A Course of National Infamy: May to August 1915

Abstract

On May 7, 1915, the German submarine campaign galvanized the world when, 11 miles off the Irish coast, a torpedo from the U- 20 sank the British Cunard ocean liner RMS Lusitania, the “Queen of the Atlantic” and the fastest ship on the seas. The liner, which had made four safe wartime round trips between New York and Europe, exploded and went down in 18 minutes, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 passengers and crew, including 128 American men, women, and children.¹ The next day’s London Daily Mail labeled the action “Premeditated Murder” and two days later published photographs of dead women and children lined up at the Queenstown “charnel house.” In America the papers also recounted the tragedy, noting that a “stunned” President Woodrow Wilson was “in seclusion” and that official Washington believed a “grave crisis” was at hand.² The New York Evening Post called the sinking a deed “for which a Hun would blush, a Turk be ashamed, and a Barbary pirate apologize.”³ “WHAT A PITY,” declared the New York Herald’s banner headline the day after the sinking, that “THEODORE ROOSEVELT IS NOT PRESIDENT!”⁴