What British luxury liner was sunk by a German U-boat in 1915?

The British luxury liner sunk by a German U-boat in 1915 was the RMS Lusitania. A German submarine, U-20, torpedoed the Cunard passenger liner off Ireland’s southern coast on May 7, 1915, during the First World War.

Lusitania was traveling from New York to Liverpool with nearly 2,000 people aboard. The ship sank in roughly 18 minutes, and about 1,198 people died, including 128 Americans. Its sinking caused international outrage because it was a passenger liner, although Germany argued that the ship was a legitimate wartime target and had been warned about the declared war zone.

The disaster intensified anti-German feeling in the United States and became an important part of the diplomatic crisis surrounding American neutrality. It did not immediately bring the United States into the war; America declared war on Germany nearly two years later, in April 1917. Lusitania is sometimes confused with Titanic, which sank after striking an iceberg in 1912.