Lusitania: Murder on the Atlantic

"Lusitania, murder on the Atlantic" may well be considered as a cheaper version of the 1998-blockbuster "Titanic", starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Although the Lusitania-film provides good entertainment, it leads you on false tracks when it comes to history.

The big question with Lusitania, unsolved to this day: the ship was too big to sink with only one torpedo. However, historically it is beyond doubt that she was sunk by just one torpedo. Even more so, after being hit she sank pretty fast.

Every fisherman at Ireland's Southern coast can exactly point out the location of the Lusitania-wreck, about 100 meters down. So the wreck has already been investigated by several diving parties, among them one led by Robert Ballard in 1993. Ballard is the American who discovered the wrecks of the "Titanic", as well as that of Hitler's famous battleship "Bismarck". Ballard thinks that the torpedo hit one of Lusitania's coal-stores, making the coal-dust explode. Carrying this explosion on to neighboring coal-stores. Later on another diving party found considerable quantities of unexploded ammunition inside the Lusitania.

Given its status as a passenger-ship carrying civilians, Lusitania's sinking in May 1915 did the German cause in World War I no good.

The film states that this disaster marked a turning point in the history of warfare, by dropping humanity and chivalry completely. This is wrong: for instance, when the German army invaded Belgium less than a year before, their behavior against defenseless Belgian civilians still evokes horror to this day.

Nevertheless Lusitania's sinking functioned well to win over the USA for their military participation in World War I. In Belgium people do not speak English, so German atrocities over there had been missed by the people of the distant USA.

Another false understanding widely current in the Anglo-Saxon part of the world: in shipping-disasters Lusitania comes only second after Titanic.

Counting in lost human lives, the greatest shipping disaster of all was the torpedoing of the German vessel "Wilhelm Gustloff" by a Soviet-Russian submarine. This happened in January 1945, when the Hitler-vessel carried about 10.000 refugees from Germany's threatened Eastern provinces westwards to safety. Nearly all these people drowned in the icy Baltic Sea, making their number of casualties at least four times as big as that of the Titanic.

Over a century ago, there was a time when warfare between nations was expected to be fought with some semblance of chivalry, and noncombatants were to be protected from harm.

Any semblance of that finally came to an end on 7 May, 1915.

Based on true events, this docudrama tells the story of one of the most pivotal events of the First World War, the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. This was the other British liner that went down tragically, but whose death could not have been more different. While not as lavish a production as the James Cameron movie, "Lusitania" nevertheless gives the viewer a reasonably accurate picture of the ship and its end. The performances are good, the story pretty much follows the historic record, and the special effects are convincing enough in depicting the death of the doomed liner. One of the movie's best scenes intersperses actual film footage of the Lusitania leaving New York on her final voyage, a sobering and haunting moment.

There's also an important backstory, namely the reason why the Lusitania was attacked in the first place. Both Lusitania and her sister Mauretania were listed as auxiliary cruisers in the Royal Navy registry. The ship was also loaded with munitions, in violation of international law. Through their agents in New York, the Germans were aware of this. There was also the fact that Winston Churchill, head of the Admiralty, wanted to create an incident at sea to bring America into the allied cause.

There are of course, some flaws in this production. For instance, the actor portraying Captain Turner in no way resembles the real person. The late Ian Holm would have been a better choice. However ,the main criticism of this motion picture is sometimes it gives the impression of being "Titanic" meets "Das Boot".

But when the torpedo strikes the hull and the contraband munitions explode, all similarities come to an end, and the mayhem that was the sinking is shown. People are drowned, pulled under, and meet other horrific ends. Unlike the Titanic, the band did not play on, the lovers did not unite, there was no nobility displayed by the passengers, and the Captain did not go down with the ship. This is where this film truly becomes the "Anti-Titanic". But even this cannot fully bring forth the nightmare that was the Lusitania. To make a comparison, the Titanic took two and a half hours to go under, while the Lusitania, a ship 90 percent the Titanic's size, went down in just 18 minutes. The percentage of loss of life was significantly higher, with 1200 souls lost out of 2000 aboard, including 120 Americans.

The international condemnation of Germany that followed this horrific loss of life was near unanimous. Like a prairie fire a wave of shock and indignation spread throughout America, and none other than former President Theodore Roosevelt declared the Lusitania's sinking to be a "barbarous act of piracy". President Woodrow Wilson however, decided to err on the side of caution. Nevertheless, the fuse was lit for America's eventual entry into World War I.

Movies about the Titanic have come and gone and many such movies, from blockbuster epics to cheap low budget movies (some were so low budgeted that the camera crews tilted their cameras instead of tilting the set!) have made their way from the movie theater and the TV, to video and later to DVD.

Yet little has been said about the Lusitania, whose sinking opened a lot of potential.

The story behind the Titanic can be summed up as follows:

Ship sets sail on its maiden voyage.

Ship hits an iceberg.

Ship sinks in the mid Atlantic.

Casualties mount.

A few survive.

End of the story.

But the Lusitania had a story far more complex. Were they bringing arms to England? Were passengers warned? Were dispatches sent to the Captain? Was the Captain innocent? Or was he guilty? These are complex questions with no real simple answers.

The movie was very well done and sure, some facts were distorted. It was war. And every historian knows that the first casualty in a war is the Truth.

Unlike TITANIC (1998), the central characters in this feature were not fictitious. They really did exist. Prof. Ian Holbourn (born November 5, 1872 and died September 15, 1935) was a passenger on the Lusitania. And he really befriended a young girl named Avis Dolphin (born 1903? and died February 5,1996).

And that "good German" on the U-boat that sank the Lusitania was not a fictitious character added to keep things politically correct, either. He also existed. Quartermaster Charles Vogele allegedly refused to relay the order to fire the torpedo and he was tried and courts-marshaled, and spend 3 years in prison for his crime. (Some accounts claimed that Voegele was an electrician, not a Quartermaster.)

It was no secret that Captain Turner later admitted that had the roles been reversed, he wouldn't had behaved any differently than Lt. Capt. Schwieger, who gave the order to fire that torpedo.

I rate this movie an 9 out of 10.

The Lusitania was a passenger ship of the Cunard Line, sunk by a German submarine in 1914 with a tremendous loss of life, 1200 crew and civilians of all ages, in the frigid waters of the north Atlantic. It was a big ship -- 800 feet long, about the size of a battleship -- and at 25 knots very fast for its time.

The German government had issued warnings that all British ships were in danger of being fired on because so many were transporting supplies and arms from the US to Britain. The US hadn't yet entered the war and the arms business was booming. But almost everyone, the Royal Navy included, scoffed at the warnings as hogwash.

When the ship is at sea, a scene took place that at first startled me. I was afraid the story would be completely derailed. We're all on the bridge, the captain (Kenneth Cranham) and number one are strutting around in their gold-emblazoned blue uniforms, and the humble helmsman pipes up with, "What course shall we be sailing when we enter submarine waters, captain?" I can't count the number of hours I spent at the helm of a US Coast Guard cutter, but if I or any other helmsman had been so impolitic as to ask a question like that, we'd have been drawn and quartered like William Wallace. Fortunately, the captain at once establishes a return to reality. "And what business is that of yours?", he snaps, shutting the cheeky helmsman up.

The story is carried by the narration of a Scots professor (John Hannah),one of the few survivors. The German U-boat crew is dealt with at some length, and portrayed more as ordinary humans rather than ravening beasts. In the more simple-minded films you can often tell at a glance what view of the enemy will be taken. How mean are they to one another and, especially, how ugly are they? An exception must be made for the brains behind the beef. The leader is often charming, suave, cultivated and fond of good wine and classical music.

The film is far harder on Alfred Vanderbilt (Kevin Otto), a handsome young scion of an American family that built its fortune in the fur trade. He's arrogant and sly. Sounds like a character in the unfortunate "Titanic," as it should. The stories and characters are isomorphic, except that instead of two doomed lovers we have the Scots professor and a young girl and neither of them drowns.

There's also a kind of epilogue. The German U-boat commander, who hesitates briefly before sinking the ship with a single torpedo, is not hailed as a hero back home because it's a propaganda victory for the Allies. He's lucky to keep his rank. The British seize on the event and promote it as evidence of the Hun's barbarity, claiming there were as many as three torpedoes, and using the incident to round up more enlistees. It also influenced America's entry into the war. The US hated all things German after the Lusitania. Sauerkraut became "liberty cabbage" (cf., "freedom fries"), and prohibition was enacted in 1919, which shut down all the breweries like Anheuser-Busch, Blatz, Schlitz, Reingold,and Budweiser.

The acting and direction are competent, although the young girl isn't much of an actress yet. The CGIs are primitive but acceptable for a TV movie. It's really a kind of history lesson, and not a bad one for today's youth.

I saw the docudrama today, thanks to Youtube, and can't support the criticism of the two other reviews here at all. Imho this BBC movie is a very good effort at educating the public about this crucial episode of history, regarding the constraints of the budget and the running time of the movie.

As a German citizen, I am, of course, not a totally impartial party (even though I try hard to be), but neither are British nor American commenters. However, I have read one of the most comprehensively sourced books on the subject, Colin Simpson's "The Lusitania", as well as countless in formations on the Internet and I'm basing my judgment on the facts that historians agree on, something that is lacking from both other reviews. And, as I see it, this BBC film got the most important facts right, while at the same time offering great acting and a storyline that shows the human side of the tragedy.

To the facts: - The Lusitania transported ammunition for the British war efforts, and this has been proved with documentary evidence. The movie mentions the fact, without going into the length of telling us that not only British officials knew this, but also US ones, as well as the German intelligence service. Since the complex US and German subplot would have taken a lot of time to tell (and introduce a lot of additional players), it is understandable that the movie leaves this side out. However, personally, I would have liked that a least a mention of the overwhelmingly pro-British tendency of the Wilson administration (especially the role of Col. House) would have been made, but it may have made the storyline too confusing.

• Not only ammunition, but also military personnel on the way to the war zone was transported. The movie doesn't show this, probably because it would have necessitated to introduce additional characters.

• As the movie mentions, the Lusitania was indeed on the list of British auxiliary cruisers. What the filmmakers doesn't tell us is that even basements for naval guns had been installed on the Lusitania after the war. Among passengers and staff, there were even rumours and that the guns were already hidden on the ship. Also mentioned by the BBC, contrary to agreed rules of naval warfare, Admiralty had issued orders to the merchant marine calling for deliberately ramming of submarines.

• It's a fact that British officials deliberately asked how the US would react if American citizen would be killed on a British ship. This is shown in the movie, even though it is left to the judgment of the viewers if and how this influenced the Admiralty in their decisions. The movie just shows the known facts, without taking a clear stance, which is a good idea regarding the lack of decisive evidence.

• The Germans had declared the waters an unrestricted war zone, and really warned passengers in the newspapers. The Lusitania, as a well known British ship, was in imminent danger, while at the same time neutrals, like American vessels, would have been relatively safe. Like the movie showed, it was dangerous ignorance in combination with misguided believe in the Admiralty safety promises that led many passengers to ignore the grave risk.

• The movie shows only one torpedo being fired. This is in accordance with German documents and testimonies, and the established view of historians worldwide. There has never been compelling evidence that more torpedoes were fired. The question, why the Lusitania sank so fast has never really been answered, the most recent view being that both the specific construction of the Ship (longitudinal bulkheads!) and an explosion of a boiler played a role. The movie doesn't show how the second explosion happened and so stays neutral on this question. Imho a good idea, because this isn't essential to the story.

• The Admiralty really did take an unfair stance in the court case, as depicted in the movie. Also, the order for the so called "advised course" contradicted other standing orders, as well as the necessities of navigation. And many important information were never relayed to the Lusitania. What isn't shown is that the Admiralty even presented doctored wireless logs, and that the judge noticed that. Maybe it would have been good to include this in the story, since it adds to the understanding of the administration-critical stance of the Judge, and of the consequent verdict.

Only the most important facts, and imho they are covered in a fair and still entertaining way by the movie. It would have been impossible to show every detail in a 90 minute feature, but the viewers get a good summary, which stay close to the view of the historians. And there isn't an especially pro-German bias (hey, it's a BBC production!). The hypocritical stance of the German Kaiser and his Admirals, who didn't want to be remembered of their own orders after public opinion turned against them is exposed, and German sub captain Schwieger is shown as a somewhat weak character, drawn between ambition, orders, and what may still have been left of ethical values. If there's any bias at all it's pro-American, because US officials, who put their countrymen into danger by deliberately ignoring the illegal transport of war supplies on a British passenger ship, aren't given any scrutiny at all. But, OK, this sideline would have taken another 20 minutes or so to tell.

So, all in all, a very good docudrama combining historical facts with good storytelling an cinematographic values. The special effects, the appearance of the Lusitania and the sub, don't look too cheap (which is often the problem with docudramas), also the use of historical coverage is accomplished in a convincing way. Taking also in consideration the good acting, especially the performances of John Hannah ("Four Weddings And A Funeral") and Adrian Topol, this movie deserves 8-9 out of 10 points. Job well done, BBC!