Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward

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THE LUSITANIA

The Lusitania was a British passenger liner that sailed regularly between Liverpool and New York. She was owned by the Cunard C o m p a n y , which, as previously mentioned, was the only major ship line which was a competitor of the Morgan cartel. She left New York harbor on May 1, 1915, and was sunk by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland six days later. Of the 1,195 persons who lost their lives, 195 were Americans. It was this event, more than any other, that provided the advocates of war with a convincing platform for their views, and it became the turning point where Americans reluctantly began to accept, if not the necessity of war, at least its inevitability.

The fact that the Lusitania was a passenger ship is misleading.

Although she was built as a luxury liner, her construction specifications were drawn up by the British Admiralty so that she could be converted, if necessary, into a ship of war. Everything from the horsepower of her engines and the shape of her hull to the place-ment of ammunition storage areas were, in fact, military designs.

She was built specifically to carry twelve six-inch guns. The construction costs for these features were paid for by the British government. Even in times of peace, it was required that her crew include officers and seamen from the Royal Navy Reserve.

In May of 1913, she was brought back into dry dock and outfit-ted with extra armor, revolving gun rings on her decks, and shell racks in the hold for ammunition. Handling elevators to lift the shells to the guns were also installed. Twelve high-explosive cannons were delivered to the dry dock. All this is a matter of public record at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, but whether the guns were actually installed at that time is still hotly debated. There is no evidence that they were. In any event, on September 17, the Lusitania returned to sea ready for the rigors of war, and she was entered into the Admiralty fleet register, not as a passenger liner, but an armed auxiliary cruiser] From then on, she was listed in Jane's Fighting Ships as an auxiliary cruiser and in the British publication, The Naval Annual, as an armed merchant man.1

Part of the dry dock modification was to remove all the passenger accommodations in the lower deck to make room for more 1- Simpson, pp. 17-28, 70.

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military cargo. Thus, the Lusitania became one of the most important carriers of war materials—including munitions—from the United States to England. On March 8, 1915, after several close calls with German submarines, the captain of the Lusitania turned in his resignation. He was willing to face the U-boats, he said, but he was no longer willing 'to carry the responsibility of mixing passengers with munitions or contraband.'

CHURCHILL SETS A TRAP

From England's point of view, the handwriting on the wall was clear. Unless the United States could be brought into the war as her ally, she soon would have to sue for peace. The challenge was how to push Americans off their position of stubborn neutrality. How that was accomplished is one of the more controversial aspects of the war. It is inconceivable to many that English leaders might have deliberately plotted the destruction of one of their own vessels with American citizens aboard as a means of drawing the United States into the war as an ally. Surely, any such idea is merely German propaganda. Robert Ballard, writing in National Geographic, says:

'Within days of the sinking, German sympathizers in New York came up with a conspiracy theory. The British Admiralty, they said, had deliberately exposed Lusitania to harm, hoping she would be attacked and thus draw the U.S. into the war.'

Let's take a closer look at this conspiracy theory. Winston Churchill, who was First Lord of the Admiralty at that time, said: T h e r e are m a n y k i n d s o f m a n e u v e r s i n w a r . . . . T h e r e are maneuvers in time, in diplomacy, in mechanics, in psychology; all of which are removed from the battlefield, but react often decisively upon it.... The maneuver which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle. The maneuver which gains an important strategic point may be less valuable than that which placates or overawes a dangerous neutral.

The maneuver chosen by Churchill was particularly ruthless.

Under what was called the Cruiser Rules, warships of both England and Germany gave the crews of unarmed enemy merchant ships a 1. Simpson, p. 87.

2. 'Riddle of the Lusitania,' by Robert Ballard, National Geographic, April, 1994, p. 74.

3. Winston Churchill, The World Crisis (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1949), p. 300.

This appears on p. 464 of the Barnes & Noble 1993 reprint.

SINK THE LUSITANIA!

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chance to take to the lifeboats before sinking them. But, in October of 1914, Churchill issued orders that British merchant ships must no longer obey a U-boat order to halt and be searched. If they had armament, they were to engage the enemy. If they did not, they were to attempt to ram the sub. The immediate result of this change was to force German U-boats to remain submerged for protection and to simply sink the ships without warning.

Why would the British want to do such a stupid thing that would cost the lives of thousands of their own seamen? The answer is that it was not an act of stupidity. It was cold blooded strategy.

Churchill boasted:

The first British countermove, made on my responsibility,... was to deter the Germans from surface attack. The submerged U-boat had to rely increasingly on underwater attack and thus ran the greater risk of mistaking neutral for British ships and of drowning neutral crews and thus embroiling Germany with other Great Powers.1

To increase the likelihood of accidentally sinking a ship from a neutral 'Great Power,' Churchill ordered British ships to remove their names from their hulls and, when in port, to fly the flag of a neutral power, preferably that of