Colin Simpson (1) (1931–2017)

This, published in 1972 (my edition is 1974) is now rather dated but it’s the first book I’ve picked up on the subject and you have to start somewhere. Author Colin Simpson took on the standard “dastardly Huns” meme that had been unchallenged (at least in the English-speaking world) since 1915 and gained considerably notoriety thereby.


In case you’re unfamiliar with the basics, the RMS Lusitania was a Cunard liner, torpedoed and sunk by U-20 on May 7, 1915 off the Old Head of Kinsale in Ireland. About 1200 passengers and crew died, many of them American; the Lusitania had been on her regular run between New York and Liverpool. The sinking caused considerable outrage in England and the neutral US, and probably contributed to the America’s eventual decision to enter WWI on the Allied side. The English contention was that Lusitania was an unarmed ship carrying only non-contraband cargo, and at the very least subject to the “Cruiser rules” that required her to be stopped and searched; the German contention was that she was an auxiliary cruiser in the Royal Navy, carrying contraband of war, and English instructions to merchant captains required them to ram U-boats and rendered the “Cruiser rules” irrelevant. We won, they lost, so our story became the standard one.


Simpson collected a great deal of data regarding Lusitania. Although a little Web searching discloses that some of it has been debunked by later authors, I’m going to stick with what he presents here until I’ve read some of the debunking books. Unfortunately, his chronological presentation, while making an exciting story, detracts from the effectiveness from his case. Therefore, I’m going to rehash his suggestions in a different order, and follow them with my take in red. I stress that, at present, my “take” is solely based on Simpson’s book and its internal logic, not evidence that has come to light since or other author’s debunking; I plan to read other books as they turn up.


* Was the Lusitania “armed”?


Not in any reasonable sense of the word. Deck rings for two 6” guns, magazines, and shell handling equipment were installed in 1913. Simpson states that the shelter deck was also adapted to take four guns on each broadside; if so, they would have been served by the same magazines and shell handling equipment as the fore and aft deck guns. However, Simpson doesn’t claim that the weapons were actually mounted. Instead, there’s mention of a mysterious area in the forward part of the ship that was sealed off under Admiralty orders. Simpson implies that the guns were stored in that area. Interestingly, just before the Lusitania left New York, three German nationals equipped with a camera were arrested in this area.


* Was the Lusitania carrying contraband of war?


Yes. Just about anything was “contraband of war”. However, the Lusitania official manifest shows she was 4986 cases of 0.303 rifle ammunition and 1248 cases of “shrapnel”. The exact nature of the “shrapnel” is still unclear, but it was listed as “non-explosive” on the manifest.


* Did the Lusitania violate US law by filing a false manifest in New York?


Unclear. Since the number of passengers and provisions on a passenger liner might change up to the last minute before sailing, it was normal for a ship to file a partial manifest, then update it later. Lusitania seems to have filled a one-page manifest, then updated it with a 22-page manifest after the ship sailed. The question for Simpson is whether apparently harmless items on Lusitania’s manifest – barrels of fur and boxes of butter, cheese, and lard – were actually explosives.


* Did the Lusitania’s cargo include items that were illegal to ship on a passenger vessel under US law? (note that 2, 3, and 4 are not the same, although obviously related)


Again, unclear, but the circumstantial evidence is interesting. Simpson contends that some or all of the furs, butter, cheese and lard listed on the manifest were actually pyroxyline (guncotton or nitrocellulose in American usage). His argument is circumstantial. The Admiralty purchased a considerable amount of guncotton from DuPont during the war. Guncotton was supposed to be shipped in special containers (Simpson doesn’t explain if this was American law or DuPont rules), but the German government had rather alertly contracted for all the containers available; therefore the Admiralty must have been shipping it in other containers. Some of the Lusitania’s cargo seems to have been routed through warehouses used by DuPont to ship explosives. Some 600 tons of pyroxline were delivered to the Cunard wharf in New York several days before Lusitania sailed. The butter and cheese cases on Lusitania were consigned to a box number in Liverpool; that box belonged to the superintendent of the Naval Experimental Establishment at Shoeburyness, which was a weapons proofing and testing site.


* Did the Royal Navy deliberately send Lusitania into “harm’s way” in the hopes that her sinking would draw the USA into the war?


Probably not. Simpson quotes several English officials – including King George V – asking Americans what the US response would be if the Lusitania was torpedoed. It’s a far cry from that to a deliberate plot.


* What was the nature of the “secondary explosion” that occurred on the Lusitania after U-20’s torpedo hit?


Kapitän-Leutnant Schweiger of the U-20 noted in his log “An unusually heavy detonation takes place with a very strong explosion cloud (far beyond front funnel). The explosion of the torpedo must have been followed by a second one (boiler or coal or powder?)…”. Passengers on board the ship also reported a second explosion, of a “different character” than the first. Simpson ventures that some of the “mysterious” cargo blew up. He notes that U-20 had previously torpedoed two other British ships, smaller than the Lusitania, in the previous few days, and a single torpedo was insufficient to sink them – they had to be finished off with the deck gun. The problem with Simpson’s implication, as I see it, is that while the explosion was too large for a single torpedo it was too small for tons of guncotton – plus the “cheese” was stored some distance from the torpedo impact. The rifle ammunition and “shrapnel” were stored closer to the impact point. As far as the rifle ammunition goes it’s very unlikely that smokeless powder would explode this way. The “shrapnel” is a different story, perhaps; the question is if these were just shrapnel projectiles; i.e., an 18-pounder shrapnel projectile, with just a small bursting charge, or an entire (but unfuzed) round with the projectile and filled shell casing. That would have involved a considerably larger amount of potential explosive. I’m going to break my rule about using more recent data here because there’s something confusing; Simpson says “A straightforward survey of the wreck has shown exactly where the torpedo struck” while more recent dives describe Lusitania as lying on her side, covering up the impact point. I’ll have to see what’s up with that.


* Did the Royal Navy “cover up” documents that would have portrayed the sinking in a different light than the standard “dastardly Hun” story?


Some documents have been lost and some are still classified. One key item is whether or not the Lusitania received Admiralty orders to divert to Queenstown (Cobh/Cork); the Captain thought she had but the relevant signal seems to be missing.


* Did the United States government “cover up’ documents that would have portrayed the sinking in a different light than the standard “dastardly Hun” story?


There’s some mystery involving an Austrian national, Dr. Ritter von Rettegh, who claimed that he had evidence that the Lusitania was carrying pyroxyline. The Austrian consulate in Cleveland was burglarized and von Rettegh’s papers were stolen. He was arrested for check fraud, but claimed he had never seen the supposed checks; he was then charged with “utterances prejudicial to the peace of the nation”, tried in camera, convicted, and sentenced to one to three years.


Well, I don’t know yet; I’ll have to read some of the rebuttal works. The edition of The Lusitania I have is a mass-market paperback with lots of fine print and footnotes; the description of the actual sinking is pretty exciting but the rest of the book concerns fine points of shipping manifests and Board of Trade trials, and thus I may have missed some details. We’ll see what happens after I’ve gone through a couple more books.… (meer)

The title is livelier than the book itself. In the early days of WWI, the UK armed several passenger liners with older model naval guns and set them up as escorts of convoys, and as general patrol craft, replacing some more up-to-date ships which were moved to the North Sea. The Germans, having a smaller merchant marine, armed some of their passenger liners and sent them to sea to hunt and destroy or capture merchant vessels . Thus we have the spectacle of two of these vessels meeting in armed combat. The Cap Trafalgar was the German raider, armed with 2 105mm guns, and the Carmania, carrying 8 4.7" (120mm) guns. On September 14, 1914 they fought off Trinidad, on the Atlantic side.… (meer)