Ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from Oceanliner Designs
today i wanted to talk to you about a topic that is of really
deep interest to me and that is the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in the first world war in 1915.
now in May of that year she was very famously and tragically torpedoed by the german submarine U-20
now the interesting thing about the Lusitania to me as with all disasters
is that often there's usually not one thing that goes wrong leading up to this situation
there's often a number of things that have had to have failed for this to happen it's not unlike
Air Crash Investigation for those of you who've watched that show i can't really think of any
one plane that was brought down by one failure there's usually a number of things that have to
go wrong in the first place and so it is the case with the Lusitania I can think of actually five
distinct areas where if one of these things hadn't have happened then the Lusitania may
not have been put in harm's way and sunk when she did so today let's count down and figure out
the five things that could have changed to have prevented the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915
Number one; mid-war sailings when the Lusitania and her sister ship the Mauretania were first
introduced in 1906-1907 they were the very very latest thing in shipbuilding they were the largest
and fastest ocean liners in the world but part of their construction costs had actually been
covered/subsidised by the British government and this was because of an agreement in place between
Cunard line the ship's owners and the British government that at the outbreak of war in the
event of any future war Lusitania and Mauretania would be deployed as armed auxiliary cruisers now
an auxiliary cruiser is a ship which has been designed not necessarily as a warship but that
can be converted a little bit and set to sea on military operations typically hunting down
say enemy merchant ships like cargo ships and the like on the early plans for Lusitania and
Maureitania you can clearly see mountings that were intended for the installation of six-inch
guns in the outbreak of a war this thought process was largely because years earlier during the Boer
war ships had proved incredibly useful in transporting troops en masse and a number
of White Star Line and Cunard commanders had actually served as captains during those voyages
but just before the first world war it was thought that giant ocean liners because they are so fast
and because they're so large would be really adept at covering great distances quickly and hunting
down enemy merchant ships but when world war one actually broke out the concept absolutely fell
apart because Lusitania and Mauretania along with the likes of Olympic and Britannic and Aquitania
chewed up enormous amounts of coal - massive amounts of fuel in fact actually keep these ships
serviceable and operating as armed cruisers would have almost exhausted the entire reserve supply
of Royal Navy coal by three months into the war so they couldn't do it therefore the entire line
of fleet was mothballed while they decided what to do with them and in the case of Mauretania
and Olympic and Aquitania they were put to see as troop ships Britannic was still under construction
during the outbreak of the first world war but she was finished off as a hospital ship and crucially
the Lusitania was actually put to sea as an ocean liner you see there was enough business
to warrant Cunard operating one transatlantic liner from their home port of Liverpool all the
way across to New York and back still there were passengers who wanted to seek refuge from the war
so there might have been refugees fleeing west and therefore booking passage on the Lusitania to
get to the new world and get to America but there are also people going back the other
way so you had missionaries you had aid workers you had people wanting to be reunited with their
families if they had originally been from Europe and that kind of thing so Cunard line reached an
agreement with the British Admiralty that kept Lusitania in service incredibly as a
passenger ship in the middle of a war zone and of course the number one threat to a passenger ship
such as the Lusitania is going to be German submarines now U-boats aren't very fast a German
submarine could really only manage about nine knots underwater and at best 15 knots surfaced
Lusitania's absolute secret weapon was her speed she was capable of 25 knots which in peace time
is really useful because you can get across the Atlantic and get passengers home safe and sound
in record time it's doubly useful during wartime because suddenly German submarines in theory can't
catch you so so long as Lusitania can keep her top speed going she should be okay so it's this
arrogant kind of thinking that the Lusitania would be fast enough to outrun any danger at all times
that actually put her into harm's way in the first place Number two; The Lusitania's secret cargo now
I mentioned earlier that Lusitania had originally been built as a potential auxiliary cruiser now
this isn't really that good of a thing when you're a passenger ship because suddenly on all the
official registries you are listed as an auxiliary cruiser and as it was the case for Lusitania it's
probably doubly as bad if you're just trying to maintain the guise of your passenger ship
being just that a passenger ship to load it up with say ammunition for the war zone that it's
heading toward that would be against the rules but Bunard and the British government did it anyway
thanks to relatively lax New York harbour customs procedures the British admiralty and government
was able to establish a deal with the likes of the Remington small arms company based in the US
to manufacture huge amounts of ammunition like rifle rounds and shells and transport them back
to Britain even though the US was still neutral and to obfuscate that and make it not that obvious
they employed the Lusitania to carry tons and tons and tons of this ammunition back across
the Atlantic now you may have heard this figure floated around that Lusitania was carrying among
other things four million rifle rounds now to put that into perspective the standard British service
rifle of the first world war was the number one mark three short magazine Lee Enfield rifle
now the short magazine the Enfield rifle had a 10 round magazine so you would load in two clips it
would have 10 bullets now the British soldier's combat load of ammunition was carried in his 1908
pattern webbing which had two ammunition pouches of 75 rounds each so that's around about 150 .303
rifle rounds per man so Lusitania on that single voyage was carrying enough .303 rifle rounds
to completely resupply the combat load for 28,000 men which is actually two division's worth of men
and if Lusitania was making this crossing every couple of weeks she could resupply
two whole divisions of soldiers on the front line every couple of weeks that's the kind of resupply
that can make an actual dent in the war effort towards the favour of the Allies so Lusitania's
efforts were no small thing that's a lot of ammunition and on top of that she was carrying
thousands of shell casings and fuses and even some explosive now I'm not suggesting necessarily
that this directly contributed to the sinking of the Lusitania the Germans in fact may not have
definitely known that she was carrying this kind of contraband munition but there were German spies
among the New York dock workers for sure there were German spies operating all throughout the US
and it seems ridiculous to me to think that they couldn't have got an inkling
about what was going on therefore painting a huge target on the Lusitania so two things stacking up
here that the British government ignore the threat of the U-boat fleet and decide with Cunard to keep
the Lusitania in operation as a passenger ship and they load the ship with tons of ammunition thus
painting a target on the ship's back it should be fine so long as she can keep up her speed right?
Number three speed versus profit now this is a small point but a very important point because I
mentioned earlier that Cunard had enough business there was enough traffic going from across the
Atlantic both ways to warrant keeping Lusitania in service the voyagers were booked nowhere near
as full as her normal peacetime sailings of course most people probably weren't brave enough to want
to sail across the Atlantic in the middle of a war zone totally fair enough but it meant that
profits were being eaten into and so the decision was made to shut down some of Lusitania's boilers
and she was only operating at about three quarters of her usual power which meant that her top speed
her secret weapon dropped from 25 knots to 21 knots now this isn't necessarily a problem 21
knots is still pretty quick for the time you think that the RMS Olympic's top speed was about
22 knots at full clip she could outrun danger she was pretty safe but it seems
really unusual to me to have your ship in harm's way and then take away its most valuable asset
which is its great speed in fact at 25 knots there is very little in the German fleet that could have
caught her the only thing I can think of are the German battle cruisers like the Derfflinger
whose top speed was 26 and a half knots but their role wasn't to chase down British passenger ships
so she would have been pretty safe if she had kept to 25 knots across the Atlantic but okay that's
fine 21 knots that should be fine so long as she does the 21 knots and doesn't go any slower right?
well! Number four; Captain Turner's many mistakes
it's very easy for me as a civilian enthusiast to sit back here over a hundred years after the
sinking of the Lusitania and criticize and fault her captain and I don't really want to
do that too much but the man made a number of critical errors that put Lusitania increasingly
deeper into dangerous territory so let's run through these real quick
couple of quick points about the man his name was Bill Turner not to be confused with the Pirates of
the Caribbean Bill Turner his nickname was Bowler Bill for his habit of buying a new bowler hat
every time he took command of a new ship he was a veteran captain he had started in sail as many
of them had during the great era of the clipper ships the sailing ships of the late 19th century
before joining the Cunard line and working his way up to C.O and he had served on quite a few famous
passenger ships including the Umbria the Carpathia and the Lusitania he had commanded Lusitania
during peace time he knew the ship well and he knew the route well he knew the transatlantic
trade like it was the back of his hand the man was a veteran he'd also been the chief officer
on the Umbria during the Boer war so in his mind he's experienced shipping during wartime but that
was a very different war because at the time there was no enemy submarine activity so you know this
is a bit of a new and dangerous world for turner to kind of get his head around but so long as he
follows admiralty instruction he should be fine so his orders are this to maintain full speed at
all times 21 knots to avoid headlands and to sail mid-channel so that is to stay away from the coast
and stay far out at sea and to avoid harbours where submarines would typically sit around and
wait for ships to torpedo now turner ignored all of these directives on the day of the sinking he
was sailing just 15 miles off the coast of Ireland now the final warning that was sent to Lusitania
detailed the fact that there was increased enemy submarine activity off the south coast of Ireland
so Turner should have known that he had to sail at full speed through that area to get out of
harm's way but a fog bank rolled in and he slowed Lusitania way down from 21 knots to 18 and finally
15 knots for four hours Lusitania was crawling along at 15 knots blasting her foghorn in the
middle of a war zone and the passengers noticed and they were a little bit rattled and surprised
that they were broadcasting their position and blowing their foghorn while crawling along
at really low speed but when the fog lifted Turner powered the engines back up but not to
full power he only got the ship moving at 18 knots instead of her lowered top speed of 21 knots so
he wasn't using the ship's great speed to stay out of danger for some reason he kept her moving along
fairly slowly so he's been ordered to go full speed through this area like there's no tomorrow
and he's slowed his ship down he's also been advised to zigzag if you keep your ship moving
in an unpredictable way it's going to be really hard to get a bearing on that ship if you're
a submarine captain but Turner misunderstood his orders he claimed he said that he thought
he only had to zigzag if he spotted a submarine so Lusitania was sailing straight ahead wasn't
taking any kind of evasive manoeuvre whatsoever in waters that were known to be crawling with
German submarines now the final blunder that Turner made was to conduct a routine four point
bearing off the old Head of Kinsale lighthouse on the south coast of Ireland and that meant keeping
the Lusitania sailing straight ahead for about 40 minutes while he conducted this navigational check
it seems unbelievable to me that Turner found the need to conduct a navigational check in a stretch
of water that he had traversed as captain of the Lusitania dozens of times now he might have been
thinking it would be highly highly unlikely for him and his ship to get so unlucky as to stumble
across a German submarine at that exact critical moment while she was conducting the bearing
check she should be fine. Wrong! Number five; Coincidence. Unbeknownst to Turner the Lusitania
had been shadowed by the U-20 for quite some time now Captain Schwiger had the ship in his sights at
first he actually thought it was multiple ships because of the numbers of funnels and masts
until finally it emerged that it was actually a four-stacker he could count the four funnels and
he knew straight away that it could only be one of five British ships the Mauretania the Aquitania
the Olympic the Britannic or the Lusitania he never admitted to knowing exactly what ship it was
but Lusitania and Mauretania were celebrities at that time they were some of the most famous
and well-known ships in the world not only that but Lusitania's sailing schedule was advertised
in american newspapers it would have been obvious that this was in fact the Lusitania even though
Schwieger of course never admitted that he knew because then he would be admitting to firing
upon civilians willingly Lusitania was originally sailing away from Schwiger in the U-20 and he
figured that he actually wouldn't be able to get a shot off but then Turner started the bearing check
and brought Lusitania perfectly into U-20's sights at 700 meters which is absolutely point-blank
range for a submarine commander Schwieger fired a single torpedo it's incredibly coincidental that
at the time that Turner intended to conduct the navigational check the U-20 was perfectly poised
to fire a shot off and some have even postulated that the attack on the Lusitania by U-20 was
premeditated that the German navy was out specifically to hunt down and destroy the
Lusitania in a blow to British morale now the impact of the Lusitania's sinking has sometimes
been a little overstated as being the thing that drew America into the first world war
because so many Americans died in the sinking this isn't entirely true America would only
join the effort against Germany two years later in 1917 but the sinking of the Lusitania helped
push public American opinion away from supporting the Germans and more towards the British and also
helped the British admiralty push this idea of the barbarism and aggression of the German navy in
targeting and sinking a passenger ship just like any disaster there's not any one thing that can be
to blame for the sinking of the Lusitania we could blame captain Turner's blunders for the sinking
but then what was she even doing there in the first place? Why did Cunard feel the need to
continue to run this lone ship in order to generate some meagre profit from whatever
small trade there was in passengers looking to get across the Atlantic. Would the Lusitania have made
it if her top speed was more than 21 knots if Turner felt that he could bring the ship back up
to 25 knots it seems feasible that the U-20 would not have been able to catch and sink her. If the
U-20 didn't happen to be there if it was just a couple of miles away or if he'd been held up by
slightly poorer weather the day before she wouldn't have been in that perfect firing solution
to sink the ship but she was and those five key things - that Cunard continued to operate the
Lusitania as a passenger ship through the first world war, that they enabled her to
carry some pretty spicy cargo in the form of millions of rifle rounds and ammunition
thus painting a legitimate target on the ship's back, that she continued to operate with three
quarters of her boilers only and a reduced top speed , that her C.O Will Turner made a number of
basic errors and ignored admiralty instruction to the end and that the U-20 just happened to be
in the perfect position to land a killing blow on the ship those five things ultimately led
to the ship's sinking and it's curious to wonder if any one of them hadn't have happened then the
Lusitania might have had a career as long and as successful as her sister ship the Mauretania
Ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from Oceanliner Designs! Thank you
so much for watching this video please think about liking and subscribing to
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down in the description until then stay safe stay happy and i'll see you again next time