On 7 May 1915 the passenger liner LUSITANIA, pride of the Cunard fleet and the envy of Britain's maritime rivals, sank off the Old Head of Kinsale. Almost twelve hundred passengers and crew, including ninety-four children, lost their lives after a German submarine fired a torpedo at the great ship's hull. The tragedy caused a wave of revulsion throughout the world, particularly in neutral America, as one hundred and forty American citizens were among the dead.
A subsequent inquiry into the disaster, circumscribed for security reasons by the British Admiralty, found the LUSITANIA's Captain Turner to be at fault. But many important questions remained unanswered. Did the admiralty have in its possession information which could have prevented the sinking of the LUSITANIA, and if so, why was it not acted upon? Was the LUSITANIA armed and therefore, by the rules of engagement, fair game for German U-boats? And why did the ship, the biggest in the world when it launched, sink after only 18 minutes, while other, lesser ships managed to stay afloat for up to several days after they were torpedoed?
Through the years, these questions have exercised the minds and taxed the resources of successive researchers and explorers, but the wreck of the LUSITANIA has been slow to offer up its secrets. Now Corkman Paddy O'Sullivan, a commercial diver with a passion for maritime history, is adding to the already substantial library of books on the subject (twenty-two at the last count) and hoping to shed new light on the tragedy with his LUSITANIA: Unravelling the Mysteries.
...O'Sullivan's book is strong on historical detail, explaining how the lines between commercial shipping and the Royal navy were blurred during the Great War, and offering fascinating insights into the workings of Room 40, the admiralty's brilliant intelligence unit. His findings are three-fold. Firstly, having established that the LUSITANIA was indeed carrying munitions, he shows that these were not live and on a technicality could therefore pass as commercial cargo. He also offers a plausible explanation for the rapid sinking of the ship: the German U-boat commander, General Schwieger, and other witnesses have noted a second explosion, after the torpedo struck, and O'Sullivan shows that this was probably caused by a quantity of aluminum powder in the ship's cargo. Finally, and most intriguingly, he argues that the British admiralty were aware that the LUSITANIA was running into danger well in advance of the disaster, but failed to act on this information, probably due to inefficiency and a haughty admiral's inability to delegate authority.
The evidence points firmly in that direction, O'Sullivan says, but I can't establish that as fact at this stage because the relevant documents are not at my disposal. They may have been destroyed to avoid embarrassment and recriminations, or they may have simply been misplaced within the archives. Several attempts to locate them have failed and we have to accept that the final part of the jigsaw may never be found. --Books Ireland, October 1998
Superbly-illustrated, the book contains much new information. Whilst confirming that the Cunard liner was carrying munitions, the second mystery blast was not that of another torpedo but rather an explosion of volatile aluminum dust. The author also exposes the failure despite warning from the Germans on the part of the Admiralty headed by Winston Churchill, to afford proper protection from U-boat attacks for the ship and the sinister role played by British Intelligence in suppressing evidence for sham tribunals which ultimately, unfairly, resulted in the scapegoating of Captain Turner. --The Southern Star
The British First Lord of the Admiralty was responsible for the needless deaths of almost 1,200 men, women and children when the LUSITANIA sank off the Old Head of Kinsale in 1915, an author has claimed.
Corkman Paddy O'Sullivan last night, launched his book The LUSITANIA Unravelling the Mysteries on the sinking of the transatlantic vessel by a German U-boat on May 7 1915.
Mr O'Sullivan, a commercial diver, has been fascinated by the sinking of the ship for almost 30 years. After years of painstaking research, he has discovered that in defiance of international law the vessel was carrying 4.2 million bullets and 5,000 shrapnel shells when she was sunk.
But his most sensational find is that the vessel sank when 46 tons of aluminum dust a key ingredient in First World explosives exploded after the German torpedo hit.
Churchill and the British Admiralty were guilty of misleading innocent passengers by using the LUSITANIA to transport huge quantities of high-explosives and munitions, Mr O'Sullivan said. What sank the LUSITANIA was the mysterious second explosion after the torpedo hit, he said.
Mr O'Sullivan's book confirms rumours which circulated in New York prior to the tragic last sailing of the LUSITANIA that she was being used to transport huge amounts of military materiel.
The German Government placed advertisements in the New York newspapers prior to her sailing at the end of April 1915 stating that this was the case, and that this made the commercial vessel a legitimate target.
All passengers were warned in the advertisements that the liner was liable to be attacked by the Germans as a legitimate military vessel that they should not sail.
A total of 1,959 ignored the warnings and of these, 1,195 perished in the see off Cork. --The Examiner, December 1998
