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Episode Notes
This week on The History Show, we tell the story of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the Old Head of Kinsale on the 7th of May, 1915.
On the first of May, 1915, the luxury ocean liner Lusitania set sail from New York for Liverpool. On board were one thousand nine hundred and sixty two people – passengers and crew.
The RMS Lusitania
About ten past two in the afternoon of May the seventh, as the ship passed eleven miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, just as the passengers were finishing lunch, a German submarine fired a torpedo that struck the bow of the boat.
Eighteen minutes later, RMS Lusitania sank and one thousand one hundred and ninety eight lives were lost. Seven hundred and sixty four people were rescued from the sea and brought to Cobh, then Queenstown.
This major maritime disaster has lived on in the popular memory in Cork. But it was an event that had a major impact throughout Europe and America and several unexplained aspects of the events of that day have puzzled historians ever since.
On this week’s programme, Myles Dungan is joined by Dr Gabriel Doherty of the department of history in UCC; Eoin Mc Garry, a commercial diver who is familiar with the wreck, and Dr Michael Martin who has written a book called Lusitania: It Wasn’t & It Didn’t, published by The History Press.
Flor Mac Carthy reports from the coastal county Cork on memories of RMS Lusitania; Louise Denvir visits the Hugh Lane Gallery whose benefactor was lost at sea and Professor Holgar Afflebach; Dr Steve Cobb and Professor Duncan Redford give German and British perspectives on those events.
Information about Lusitania 100 events in Cobh; Kinsale; Old Head of Kinsale and Courtmacsherry this week is available from www.visitcorkcounty.com/lusitania100cork
Dr Gabriel Doherty is organising a conference on the Lusitania at University College Cork. It's called The Lusitania and the War at Sea 1914-18 and takes place on Wednesday the 6th of May. For further information, e-mail g.doherty@ucc.ie
Please note that this conference is free and open to the public.