Divers find ammunition in Lusitania

S.F. man who owns wreck says discovery helps answer questions about 1915 sinking

Anne Constable | The New Mexican

9/26/2008 - 9/27/08

The British passenger ship Lusitania was carrying small-arms ammunition in its hold when it was sunk by a German torpedo in 1915.

An Irish dive team Tuesday recovered a sample of Remington .303s, which had been listed on the cargo manifest but were never proven to have been on board.

The wreck of the Lusitania lies about 300 feet below the surface in Irish territorial waters approximately 12 miles off the coast of County Cork.

Using a remotely operated vehicle as support, a dive team headed by Eoin McGarry found its way to the site in the ship that previous dives had determined to be the most likely area for finding munitions.

The cartridges are in the hands of Irish authorities, awaiting further study. The .303 British was the official military rifle cartridge of England and the British Empire from its adoption in 1888 until the 1950s.

"The size of the shipment was significant and therefore resulted in a valid charge that the ship was carrying war material and as such qualified her as a legitimate target for the German submarine," said Gregg Bemis, a Santa Fe venture capitalist and sometime Republican candidate for Congress and the state Legislature. He has been sole owner of the wreck since 1982.

The ship sank 18 minutes after the torpedo pierced its starboard side, killing 1,198 passengers, including 128 Americans and 94 children.

For years, Ireland fought Bemis' requests to explore the inside of the sunken ship, claiming it is an archaeological site. In March 2007, the Irish Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision allowing him to conduct a forensic dive.

Bemis has long been intrigued about the cause of a second, massive explosion reported by the survivors. "For years, it has been my belief that high explosives may have been in the ship's magazine. Now that we have been able to validate that this passenger ship was in violation of the war rules by carrying serious war materials on board, it has become even more likely and more desirable to validate the cause of the second explosion," he said.

Others believe an explosion in the ship's steam-generating plant is a more likely explanation.

At the time, many people speculated that Winston Churchill, then first lord of the admiralty, conspired to have the Lusitania sunk to draw the U.S. into World War I. The American president, Woodrow Wilson, sent a formal protest to the Germans, but the U.S. didn't enter the war for two more years.

Solving the mystery is "important both ethically and for the sake of preventing distortion of the truth for political expediency," Bemis said.

He has sponsored numerous other dives to the ship and in 2004, at age 76, he made a 62-minute decompression dive to the wreck.

Bemis said he is hoping this latest discovery will help fuel interest in funding further research into the Lusitania and the remaining mysteries about its final voyage.

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.