Carter Roy

And other passengers got personal warnings.

Broadway producer Charles Froman and railroad air Alfred Vanderbilt both received mysterious telegrams telling them not to board the Lusitania.

Frohman ignored the message and Vanderbilt wrote his off as a joke.

Both died at sea.

Across the pond, both the King of England and the American ambassador to the UK discussed the hypothetical scenario of a German U-boat attacking a ship carrying Americans.

The ambassador wrote to his son, I almost expect such a thing.

It's suspicious.

Were these conversations all really hypothetical?

Or was it because the ship's attack was being planned?

As the conspiracy theory goes, it was all about plausible deniability.

And allegedly, here's how Room 40 made that happen.

First, they cleared all other ships from the area.

The week of the Lusitania's crossing, several commercial ships sailing to England received a memo telling them to go north around Ireland, not south.

The Lusitania, mysteriously, never got that memo.

They also never got the naval escort they'd been promised.

Since the outbreak of the war, standard protocol for the Cunard line ships was to meet up with a navy ship as they approached the war zone.

This way, if there was an attack, the military ship could fire back.

The Juno was scheduled for the job, but never showed.

When he realized this, the chairman of the Cunard line contacted the British Navy, pleading for help.

None was sent.