Posted on 07/23/2008 1:00:22 PM PDT by nickcarraway
American entrepreneur Gregg Bemis finally gets courts go-ahead to explore the wreck off Ireland
It is the best known shipwreck lying on the Irish seabed, but it is only today that the owner of the Lusitania will finally begin the first extensive visual documentation of the luxury liner that sank 93 years ago.
Gregg Bemis, who bought the remains of the vessel for £1,000 from former partners in a diving business in 1968, has been granted an imaging licence by the Department of the Environment. This allows him to photograph and film the entire structure, and should allow him to produce the first high-resolution pictures of the historic vessel.
The RMS Lusitania sank off the coast of Cork in May 1915 when a German U-boat torpedoed it. An undetermined second explosion is believed to have speeded its sinking, with 1,198 passengers and crew losing their lives.
Bemis is hoping that the week-long filming project, which begins today, will prove his theory that the Lusitania was carrying explosives, and that these were the cause of the mysterious second blast.
“I want to find out where the second explosion took place and why,” he said. “I believe there were explosives on board. I can tell the whole world that, but they’re not going to believe me until we get down there and get proof.”
JWM Productions will film the project for a television series to be shown on the Discovery Channel next year.
The 80-year-old entrepreneur only won the right to explore the wreckage,
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
We entered WWI because the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor.
Here's the point: regardless of what the British "were" doing on the L, the U-boat captain had NO WAY of knowing that; certainly no record of heavy uses of passenger ships of this type, therefore it was still indefensible on his part. Regardless, the U.S. should have gone to war over the dozens of OTHER sinkings of neutral ships that the Germans engaged in.
Those are the two AMERICAN ships (and one was all that was necessary to declare war, my friend). But there were hundreds of neutral ships or ships carrying passengers/neutrals that were no Americans. The fact that the Germans only resumed this as a desperation ploy suggests that they knew it was wrong. They didn’t dare take on the British navy, even with all their U-boats.
Missing the point: it’s all after the fact, even if “true,” which I doubt. The U-Boat captain THOUGHT he was torpedoing a passenger ship, period.
Attacking passenger ships is a no-no for any navy, at any time.
Reagan wouldn't have tolerated it for a minute.
We should have declared war after they sank the Housatonic. Reagan would have.
Should have entered sooner. That’s what I said: Reagan would not have tolerated that crap.
Almost all large passenger ships carried deck guns
No they didn't. Despire what a couple of German agents and a airhead broad(supposedly) claimed. If this woman existed, the steward was trying to get into her knickers.
Right. But British law probably wouldn’t apply, either. A case of this sort would have to come under either Irish law or international maritime law.
*snicker*
Still, they made it very clear that the promise to not attack passenger ships had expired, didn’t they?
I suppose if they hadn’t warned anyone, you’d hold that against them too, wouldn’t you?
Damned if you do, double damned if you don’t, eh?
I rather doubt that.
So it really isn’t anyone’s property except the government of Ireland... What is the point of “buying” it then?
This was a despicable society, and they deserved to lose.
Reagan would have given ONE warning, after the Lusitania (1915) and I bet we would have been in the war the next year, because the Germans had no intention of heeding any warnings.
Unlike you, Reagan was a great respecter of the Constitution.
The president has no authority to declare war.
I do agree that he would have cajoled congress, who does have the constitutional authority, into declaring war. And probably faster than Wilson, too.
most likely he holds the “salvage” rights, which means that he can theoretically control who is allowed to dive the wreck, and holds the rights to any property removed from it.
But imagine that a private party owned the USS Arizona.
Would you want just anyone going down there and effectively graverobbing? Or would you want it protected as an historic/archaeological site?
Aleister Crowley, Secret Agent Man
Ian spoke with professor of history Dr. Richard Spence about his new book on Aleister Crowley, the "poster boy for 20th century occultism." Spence said Crowley was raised in a well-to-do, fundamentalist Christian home and received a Cambridge education. His most shocking revelation about the infamous occultist, however, involves Crowley's work as an operative for British naval intelligence.
Spence described Crowley as a daring mountain climber, looking for contact with the divine, and "not overly constrained by conventional morality." He mentioned the influential role Crowley's aunt played in his drift into secret service work, as well as an event that took place in Stockholm, Sweden. According to Spence, agent Crowley was there on his way to Czarist Russia.
Spence noted the relationship between politics and the occult during his discussion, and talked about Crowley's association with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult organization in Late Victorian Britain. It was the goal of certain dissident political (and occult) groups to bring about regime change in various European countries, including Britain. Crowley's role was as an undercover informant and provocateur, Spence noted.
Spence also discussed Crowley's secret mission to Canada under the pseudonym 'Clifford,' his association with the German Propaganda Cabinet in New York, as well as his possible involvement in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania (torpedoed by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915. Spence theorized that the passenger ship was sunk as part of a British plot to get the U.S. into the war.
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I rest my case!
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