather one of the shoes of the

baby, which he obviously treasured, because it came ashore, it was

passed down through the family once he was on land again.

And he inscribed it, underneath, with "Lusitania 1915."

And I think the words "Lest we forget."

So he obviously treasured that, and since then,

Fred Russell, the first-class waiter, also survived.

And in letters now in the museum, he spoke of his relief at escaping

and making it back to Liverpool, to the relief of his family.

Uncle Fred came home, but there were a lot of families who probably

suffered greatly because they had lost their income, you know?

They have lost their family member, and they probably suffered greatly

But hundreds of other families didn't get good news.

Norman Ross's grandfather had been a barkeeper on the ship,

but Henry Ross was never found, despite the yearnings of his wife.

He was such an excellent swimmer, according to my grandmother,

that she really didn't think - she thought if anyone was going to

And she was always of the opinion that he may have lost his memory,

a knock on the head, and could perhaps be somewhere in Ireland.

And so people went out to look for him.

Communities on both sides of the Irish Sea went into mourning, grief

that is to this day re-enacted by groups like these in Ireland, where

Most simply couldn't believe that a civilian ship had been targeted

We moved into an area of almost kind of total war, where civilians were

It was still kind of a learning process, a journey into the unknown

for the crews and passengers during the First World War.

The small Irish town of Cobh struggled to deal with so many dead.

The world had never seen civilians attacked like this in war before.

100 years on, those graves are still tended to, victims

of a tragedy that didn't distinguish between age, class or nationality.

Just over 120 Americans lost their lives, and nearly 200

In all, just under 1200 civilians perished

The shock of the Lusitania was felt across Britain and America,

It was overwhelmingly an attack on a civilian ship.

I think those kind of men, women and children who were caught

up in that attack, you know, the horror of that is still felt.

It was new at the time, but it still has that impact

It is still felt as a kind of horrific, horrific act.

But within months, Britain was using the sinking

The author of War Horse, Michael Morpurgo, touches on this in

His wife Claire's family were among thousands who bought specially

made medals issued soon after the disaster.

And there's the medal, where she found it, aged seven.

The medals were exact copies of ones released in Germany,

The British cleverly turned this triumphalist sentiment on its head,

and issued 300,000 of their own, to show the public how barbaric

For months afterwards there was great anti-German feeling.

Up until that time this notion that somehow everyone was very happy to

go off and join this war, there were plenty

of people who were, but there were also plenty of people who were not.

Many of those now felt, "This is an enemy that has got to be stopped."

100 years on, the Lusitania now lies in 90 metres of water,

But what has never been fully answered is whether she was

a legitimate target, and why did she sink in just 18 minutes?

For nearly 50 years, the wreck has been owned by this

Intrigued by the tragedy, he has always wanted answers to

He has spent millions on diving operations to find out.

He is now convinced the British government was secretly using

passenger liners like the Lusitania to carrying munitions

And it was these, not the ship's boiler, that caused

There is no question in my mind that there were explosives on board.

Whether the explosives were gunpowder or

whether they were the shrapnel shells which were supposedly not

charged, but in fact were, whatever it was, it was certainly a

The explosives theory is controversial, because there

He says she was also laden with millions of rounds of ammunition,

A deadly cargo completely unknown to the passengers.

If the British and American authorities were responsible

for putting high explosives on board a passenger ship, I think

It shouldn't be left to the imagination of people,

Now, a century on, the British Foreign Office has made

For increasing numbers of historians,

that admission suggests the Lusitania was a legitimate target.

I think there are several people to blame here.

The German submarine commander has to take responsibility for the death

of 1200 civilians, but so too must the Admiralty and the British

government for introducing civilians into the mix, by using civilian

But getting proof of the munitions to the surface has been impossible.

One problem is the wreck is disintegrating.

You have the trauma that she experienced at

the time of her sinking, the first torpedo, the second explosion.

It's like going into a crime scene 100 years later.

Can you find that evidence you're looking for?

We don't know, but we have to have a good attempt at trying.

Ireland's president, Michael Higgins, is

among those who say the wreck should be left untouched as a war grave.

It was, if you like, to assure respect.

It also was to enable such investigation to take place

in a regulated and a responsive environment.

# They say its darkest before the dawn.

So for now, the Lusitania must be recalled in other ways.

# We should make port before the morning.#

In songs and stories passed down through generations.

# We should make port before the morning.#

And for victims and descendants, the once opulent Lusitania has now

journeyed into history as a liner shrouded in grief,

# We will make port before the morning.#

It was a tragedy that should never have happened.

She was so affectionately regarded in Liverpool.

War, now, is completely universal in its destruction, and this was,

When there has been a mass loss of life like this, I think people

Wet and windy weather in the forecast. Quite an unsettled festive

period to come. At the moment, storm Ivar, named by the Irish Met

service, pushing from the