The Lusitania Disaster would make for a fast-paced Hollywood thriller..

[PaxxAmericanus]

Most of us AH fans are probably aware of the rather antiseptic fact that the British ship Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat just off the Irish coast on May 7, 1915.What I think is less widely known is that the 18-minute sinking was a terrifying and nearly unmitigated disaster that really could be called Death by Lifeboat. I was never aware of this fact as presented on a concise YouTube video below. But what do you think? If presented well could a movie titled LUISITANIA rival James Camerons TITANIC( 1997)?

 

[Derek Jackson]

I notice that the second explosion, caused by a mixture of coal dust andair is not mentioned

 

[Sekhmet_D]

It won't rival Titanic, but could be pretty decent fare in its own right.

 

[SirCecil]

If I ever make it big I'm shamelessly stealing this concept.

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

I mean, there is a Lusitania movie, it just was not much of a success but it's pretty accurate in showing just how fast and chaotic the sinking was.

 

[ennobee]

I wonder how the movie would handle the competing claims as for the ship being a legitimate target because she was carrying ammunition, or if it will show the gun they bolted to her deck.

 

[PaxxAmericanus]

I mean, there is a Lusitania movie, it just was not much of a success but it's pretty accurate in showing just how fast and chaotic the sinking was.

Do you know the exact title and/or release year?

I wonder how the movie would handle the competing claims as for the ship being a legitimate target because she was carrying ammunition, or if it will show the gun they bolted to her deck.

That would be interesting however even if such evidence were deemed incontrovertible, I still don't see Hollywood making a movie that justifies the sinking.

 

[PaxxAmericanus]

Also anyone know if the concept of international waters was established at this time? Also, if it was and the Germans hit ships within the coastal waters of the UK wouldn't that violate the Geneva Convention which Germany had signed?

 

[Kaiser of Brazil]

Do you know the exact title and/or release year?

Sinking of the Lusitania, terror at sea (2007)

 

[PaxxAmericanus]

Sinking of the Lusitania, terror at sea (2007)

Narrated by Bily Boyd of LOTR fame. And its on YouTube.

 

[Swoosh1992]

Narrated by Bily Boyd of LOTR fame. And its on YouTube.

And starring John Hannah of the 1999 cinematic masterpiece The Mummy starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz

 

[YYJ]

Also anyone know if the concept of international waters was established at this time? Also, if it was and the Germans hit ships within the coastal waters of the UK wouldn't that violate the Geneva Convention which Germany had signed?

Germany knew the ship was carrying munitions. They took out an ad in the New York Times to that effect. So Lusitania was a warship, legally. And a warship of a belligerent nation, Great Britain.

Attacking an enemy within their own territorial waters is the clearest legal position. It would be greyer, but not much, in International waters.

Territorial waters were 3 miles, at the time IIRC.

 

[PaxxAmericanus]

Anyone know if /Germany was specifically or generally held responsible for the Lusitania sinking in the Treaty of Versailles?

 

[Dorknought]

Anyone know if /Germany was specifically or generally held responsible for the Lusitania sinking in the Treaty of Versailles?

A German liner was transferred as replacement.

Edit: "With the end of the war, the British received three ships from Germany as the spoils of war. One of these, once known to the Germans as the Imperator, was given to Cunard and renamed Berengaria, as a replacement for Lusitania."
[https://www.rmslusitania.info/lusitania/cunard/]

 

[DougM]

The problems with a movie are
1) What is the story that anyone cares about? i titanic we had to invent the love story and the bit about the jewell.
2) it has the whole WW1 ”good vs bad” issue. Do you try and make the Germans in the sub look like bad guys or just guys doing their jobs? or do you simply ignore them? This aspect will adversly effect the plot. An iceberg is an inert “antagonist“ thus it is man vs nature but the Lusitania was sunk by other men. This is going to effect how the audience perceives the plot/movie.
3) Titanic took over 2.5 hours to sink so you had plenty of time to show everyone as the ship goes down. Lusitania took what 18-20 minutes? It was much mire of a mad scramble.
4) Morality. We still argue about if she was a valid war target and who is morally responsible. This can get ugly fast and will not help you get. an audience.
4b) The munitions she carried complicate things.
5) the second explosion is still not 100% figured out and we still get some argument about that
6) as far as i know both the US and GB are still restricting information/documentation about this.

So this will not have a great story to drag the audience. in, it has a lot of questions that are. still being debated and it sunk so fast it will not give that goods long last act.
Alternatively you could keep slipping back and forth between the sub and the ship but that is hard to do as the Germans are still viewed (rightly or not it doesn't matter) as the bad guy so this limits the usefulness of seeing it from the german point of view. This is simply a complicated subject.

 

[Ozpin]

Yeah, it would be difficult. Though I suspect Hollywood would not mind putting their quotas on it or depicting the Germans as the bad guys. I suggest a movie about the Burning of the TSMS Lakonia in 1963.

 

[PaxxAmericanus]

I suggest a movie about the Burning of the TSMS Lakonia in 1963.

What was that? Also, if there were bad guys in WWI and WW2 Germans sadly fit the bill. Their war goals and actions in WWI weren't as bad as WW2 but not by a lot right ?

 

[RedSword12]

Also anyone know if the concept of international waters was established at this time? Also, if it was and the Germans hit ships within the coastal waters of the UK wouldn't that violate the Geneva Convention which Germany had signed?

The Lusitania was a legitimate target of war, carrying ammunition and registered as an auxiliary military vessel of the Royal Navy. In effect, the British were using the passengers as human shields. That said, I don't believe it was so much a plot as unthinking, bureaucratic routine. Just business as usual, which in the new context of war suddenly had very different implications. Passenger vessels often carried military cargo, even in peacetime, and this was just a continuation. The more insidious part was the British instructions to civilian vessels to install hidden weapons and to ram U-boats if they followed cruiser rules, and the use of Q-ships to likewise punish U-boats for following the rules. If U-20 had approached the Lusitania with speakers warning the passengers to evacuate, it in all likelihood would have been rewarded by being rammed. Was it morally wrong to sink the Lusitania? Certainly, but an equal share of the blame goes to the people who irresponsibly blurred the line between civilian and military vessels, and knowingly or unknowingly used passengers as human shields.

 

[PaxxAmericanus]

. If U-20 had approached the Lusitania with speakers warning the passengers to evacuate,

Not one lost. What an orderly war that would have been. The Christmas 1914 truce lingers into mid 1915 for some reason?

 

[PaxxAmericanus]

In the 2007 Lusitania move the German government is depicted s initially lionizing the U20 captain for the sinking to scapegoating him for it when international outrage focused on Germany for the whole matter.