id not choose to send British
ships to meet the German fleet, and the expected battle did not
take place.

France, on April 26, 1915, was to sustain a severe loss to her
navy; she had up to this time not lost as many ships as her ally,
England, or her enemy, Germany, but her navy was so much smaller
than either of them that the sinking of the _Leon Gambetta_ on
that date was a matter of weight. The _Gambetta_ was an armored
cruiser, built in 1904, and carrying four 7.6-inch guns, sixteen
6.4-inch guns and a number of smaller caliber. She had a speed
of twenty-three knots. While doing patrol duty in the Strait of
Otranto she was made the victim of the Austrian submarine _U-5_,
and sank, carrying with her 552 men.

On April 28, 1915, there occurred another incident which gave rise
to diplomatic exchanges between Germany and the United States.
On that date a German seaplane attacked the American merchantman
in broad daylight in the North Sea, but fortunately for its crew
the ship was not sent to the bottom. The first American ship to
be struck by a torpedo in the war zone established by the German
admiralty's proclamation of February 5, 1915, was the _Gulflight_.
This tank steamer was hit by a torpedo fired by a German submarine
off the Scilly Islands, on the 1st of May, 1915.

But of more importance, because of the number of American lives lost,
the standing of the matter in international law and the prominence
of the vessel, was the sinking of the Cunard liner _Lusitania_, on
May 7, 1915. This is fully described in the chapter on submarines,
and in the diplomatic developments discussed in the chapter on
the United States and the War. The _Lusitania_ had left New York
for Liverpool on the 1st of May, 1915. She was one of the fastest
ships plying between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Larger
than any warship afloat at the time, she was able to make the trip
from Liverpool to New York in a little under five days. On her
last crossing she carried 2,160 persons, including passengers and
crew, many of the former being Americans, some of them of great
prominence. While off Old Head of Kinsale, on the southeastern
end of Ireland, at about half past two, on the afternoon of May
7, 1915, with a calm sea and no wind, she was hit by one or more
torpedoes from a German submarine without warning.

Those on board immediately went to the life boats, but it was only
twenty minutes after she had first been hit that she sank, a