I'm pleased to welcome Greg Taylor to my blog today, to share with us the secrets of the Lusitania. Greg's book won the M.M. Bennetts Award for Historical Fiction last year.
The Lusitania Cover Up
Nearly 100 years after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania the truth came out
By Greg Taylor
By Greg Taylor
On May 1st 2015, the British government archives
at Kew released declassified documents. What
documents are kept secret? Those which
are dangerous or embarrassing to the government. In the case of documents related to RMS Lusitania released on May 1st
2014, both are true.
The sinking of the Lusitania
was the 9/11 of its day. On May 7th
1915, the 31,550-ton Cunard Liner was en route to Liverpool from New York with
1,959 souls aboard when a German U-Boat torpedoed her just 11 miles off the coast
of Ireland.
Everyone is familiar with the tale of the Titanic but what about the Lusitania?
She was launched into the River Clyde to the strains of
“Rule Britannia” on June 7 1906, the largest moveable object ever created by
man. On the Lusitania rested the hopes of the Empire and Cunard Lines that
Britain would reclaim from the German liners the Blue Riband for the fastest
crossing of the Atlantic, which she did on her third Atlantic crossing with a
speed of 23.99 knots.
In 1915, the Lusitania
was the fastest most luxurious ship making the transatlantic run. When she sailed from New York on May 1st
1915, the New York Times and other papers carried a warning from the German
Embassy. Everyone ignored it - confident the fastest ship in the world could
outrun any German submarine that might dare to threaten a passenger liner
travelling from a neutral country.
The U20 spotted the Lusitania
on the 7th of May, the last day of her crossing. The submarine nearly lost her due to the
liner’s superior speed but a last minute change of direction gave the U20 an
excellent shot. After being hit by a
single torpedo, the Lusitania sank in
eighteen minutes at a list so severe that only eight of the forty-two lifeboats
were launched. Due to the thirty-degree list, the lifeboats on the port side
smashed into the decks below, while those on the starboard side hung eight feet
from the doomed ship.
Kapitänleutnant Schwieger, who ordered the torpedo strike, was
shocked when he saw through his periscope a second, much larger explosion. He refused to permit his crew to look at the
drowning passengers of the Lusitania.
To this day, experts continue to debate the cause of the
second explosion that sealed the Lusitania’s
fate after the torpedo struck. Imperial Germany immediately claimed the ship was
loaded with explosives destined for the front.
During the official inquiry into the sinking of the Lusitania, the Admiralty manipulated
testimony so that Lord Mersey reached an erroneous conclusion that multiple
torpedoes struck the ship. The Admiralty
knew Kapitänleutnant Schwieger had fired only a single torpedo but it was important
to blame only Imperial Germany since the Admiralty had withdrawn the
Lusitania’s escort ship. It was also known that First Sea Lord Winston
Churchill had remarked that the loss of an ocean liner such as the Lusitania might help bring American into
the war on the side of Britain.
What was in the documents released at Kew on the 99th
anniversary of the sinking?
Under the 30 Year Rule, the British National Archive
released internal memoranda between the Commonwealth Department and Ministry of
War that showed that in 1982 the Government was concerned that divers to the
Lusitania wreck were at risk because the wreck contained explosives. One of the memos went so far as to say that
this disclosure might “blow up on us all”.
The British government was worried about ramifications for
British-American relations because the discovery of explosives on the wreck
would imply the Lusitania had been a legitimate target.
A new book, Lusitania R.E.X, weaves fiction around
the known facts to create a plausible explanation of some of the mysteries
surrounding the sinking. The story is centred on one of the wealthiest men in
the world, Alfred Vanderbilt, who lost his life after giving his lifebelt to a
woman passenger. This historical fiction is replete with spies, secret
societies and superweapons, as well as millionaires, monarchs and martyrs. In the book, Alfred and his fellow members of
Skull and Bones, a Yale secret society that in 1911 included the President of
the United States, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Treasury, have
taken a secret cargo aboard the ship. The
story unfolds on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in settings that range from
gilded palaces and the Lusitania to
the blood-soaked trenches of Ypres.
Amazon: http://mybook.to/greglusitania
Website: http://www.
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