Carter Roy

This essentially put Germany under siege.

Without food and supplies, they'd have to surrender soon.

But Germany fought back by deploying the Unterseeboot, or U-boat.

These submarines were the newest warfare tech, able to sneakily attack the dominant British destroyer ships.

By this point in the war, U-boats had sunk several British ships, so the general public knew the threat was real.

Still, they thought the German U-boats would only sink British ships.

So the Cunard Line came up with a crafty solution, fly American flags on their ocean liners, even though they were a British company with majority British passengers.

The Lusitania's final voyage had 139 Americans out of 1,959 total passengers, so it wasn't technically a lie.

But most people would agree the Lusitania was quite literally flying a false flag.

Fun fact, this is an old seafaring tactic and it's actually where the term false flag originated.

Anyway, because the USA was neutral in May 1915,

Everyone believed that the German U-boats wouldn't attack a ship flying American flags, especially after President Wilson had announced strict accountability for any German attacks on American people or property.

Even then, Captain Will Turner exercised caution, and on May 7th, 1915, he faced a hard decision.

By this point, the ship had crossed the Atlantic and reached the Celtic Sea just south of Ireland, heading northwest to Liverpool.

It needed to cross the Mersey Sandbar.

A massive ship like the Lusitania could only sail over it at high tide.

So normally, ships stopped and waited if they reached the sandbar at low tide.

But during war, a stop risked a submarine attack.

Captain Turner knew that if he slowed to just the right speed, he could reach the sandbar at high tide exactly and sail straight through, no stops.

To calculate the perfect speed, he needed the ship's exact navigation coordinates, which he and his crew could only pinpoint with land in sight.