Quotes About Lusitania

the Lusitania was deliberately sent to her doom. Prior to the incident, Winston Churchill, then head of the British Admiralty, had ordered a study done to determine the political impact if the Germans sank a British passenger ship with Americans on board. And just before the sinking, Edward Grey, the British foreign minister, asked Edward Mandell House, top advisor to President Woodrow Wilson: "What will America do if the Germans sink an ocean liner with American passengers on board?

I do think hubris played a role here as well, the belief that the Lusitania was too big and too fast to ever be caught by any submarine, and that, in any case, no U-boat commander would think to attack the ship because to do so would violate the long-held rules governing naval warfare against merchant shipping.

The Lusitania is important, of course, because this is where Germany began its maritime campaign using this brand-new weapon. We have to appreciate how the submarine, as a weapon against civilian shipping, was a particularly novel thing - so novel that many people at the time dismissed its potential power, its potential relevance.

the most likely explanation is that there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war.

On Monday, May 10, the coroner's jury issued its finding: that the submarine's officers and crew and the emperor of Germany had committed "willful and wholesale murder." Half an hour later a message arrived from the Admiralty, ordering Horgan to block Turner from testifying. Horgan wrote, "That august body were however as belated on this occasion as they had been in protecting the Lusitania against attack.

The reference to the Lusitania was obvious enough," he recalled later, "but personally it never entered my mind for a moment that the Germans would actually perpetrate an attack upon her. The culpability of such an act seemed too blatant and raw for an intelligent people to take upon themselves.

He glanced back. Two images became impressed in his memory. One was of a collapsible lifeboat slipping from the ship, still sheathed in its protective cover; the other, of Captain Turner in full dress uniform still on the bridge as the Lusitania began its final dive.

The Admiralty was well aware the Lusitania would soon traverse these same waters but made no effort to provide specifics of the night's events directly to Captain Turner.

OF THE LUSITANIA'S 1,959 PASSENGERS AND CREW, only 764 survived; the total of deaths was 1,195. The 3 German stowaways brought the total to 1,198. Of 33 infants aboard, only 6 survived. Over 600 passengers were never found. Among the dead were 123 Americans.

Five months after the disaster, Charles Lauriat wrote a book about his experience, entitled The Lusitania's Last Voyage

Do you think all these people would be booking passage on the Lusitania if they thought she could be caught by a German submarine? Why it's the best joke I've heard in many days, this talk of torpedoing the Lusitania.' Both Vanderbilt and Turner laughed.

I FIRST STARTED READING about the Lusitania on a whim, following my between-books strategy of reading voraciously and promiscuously.

most likely explanation is that there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war.

The sinking of the Lusitania wasn't the proximal cause for the U.S. entering WWI. It was almost two years between the sinking and the war declaration, and President Wilson's request for war never mentions the Lusitania.

I've been asked a lot lately what message is there in the Lusitania for the modern day. To be honest, not much. Except that maybe hubris and overconfidence are always dangerous things.

He felt as if he had been shipwrecked on the Titanic, but in the nick of time had been rescued. By the Lusitania

It's essentially taught in high school and college survey courses as an item on a timeline: 'The Lusitania was sunk; the U.S. gets into World War I'.

The Lusitania is a monument to this optimism, to the hubris of the era. I love that, because where there is hubris, there is tragedy.

It's not my intent to write definitive history. 'Dead Wake' isn't a definitive history of the sinking of the Lusitania. It's my account.

He felt as if he had been shipwrecked on the Titanic, but in the nick of time had been rescued. By the Lusitania.

One of the really amazing things about the Lusitania saga was that, at the time, there existed in the admiralty a super-secret spy entity known as 'Room 40'.

Only 768 people—passengers and crew—had survived; four of those died of their injuries in the next months. Some 1,198 had perished, including 128 Americans. Over 800 of Lusitania's victims were never recovered.(

I didn't know anything about the Lusitania. I started reading because I had nothing else in my plate. And as soon as I start reading, I thought now this is interesting, you know, the hows of what happened, the actual - the actual sinking of the ship.

You don't understand how important faith is to the people of Lusitania,' said Peregrine 'And you don't understand how devastating fear and rage can be, and how quickly religion and civilization and human decency are forgotten when a mob forms.