Lusitania under the American flag
On 6 February 1915 the Cunard Line liner Lusitania arrived in Liverpool from New York. On the last stage of the voyage, across the Irish Sea, the British ship sailed under the flag of the United States. According to American passengers, the Stars and Stripes flew from her from the vicinity of Queenstown, today’s Cobh, until she entered the estuary of the Mersey.
A voyage across a stormy Atlantic
Lusitania sailed from New York on 30 January under the command of Captain Daniel Dow. On board, among others, was Colonel Edward House, the trusted adviser of President Woodrow Wilson, who was travelling to Europe to sound out the chances of peace. The voyage was rough: in the storms waves broke over the deck, and eleven passengers were injured. Meanwhile the waters for which the ship was bound were becoming ever more dangerous. At the end of January the German submarine U-21 shelled Walney Island and sank three British steamers in the Irish Sea, and on 4 February Germany declared the waters around the British Isles a war zone.
The Stars and Stripes at the masthead
On the afternoon of 5 February, as the ship approached the coast of Ireland, the American flag appeared at the masthead. House noted this in his diary. According to passengers, Lusitania had earlier received a wireless warning of submarines sighted in the area. Off Queenstown the ship circled for about two hours and then, without taking on a pilot, headed at full speed for Liverpool. She reached the mouth of the Mersey at dawn on 6 February, still under the American flag. Captain Dow is said to have explained to one of the passengers that he had the right to hoist the flag of a neutral country because he was carrying neutral passengers and neutral mail.
The captain acted in the spirit of the Admiralty’s advice issued a few days earlier, which allowed British ships to hoist neutral flags in the waters around the British Isles. The British later explained that Dow had done so at the request of the American passengers and without government instructions.
A storm over the flag
News of the voyage quickly spread through the press on both sides of the Atlantic. In Germany it caused outrage, because it confirmed what the German declaration of 4 February had warned of: that British ships were hiding under neutral flags. In Washington, on the other hand, there were fears that the British were endangering genuine American ships, because a German commander would no longer be able to trust any flag. The Lusitania affair became one of the main causes of the diplomatic dispute over the use of neutral flags, which the governments in London, Washington and Berlin conducted in the days that followed. The liner herself soon returned to her regular route between Liverpool and New York, through waters that Germany had declared a war zone.
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Meanwhile
(04)Elsewhere in the same days.
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- 3 February 1915 · AfricaUganda–Congo boundary agreementOn 3 February 1915 Britain and Belgium signed an agreement in London that finally confirmed the course of the boundary between Uganda and the Belgian Congo.
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Related events
(04)The same battle, people or subject.
- 28 March 1915 · War at seaSinking of the FalabaOn 28 March 1915 U-28 torpedoed the British passenger ship Falaba. Over a hundred died, among them Leon Thrasher, the first American killed by a U-boat.
- 7 May 1915 · War at seaSinking of the LusitaniaOn 7 May 1915 U-20 torpedoed the British liner Lusitania off Ireland. Within 18 minutes almost 1,200 people died, including more than a hundred Americans.
- 30 January 1915 · War at seaAdmiralty advises neutral flagsAt the end of January 1915 the Admiralty advised British ships to fly neutral flags, or no flag at all, in the waters around the British Isles.
- 24 June 1915 · PoliticsRobert Lansing becomes Secretary of StateOn 24 June 1915 Robert Lansing became US Secretary of State. He replaced William J. Bryan, who resigned in protest at the second Lusitania note.