History 1302
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
Writing Assignment
37 points possible
Answer the following questions in full and grammatically correct sentences. All assignments are to be typed and double-spaced. Include full student name, class, section number, and date in the upper right-hand corner. There is no need to write out the questions, but all answers must exactly match the question number
1. What was the Lusitania named for? (1 point)
2. At the end of April 1915, how many Atlantic crossings had the Lusitania completed (1 point)
3. Even while docked, how many tons of coal did the Lusitania burn a day? (1 point)
4. Provide two of the requirements that the Admiralty made of Cunard when offered loans to build both Lusitania and Mauritania. (2 points)
5. Why didn’t the Admiralty keep possession of the Lusitania when the war began? (1 point)
6. Name two things a Cunard captain was supposed to be besides a “mere navigator.” (2 points)
7. True or false? Captain Turner was the most seasoned captain at Cunard, the commodore of the line, by May 1915 (1 point)
8. What was Cunard’s foremost priority? (1 point)
9. The German campaign to build ships of quantity and scale to challenge Great Britain’s navy led to the creation of what class of warship? (1 point)
10. Name the most famous of “the few prescient souls” that grasped that the submarine would transform naval strategy (1 point)
11. Name the “important secondary effect” that the disaster at “Broad Fourteens” had on British naval policy (1 point)
12. True or false? The determination as to which ships were to be spared or sunk rested with the individual U-boat commanders (1 point)
13. Provide the name of the captain of Unterseeboot-20 (1 point)
14. Name the first submarine ever credited with sinking an enemy ship (1 point)
15. True or false? Every ship that left New York harbor had to be inspected for properly listed cargo and that it was not armed (1 point)
16. What was the task of Room 40? (1 point)
17. What was the quandary that Room 40 faced in being able to break German coded messages about the details of its naval fleet? (1 point)
18. Name the most “glamourous passenger” scheduled to travel on the Lusitania (1 point)
19. Aside from the person identified in question 18, name one other member of the “Just Missed It” club (1 point)
20. As Larson tells it, what was the most distracting issue for President Wilson, aside from the increasing risk of war with Germany? (1 point)
21. With a well-trained crew, a submarine of U-20s class could descend from a fully surfaced condition to a level deep enough to clear the hulls of the largest ships in as little as how long? (1 point)
22. True or false? The British Admiralty was anxious and concerned about the Lusitania, not the “superdreadnought” HMS Orion (1 point)
23. True or false? According to German records 60% of attempted torpedo firings resulted in failure (1 point)
24. True or false? According to the full cargo manifest of Lusitania, there were munitions aboard the ship (1 point)
25. True or false? Though not said explicitly, Britain hoped the U.S. would join the Allies and tip the balance of the war in their favor (1 point)
26. Portholes were a concern for all ship captains, including Captain Turner. Under certain conditions, a single open porthole in a ship could admit how much water? (1 point)
27. In maritime vernacular, the trail of fading disturbance created by ship or torpedo was known as what? (1 point)
28. The torpedo that impacted the Lusitania blew a hole roughly how big in the hull? (1 point)
29. True or false? A big issue for the passengers of the Lusitania was that many did not know how to correctly put their life jackets (1 point)
30. True or false? Many of the dead crewmen were precisely those who would have been assigned to help launch the ship’s lifeboats (1 point)
31. How long did the Lusitania’s survivors drift in the water before rescue ships arrived? (1 point)
32. According to Larson, why would the Admiralty assign fault to Captain Turner? (1 point)
33. Provide one thing that, according to Larson, could have saved the Lusitania? (1 point)
