![]() Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans. On May 7, the Lusitania was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. The announcement was placed on the same page as an advertisement for the imminent sailing of the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner from New York to Liverpool. In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. In the first few years of World War I, the U-boats took a terrible toll on Allied shipping. The typical U-boat was 214 feet long, carried 35 men and 12 torpedoes, and could travel underwater for two hours at a time. The Germans’ most formidable naval weapon was the U-boat, a submarine far more sophisticated than those built by other nations at the time. READ MORE: History Faceoff: Should the U.S. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized, calling the attack an unfortunate mistake. Frye, a private American merchant vessel that was transporting grain to England when it disappeared. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines and, in February 1915, Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted blockade of the British isles. ![]() When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. On January 31, 1917, Germany announces the renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare in the Atlantic as German torpedo-armed submarines prepare to attack any and all ships, including civilian passenger carriers, said to be sighted in war-zone waters.
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