Immediately after its impact, however, a secondary explosion from inside the ship caused the Lusitania to list perilously to one side (rendering most lifeboats useless) and take on water. “Remarkably,” the attack had “dominated the headlines for only about a week before being overtaken by a newer story.” We might compare this to news of the Titanic disaster three years earlier, credited as “ one of the first and most significant international news stories of the 20th century.” There is much about the Lusitania the public did not learn, leading to later accusations of a British Naval Intelligence cover-up.įor one thing, stories reported that the ship had been hit by two torpedoes when there was only one. These were emotional surveys of a tragedy, not investigative journalism of an act of war. Lusitania.” Two weeks later, another photo spread honored the ship’s dead, reflecting a “panorama of responses to the disaster,” the Library of Congress writes, including “sorrow, heroism, ambivalence, consolation, and anger.”
A week after the disaster, in a May 16th, 1915 issue, the Sunday New York Times ran a two-page spread entitled “Prominent Americans Who Lost Their Lives on the S.S. coverage immediately afterward was not overly belligerent. The Lusitania did not change President Woodrow Wilson’s position. While the “sinking of the Lusitania was a crucial moment in helping to sway the American public in support of the Allied cause,” it was only kept in the public eye by those who wanted the U.S. But it would take almost two years after the attack before the country entered the war.
That lesson is largely the result of a propaganda effort launched at the time to inflame anti-German sentiments and push the U.S. We learn roughly that the sinking of the British luxury liner was an act of German aggression that moved the U.S.
school system, the words “Remember the Lusitania” may be as vaguely familiar to you as “Remember the Alamo.” And you may be just as fuzzy about the details.
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