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Mange wrote: The Lusitania wasn't a cargo ship and I can't frankly see any way to extensively remodel the ship without the ship spending a considerable amount of time at a ship yard. You can't simply move for example the boilers or move coal bunkers and condensers (which restricted the sizes of the cargo holds). The Lusitania arrived in New York on April 24 and departed on May 1.

When Titanic's older sister ship Olympic was fitted with a double skin after the Titanic disaster, the funnels had to be removed (the entire refit took eleven months to complete. When the Olympic was converted to oil burning after WWI and the boilers were removed, the refit took even longer).

Jeez... you are talking about only putting a bunch of crates on board a ship. A few of them. The ship itself was carrying nearly 2000 on board when it sank. I doubt there's really a lot of space on the ship to accomodate both passenger cargo and what not. If the ship is only carrying guns as some have said, I am hard pressed to believe you need to modify the ship incredibly extensively just to ... ship some guns/bullets???

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Jeez... you are talking about only putting a bunch of crates on board a ship. A few of them.

Hardly "a few" - the Lusitania was carrying among her cargo 1,248 cases of 3in artillery shells (four shells the case) and 4,927 cases of rifle ammunition (1,000 rounds the case), totalling 173 tons of munitions (Massie, Castles of Steel, pg. 530).

If the ship is only carrying guns as some have said, I am hard pressed to believe you need to modify the ship incredibly extensively just to ... ship some guns/bullets???

While the Lusitania was fitted with the necessary magazine spaces, shell hoists and gun mounting points for up to a dozen 6in guns during her construction (Massie, CoS, pg. 529), for obvious reasons the 6in magazines wouldn't be suitable for cargo storage, and as far as I'm aware her cargo spaces were all below the waterline.

Black Admiral wrote:Hardly "a few" - the Lusitania was carrying among her cargo 1,248 cases of 3in artillery shells (four shells the case) and 4,927 cases of rifle ammunition (1,000 rounds the case), totalling 173 tons of munitions (Massie, Castles of Steel, pg. 530).

While the Lusitania was fitted with the necessary magazine spaces, shell hoists and gun mounting points for up to a dozen 6in guns during her construction (Massie, CoS, pg. 529), for obvious reasons the 6in magazines wouldn't be suitable for cargo storage, and as far as I'm aware her cargo spaces were all below the waterline.

Wait, those are heavy and large. How do you fit all that in her cargo when there's passenger cargo to deal with?

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:

Black Admiral wrote:Hardly "a few" - the Lusitania was carrying among her cargo 1,248 cases of 3in artillery shells (four shells the case) and 4,927 cases of rifle ammunition (1,000 rounds the case), totalling 173 tons of munitions (Massie, Castles of Steel, pg. 530).

While the Lusitania was fitted with the necessary magazine spaces, shell hoists and gun mounting points for up to a dozen 6in guns during her construction (Massie, CoS, pg. 529), for obvious reasons the 6in magazines wouldn't be suitable for cargo storage, and as far as I'm aware her cargo spaces were all below the waterline.

Wait, those are heavy and large. How do you fit all that in her cargo when there's passenger cargo to deal with?

3in shells are about 18lb each, hardly heavy and large. The ammo and shell racks for the intended AMC armament of a dozen 6in guns meanwhile would weight maybe 150-200 tons, not much of an issue for a ship displacing nearly 45,000 tons loaded.

All the big transatlantic liners had significant commercial cargo capacity besides space and weight margins for passenger luggage and cargo… just like modern airliners do. The liners traveled easily three or four times faster then cargo ships of the day did (in WW1 a typical freighter went like six knots) and so there was a big market for liners to move priority cargoes. In the era before transatlantic flight this was the only way ship something quickly.

Lusitania's carriage of munitions was probably just a matter of convenience at a time when German U-boats were inflicted heavy losses and neutral shipping lines were demanding very high rates to sail into the German declared war zone. The Germans had already declared that they would sink Lusitania and were already violating the laws of cruiser warfare so there was no reason NOT to use every possible ship to move munitions.