[TWENTY-NINE VESSELS SUNK IN ONE WEEK] — [EIGHTY-TWO NON-COMBATANT VESSELS DESTROYED IN GERMAN WAR ZONE] — [THE ATTACK ON THE GULFLIGHT.]
The fact that the Lusitania was the twenty-ninth vessel to be sunk or damaged in one week in May in the war zone established by Germany around the British Isles throws into grim relief the ruthlessness of modern war. The naval battles of the past were engagements of dignity in which, when a vessel was lost, it went down with a certain tragic magnificence after a fair fight; but most of the vessels lost in the European war have been the victims of torpedoes, struck by stealthy blows in the dark. In less than three months, from February 18 to May 7, 1915, no less than eighty-two merchant vessels belonging either to the Allies or to neutral nations were torpedoed or mined in the war zone, with a loss of life estimated at 1,704 non-combatants—a terrible sacrifice to modern warfare.
Naturally the greater number of these merchant ships were British, but the fact that the war zone was proclaimed by Germany with a view to stopping neutral shipping as well is established by the figures which show that among the eighty-two non-combatant vessels destroyed there were French, Russian, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Greek and three American vessels, the latter being the Evelyn, sunk by a mine explosion February 20; the Carib, sunk by a mine explosion February 22, and the Gulflight, torpedoed May 1.
In addition to these eighty-two cases of non-combatant vessels destroyed, there have been innumerable instances of unsuccessful attacks, of which a notable example was the double attempt to sink the American tank steamship Cushing, once by a Zeppelin which aimed three bombs at the vessel, and once by a submarine which placed a contact mine directly in the path of the ship; her bow narrowly missed the mine, and her stern struck it a glancing blow, but not with sufficient force to explode it.
THE ATTACK ON THE GULFLIGHT
It would require many hundreds of pages to recount the details of all of these crimes against non-combatant merchant ships, and to show the relentless severity with which neutral commerce has been attacked, but the organized military measures even against neutral ships are well illustrated by the case of the American ship Gulflight, as described by the second officer, Paul Bower:
“When the Gulflight left Port Arthur, Texas, on April 10, bound for Rouen, France,” said Bower, “we were followed by a warship of some description, which kept out of sight, but in touch by wireless and warned us not to disclose our position to any one.
“At noon Saturday, May 1, we were twenty-five miles west of the Scilly Islands, a small group about thirty miles southwest of England. The weather was hazy, but not thick. About two and one-half miles ahead I saw a submarine.
Where Lusitania Was Torpedoed.