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} |} RMS ''Lusitania'' was a British ocean liner, holder of the Blue Riband, and briefly the world's largest passenger ship until the completion of her running mate . She was launched by the Cunard Line in 1906, at a time of fierce competition for the North Atlantic trade. On 7 May 1915, she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, causing the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew. She had made a total of 202 trans-Atlantic crossings.〔http://www.rmslusitania.info/〕 German shipping lines were aggressive competitors in the transatlantic trade, and Cunard responded by trying to outdo them in speed, capacity and luxury. ''Lusitania'' and ''Mauretania'' were fitted with revolutionary new turbine engines, able to maintain a service speed of . Equipped with lifts, wireless telegraph and electric light, they provided 50% more passenger space than any other ship, and the first class decks were noted for their sumptuous furnishings. When RMS ''Lusitania'' left New York for Liverpool on what would be her final voyage on 1 May 1915, submarine warfare was intensifying in the Atlantic. Germany had declared the seas around the United Kingdom a war zone, and the German embassy in the United States had placed a newspaper advertisement warning people of the dangers of sailing on ''Lusitania''. On the afternoon of 7 May, ''Lusitania'' was torpedoed by a German U-Boat, off the southern coast of Ireland and inside the declared "zone of war". A second internal explosion sent her to the bottom in 18 minutes. In firing on a non-military ship without warning, the Germans had breached the international laws known as the Cruiser Rules. Although the Germans had reasons for treating ''Lusitania'' as a naval vessel, including the facts that the ship was carrying war munitions and the British had been breaching the Cruiser Rules, the sinking caused a storm of protest in the United States, as 128 Americans were among the dead. The ship's sinking provided Britain with a propaganda opportunity, which helped shift public opinion in the United States against Germany and strongly influenced America's eventual declaration of war two years later, in 1917. ==Development and construction== ''Lusitania'' and were commissioned by Cunard, responding to increasing competition from rival transatlantic passenger companies, particularly the German Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) and Hamburg America Line (HAPAG). They had larger, faster, modern, more luxurious ships than Cunard and were better placed, starting from German ports, to capture the lucrative trade in emigrants leaving Europe for North America. In 1897 the NDL liner captured the Blue Riband from Cunard's , before the prize was taken in 1900 by the HAPAG ship . NDL soon wrested the prize back in 1903 with the new and . Cunard saw their business steadily declining as a result of the so-called "s". The American millionaire businessman J. P. Morgan had decided to invest in transatlantic shipping by creating a new company International Mercantile Marine (IMM), and in 1901 purchased the British freight shipper Frederick Leyland & Co. and a controlling interest in the British passenger White Star Line and folded them into IMM. In 1902, IMM, NDL, and HAPAG entered into a "Community of Interest" to fix prices and divide among them the transatlantic trade. The partners also acquired a 51% stake in the Dutch Holland America Line. IMM made offers to purchase Cunard which, along with the French CGT, were now their principal rivals. Cunard declined the offer, but lacked the financial resources to respond with new ships. Cunard chairman Lord Inverclyde thus approached the British government for assistance. Faced with the impending collapse of the British liner fleet and the consequent loss of national prestige, as well as the reserve of shipping for war purposes which it represented, they agreed to help. By an agreement signed in June 1903, Cunard was given a loan of £2.6 million to finance two ships, repayable over 20 years at a favourable interest rate of 2.75%. The ships would receive an annual operating subsidy of £75,000 each plus a mail contract worth £68,000. In return the ships would be built to Admiralty specifications so that they could be used as auxiliary cruisers in wartime. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「RMS Lusitania」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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