Amid published German threats that ships flying Allied flags in war zones were liable to destruction, the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania left Pier 54 in New York bound for Liverpool with nearly 1,900 passengers and crew aboard. German embassy notices in American newspapers that very morning warned travelers of the danger. On May 7, a German U-boat torpedoed the ship off the Irish coast, killing 1,198 people and inflaming American opinion against Germany.
On the morning of departure, New York newspapers carried an unusual notice placed by the German Embassy, warning that vessels flying the flag of Great Britain were subject to destruction in the waters around the British Isles, and that travelers sailing on such ships did so at their own risk. It ran just beside Cunard's own advertisement for the Lusitania's sailing.
Most passengers dismissed the warning as bluster. The Lusitania was, after all, one of the fastest ships afloat, believed capable of outrunning any submarine, and Cunard had made the crossing hundreds of times without incident. Among the passengers were the American art collector and philanthropist Alfred Vanderbilt and the theatrical producer Charles Frohman, neither of whom would survive the voyage.
Six days later, on May 7, the German submarine U-20 fired a single torpedo into the Lusitania's hull off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland. A second explosion, likely from ignited coal dust or ammunition, tore the ship apart, and it sank in just eighteen minutes. The deaths of 128 American citizens became a rallying point that pushed the United States toward entering World War I two years later, making this quiet, defiant departure from New York harbor the opening scene of a tragedy that reshaped the war's diplomatic course.
Key people: Alfred Vanderbilt, Charles Frohman