The Liner Torpedoed In Eighteen Minutes

On 7 May 1915 the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was crossing the Atlantic carrying nearly 2,000 passengers when a German U-boat fired a torpedo into the side of the ship off the coast of Ireland, and within seconds a second explosion tore through the vessel causing panic across the decks as passengers rushed toward lifeboats while the ship began tilting heavily into the freezing sea, and many of the lifeboats could not even be launched properly because of the angle of the deck, and people were thrown into the water as the Lusitania sank in just eighteen minutes, and witnesses later described hearing screams across the ocean while hundreds struggled in the freezing Atlantic surrounded by wreckage, and by the time it was over nearly 1,200 people were dead, including more than one hundred children.

Interesting Fact

The sinking of the Lusitania shocked the world because many passengers were civilians. Germany argued the ship was carrying war materials, something historians later confirmed was partly true. The disaster helped turn public opinion strongly against Germany during World War I.

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