ort. But during the excitement of the attack her
captain died of heart failure and two of her crew jumped into the sea
and were drowned. Three days later the French steamship _Europe_ and
the British ship _Fulgent_ were sent to the bottom, probably by the
same submarine.

The month of May, 1915, had opened with greater activity on the part
of German submarines than had been shown for many weeks previous.
Between the 1st and the 3d of that month seven ships were torpedoed,
four of them being British, one Swedish, and two Norwegian. By the 5th
of May, 1915, ten British trawlers had been sunk; some of these were
armed for attack on either German submarines or torpedo boats.

CHAPTER XXXIV

SINKING OF THE "LUSITANIA"

On the 7th of May, 1915, came the most sensational act committed by
German submarines since the war had started--the sinking of the Cunard
liner _Lusitania_. The vessel which did this was one of the _U-39_
class. In her last hours above water the giant liner was nearing
Queenstown on a sunny day in a calm sea. When about five miles off
shore, near Old Head of Kinsale, on the southeastern coast of Ireland,
a few minutes after two o'clock, while many of the passengers were at
lunch and a few of them on deck, there came a violent shock.

[Illustration: The Great liner, "Lusitania," which was torpedoed by a
German submarine, not far from Old Kinsale Head, Ireland, May 7,
1915.]

Five or six persons who had been on deck had noticed, a few moments
before, the wake of something that was moving rapidly toward the ship.
The moving object was a torpedo, which struck the hull to the forward
on the starboard side and passed clean through the ship's engine room.
She began to settle by the bows immediately, and the passengers,
though cool, made rushes for lifebelts and for the small boats. The
list of the boat made the launching of some of these impossible.

The scenes on the decks of the sinking liner were heartrending.
Members of families had become separated and ran wildly about seeking
their relatives. The women and children were put into the
lifeboats--being given preference.

"I was on the deck about two o'clock," narrated one of the survivors,
"the weather was fine and bright and the sea calm. Suddenly I heard a
terrific explosion, followed by another, and the cry went up that the
ship had been torpedoed. She began to list at once, and her angle was
so great that many of the boats on the port side c