The Ill-Fated Cunard Liner Lusitania -- May 7, 2015

Moving Picture World, 22-May-1915

After a year of war, Germany was not in a good position.  The British had established a fairly tight blockade of imports, and the army had failed to take Paris and had settled into static positions on the Western Front.  In order to disrupt vital shipping to Britain, Germany had decided to adopt a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.  U-Boats would no longer warn civilian vessels before sinking them.  On 07-May-1915, U-20 torpedoed and sank RMS Lusitania near the coast of Ireland.  A number of Americans died and this nearly drove the country into the war on the side of the Allies, Britain, France and Russia.  Germany promised to stop unrestricted submarine warfare and America stayed out until they resumed it again. 

Lusitania carried 1,962 passengers.  1,191 died.  128 of the dead were Americans. 

The ads on this page were an early reaction to the sinking.  No movies or still photographs were taken of the sinking, so slides were probably hand-drawn.  The posters may have been used to promote newsreels that showed the ship sailing. 

Moving Picture World, 22-May-1915



My other blog has a contemporary newspaper article about the sinking:
http://cablecarguy.blogspot.com/2015/05/great-liner-lusitania-torpedoed-and.html