When instead they found a naval stalemate, British warships blockaded Germany and the Germans resorted to submarine warfare with their fleet of U-boats. The sinking of civilian ships without rescuing their voyagers, said Winston Churchill, then first lord of the admiralty, leaving them “to perish in open boats or drown amid the waves was in the eyes of all seafaring peoples a grisly act, which hitherto had never been practised except by pirates”.īoth the Royal Navy and the German fleet had envisaged a naval war in which their battleships met in huge showdowns such as the battle of Trafalgar. Until 1914 the established naval rules provided that warships could stop and search merchant vessels, but must safeguard their crews. This unprecedented attack on civilians caused a storm of indignation, particularly in the US, which expected its citizens to be immune from international violence. Many passengers drowned because they donned their life-jackets incorrectly and could not keep their heads bobbing above water. It sank in 18 minutes: 1,198 passengers and crew, including three German stowaways and 123 Americans, perished. O n the Cunard liner Lusitania, the fastest ship of its day, steaming from New York to Liverpool, was torpedoed by a German submarine 12 miles off the coast of southern Ireland, not far from Cobh.
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