Lusitania

RMS Lusitania departing New York - Ossie Jones

I'm reading a story about the Chinese plan to build a railway across the Andes mountains in South America. Okay, that sounds nuts, but it also sounds like something China might try.

Well, let's see if we can find a map. I found several speculative plans, but nothing definite. I'm reading about one and they mention Lusophones, which is a new term for me. Look it up and it turns out it means people who speak Portuguese and comes from the name of a Roman province which was located where Portugal is now.

Just bugged me that there were so many disparate things that all used the same name.

Dead Wake - The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson

Dead Wake - The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
by Erik Larson

Not a great book, but not bad. An easy, engaging read. About half of the book is devoted to serious stuff, like the ship, submarine operations, political machinations and military operations. The other half is fluff - little bits of information about some of the various passengers, who they were, what they were doing and what became of them.


S.S. Lusitania Leaves New York City on Last Voyage

S.S. Lusitania Sinking

The water that day was nearly mill-pond still. Launching the lifeboats was almost a complete disaster, partly due to an inexperienced crew and partly due to poor organization, or maybe I am repeating myself. There was also the problem of launching the boats while the ship was still moving. A behemoth like the Lusitania charging along at 18 knots doesn't suddenly stop just because there is a big fat hole in the side.

The sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-Boat may have been the trigger that launched America on the road to war. It took two years, but eventually we got involved. One of the first things we did was send a squadron of destroyers over. The event was significant enough that Bernard F. Grimble captured it in a painting.

Return of the Mayflower, by Bernard F. Gribble (British, 1873-1962)

SM U-20 grounded on the Danish coast in 1916. Torpedoes had been exploded in the bow to destroy the boat

The submarine that fired the fatal torpedo ended up grounded on the Danish coast. The Germans expended great effort to refloat it but failed.

P.S. Some places say SS for Steam Ship, some places say RMS which stands for Royal Mail Ship, not Royal Majesty's Ship, which would have been my first guess. British Royal Navy ships are denoted by HMS which stands for His (or Her) Majesty's Ship. RMS just means the ship carries the mail.

P.P.S. Some of the place names from Ireland sounded familiar. Seems I did a post about The Wreck of the Seahorse a couple of years ago. 200 years ago the Seahorse foundered on the Irish coast not far from where the Lusitania went down. I added it to the map.

Honest officer, the gun went off all by itself!

Cover illustration from Le Petit Journal (29 March 1914) depicting the assassination of Calmette by Madame Caillaux.

I started reading Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson and almost immediately ran into this passage:

Henriette Caillaux, pistolet

Henriette was one of the richest women in France at the time. Wikipedia has an account of this incident.

The Sinking of the Lusitania

The Sinking of the Lusitania (Winsor McCay, 1918)
Under the Spreading Oak Tree
The sinking happened 100 years ago yesterday. This is the oldest known non-fiction, animated film. From the Wikipedia article about this short animated film:

In 1915, a German submarine torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania; 128 Americans were among the 1,198 dead. The event outraged McCay, but the newspapers of his employer William Randolph Hearst downplayed the tragedy, as Hearst was opposed to the US joining World War I. McCay was required to illustrate anti-war and anti-British editorial cartoons for Hearst's papers. In 1916, McCay rebelled against his employer's stance and began to make the self-financed, patriotic Sinking of the Lusitania on his own time.

761 people survived. The film mentions four prominent people who died here:

• Elbert Hubbard. I didn't recognize the name, but his words are familiar.
• Charles Klein. Show biz personality.
• Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt I. A fat wallet won't protect you from a watery grave. Or people making fun of your middle name. No wonder everybody calls him G.
• Charles Frohman. Show biz bigwig.

Via Posthip Scott.

Update October 2023 replaced missing video.

Update November 2024 replaced missing video.