When I was a little kid, I’d heard of two ships, two ocean liners that had met with
catastrophe. One of them was the Titanic, who sank in 1912, but as for the other one...
100 years ago today, on May 7th, 1915, the passenger ship Lusitania was torpedoed and
sunk by a German U-Boat, sending 1,198 men, women, and children to their deaths.
I’m Indy Neidell; this is the Great War.
The big news last week was the landings at Gallipoli, which quickly descended into a
slaughter on all sides, Turkish, Arab, Australian, British, French, and New Zealander. Tens of
thousands of men were successfully landed, but the Ottomans remained in control of the
Straits. Further north, the Austro-Hungarian army was preparing for a new offensive with
German guidance and support, the Germans had been thwarted in the west, and the Armenians
in Van were still under siege.
But there was a lot going on this week too, and for a change of pace, let’s look at
the USA to start the week.
On May 1st, New York newspapers published an ad sent them by the German embassy in Washington
that read, “Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a
state of war exists between Germany and Great Britain... the zone of war includes the waters
adjacent to the British isles”, and that ships flying the British flag, “are liable
to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing... do so at their own risk. This warning
appeared next to an ad for the British Cunard Lines ship the Lusitania, which set sail that day.
The Lusitania was the fastest passenger ship in service across the Atlantic, a real luxury
liner, much like the Titanic, and also much like the Titanic, did not have enough lifeboats
in case of disaster. Actually the Lusitania had four fewer. Thing is, this was a common
practice, for it was expected that if you sank, it would be in shipping lanes where
you could get help. So the Lusitania set sail for Europe.
On the night of May 6th and the morning of May 7th, ship’s Captain William Turner received
six warnings from the British admiralty about U boat activity in the area that had sunk
two British merchant ships without warning. Turner was advised to travel at full speed
and make a zig-zag course. I’ve already talked a bit about this before, but I’ll
say it again- a submarine had to surface to fire its torpedoes, and its surface speed
was no match for a dreadnought or a liner like Lusitania, so travelling at top speed
in a zig-zag course pretty much it impossible for these ships to be sunk by a sub. Well,
Turner didn’t heed the advice- he had even dropped his speed and was travelling on a
straight path. Now, Sub U-20, the one that sunk the merchant ships a day earlier, spotted
the cruiser Juno around noon on the 7th, but she was zig-zagging at top speed, so U-20
gave up the chase and about 90 minutes later sighted the Lusitania off the Southwest coast
of Ireland. A single torpedo was fired and the great liner sank in 18 minutes. Of roughly
2,000 passengers, 1,198 drowned, of them 128 or 124 or 114 were Americans, depending which
source you believe.
The sinking shocked America, but President Wilson refused to abandon neutrality. The
Germans officially apologized, though many German papers wrote proudly of the sinking
of enemies who bore responsibility for their own risk. Captain Turner, by the way, survived
after being washed off the bridge. Former President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a book
arguing for rapid American rearmament and a huge naval construction program and warned
that “what befell Antwerp and Brussels will surely someday befall New York, San Francisco,
and may happen to many an inland city also” if the USA did not prepare for war. Later
in the year, Germany would officially place passenger liners off limits for U-boats, but
for right now, American public opinion was inflamed, and many Americans who had pushed
for neutrality were now changing their minds.
But while foreign opinion wasn’t going so well for the Germans this week, the actual
fighting certainly was.
In the west, at the ongoing Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans had driven back the
British early in the week with repeated poison gas attacks, and on May 5th recaptured Hill
60, which they had lost two weeks ago.
But the big German victories this week were happening way over on the Eastern Front.
On May 1st, a combined Austro-German offensive began under German General August von Mackensen.
The initial assault was preceded by a bombardment from 610 big guns, the largest-scale attack
so far in the east, and it included gas shells- in four hours 700,000 shells were fired.
The offensive was an immediate success. In the first day the Russians were driven from
Gorlice, five days later driven out of Tarnow. The Russians had made advances for eight months
– all of them were erased in under a week as the Carpathian passes one by one fell to
the attackers. 30,000 Russian POWs were taken this week.
See, Mackensen had been very clever. The attacks launched in the north and south in April had
been diversions while his forces had gathered near Cracow. The Russians had also ignored
intelligence reports of the German build-up, too busy hatching their own plans to break
through the Carpathians, so Mackensen had managed to assemble and attack with a force
of 300,000 men and 1,700 big guns.
Here’s something interesting: In Vienna, as the Russians retreated, the Austrian Foreign
Minister, Count Czernin, thought that the time was ripe for peace with Russia, with
the condition being that Russia renounce all German and Austrian conquests. The Russian
army was in flight, so he may have been right in thinking they would accept, but in Berlin,
the thinking was now that this push was just a prelude to total victory over the Russians.
And there was a petition to the German Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg from the six largest German
economic and industrial groups with demands for once the war was won. These included in
the west: Belgian economic and military dependence on Germany, the French coastline as far south
as the River Somme, the coal producing region of Northern France, and in the east part of
Russia’s Baltic provinces and a huge chunk of land to the south of them, so that the
addition of manufacturing resources in the west would be balanced in the east. The area
demanded contained a population of 11 million people. But no one was going to agree to that,
so victory would have to come on the field.
And one field where no one was yet claiming victory was at Gallipoli.
On the 1st, the Turks attacked the Allied positions, on both the 2nd and the 4th, the
British attacked and failed at Gaba Tepe, and on May 6th, the second battle of Krithia
began. That village and the nearby hill Achi Baba were necessary to capture in order to
advance up the peninsula, but much like the landings last week, it was a bloodbath. Of
the 25,000 or so Allied troops attacking, roughly a third became casualties and though
small gains were made, the objectives remained out of reach.
However, losses like that could not realistically continue or else the Allies would soon run
out of men to hold their own ground, but the battle plan was a joke. The attackers didn’t
actually know where the Ottomans were fortified, having not done reconnaissance, so the preliminary
artillery bombardment was just a waste of shells. British Commander Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston
cemented his reputation for incompetence at this battle, indeed he is known today as one
of the worst generals of the war overall. He would soon be promoted to Lieutenant General.
One Allied advance that was making headway this week was in German Southwest Africa,
as South African forces occupied Otjimbingwe and Karibib. South African Prime Minister
and General Louis Botha complained publicly about the Germans poisoning the local wells.
The German commander admitted the fact but said that the wells were marked “poisoned”
so it was, you know, okay.
And that was the week. The Germans spectacularly successful in the east, performing well in
the west, and losing ground in Africa, and another bloodbath at the Dardanelles. And
thousands of people drowning in the sea.
But I’m not talking about the Lusitania for that wasn’t the only sinking this week.
On May 1st a British submarine penetrated the Dardanelles and sank a Turkish troop transport
with 6,000 troops aboard. 6,000. Three times the amount of people on the Lusitania, but
you don’t hear about that sinking. They weren’t civilians; they were soldiers. They
were cannon fodder. They were insignificant. But they were men, and one of the most famous
poems of the war was written this week by John McCrae, a Canadian Doctor in the Canadian
Medical Corps, which he wrote after seeing the wreckage of Ypres, and it was for all
of those “insignificant” soldiers who died.
In Flanders fields the poppies grow Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky The larks still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders Fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high, If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields.
If you would like to see more about what was happening in Flanders Fields, click here for the First Battle ofYpres.
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