Posted on 09/02/2014 8:11:44 AM PDT by Kaslin
I read once that in 1982 salvage divers managed to detach three of Lusitania’s four propellers. IIRC two of them are on public display.
The name “Lusitania” was still legible on the wreck at that time. The artist who specializes in painting depictions of sunken ships showed the Lusitania’s hull with hundreds of fouled fishing nets & glass floats waving eerily in the deep.
The idea of Churchill trying to pull the United States into the war would be unlikely due to the following reasons:
In 1915, the United States had not yet mobilized for war, and Britain was dependent on the US for the British Army in France. If the US had declared war right after the Lusitania‘s sinking, the supplies that had once been going to Britain would have stayed in the US, leaving the British without ammunition to fight the Germans.
Churchill and Fisher were known to keep information to themselves and micromanage the affairs of Room 40. Fisher was close to a nervous breakdown at the time and Churchill was in France at the time of Lusitania‘s sinking. If Churchill had wanted Lusitania sunk, such a plan could not have happened without his explicit approval, and he would have stayed in Britain to supervise the plot instead of being in France.
Diana Preston advances a theory that, without Fisher and Churchill, Captain William Reginald Hall could have masterminded such a plot. Captain (later Admiral) Hall was known to use cloak-and-dagger tactics, had access to all the relevant decodes of Room 40, and capable of acting independently of Fisher and Churchill. Whether he could have executed such a plan without Churchill’s knowledge and approval, however, remains speculative.
Too many Churchill bashers here at FR!
Kent Lyon is quite correct. My grandfather’s log shows that this was just a routine voyage and, as far as I can see, there was no period of refit which, in any case, would not have been undertaken in Liverpool and which would have taken weeks, if not months!. If, and it’s a very BIG ‘IF’, Churchill did say what Simpson claims Peskett reported, the more obvious answer is that Churchill was concerned about the safety of the ship in a war zone!
Simpson made a number of unsubstantiated claims in his book almost all of which were aimed at discrediting Winston Churchill. It is difficult not to believe that his motive in writing the book was, therefore, more of a personal vendetta against Churchill rather than an investigation of the sinking. His main allegations were that:
1. The ship was armed with a number of 6” guns;
2. She was carrying contraband HE; and
3. Churchill, with the connivance of the Admiralty, deliberately allowed the ship to sail into the path of waiting U-Boats.
Simpson was unable to provide any reliable historical evidence in support of his claims. It seems that much of his so called evidence appears to come from somewhat dubious sources that cannot be independently checked or which has mysteriously disappeared! If, indeed, any such evidence does materialise then I shall be the first to acknowledge that I was wrong in which case my grandfather, father and other members of the family must have also been complicit in the conspiracy! I, and a number of other authors, have tried in vain to engage with Simpson on various matters and he has refused to discuss them or even contact us. If there had been anything like a whiff of suspicion on any of the above claims it would have come to light long before anyone started writing books about it!
Both my grandfather’s brothers attended the Lord Mersey Enquiry and found nothing sinister or questionable at that time. It was wartime and, to those of us who are now accustomed to negligence claims in the law courts, would not seem unusual. Yet there are those who still believe there was a government led cover-up when there was really nothing to cover up.
A lot of Churchill haters in Britain as well!
Impressive posts, thank you.
Yes... and Wilson was dilly dallying like mad to keep the US out.
How many young men died in the year or two that Wilson delayed solely for his own political benefit. If there is a case of a president lying and people dying it is Wilson not Bush.
I read this.
I checked the author.
I stopped reading.
Stampeded? The invasion of Iraq was bipartisan and had wide public support when it was voted for.
9/11? The basis for the invasion was due to repeated violations of the cease-fire terms from the Gulf War. Anything else is a MSM fabrication.
WMDs? The claim that was made that Iraqi posession of WMDs was imminent. Meaning: we don't know if they have 'em, but they can have in very little time.
douse our East Coast with anthrax? Patsie pulled this one out of thin air.
Eddystone was also making the Lee Enfield Pattern 14 under British contract. Production shifted to the U.S. version, the M1917 Enfield in 30 06 after the U.S. entered the war.
I do not agree that Wilson wanted into the war. I believe that he naively thought that he could stay out of the war and still reap the economic benefits. When this proved impossible, Wilson threw the country into war and used it as an excuse to implement his progressive/socialist schemes of governance by executive fiat. I wonder where Obama got his idea for the same approach?
Wilson was NOT our best President or anywhere NEAR best.
Www.lusitania.net/deadly cargo
You can read the cargo manifest AND the supplemental manifest filed after she was at sea in the originals at the above site.
Lusitania went into Liverpool in 1913 to have the gun mounts and magazines installed. Whether the guns themselves were ever loaded aboard is a good question.
You know, speaking of Winston, I wonder what the Chancellor of the Exchequer was doing on Black Thursday October 24, 1929.
http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/churchill-winston_philip-snowden-1932.html
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