@@FelisLeopard Based on the super tiiiiiny bit of 3d modelling I've done, I can tell a lot went into that model. Well done Felis!! And thank you for giving permission and letting us all see it!
Apparently, some of the ships kitchen staff jumped in a food service elevator right after the torpedo hit, to get to the boat deck faster. They were trapped in the elevator when the second explosion happened, and the power failed. I cannot think of a more terrifying way to die.
I read not that long ago that a lift boy (?) who worked in the elevators said no one was trapped but I've never heard of the food service elevator situation before. Truly horrible. I'm not sure but I think something like that may have happened on the Andrea Doria in 1956. I read something about people trapped in an elevator but I don't know the outcome. I think that if it happened at all it ended with those in the elevator being released. I'd read about the trapped-in-the-elevator scenario many years ago and since then have tended to avoid elevators, not out of fear but as a reasonable precaution. Too stair-climbing is good exercise! Still I did get caught in an elevator once but it was resolved in about five minutes and I hope to never experience that again.
It's crazy to me how Lusitania and Titanic have very similar numbers in terms of victims and survivors, and yet one took 18 minutes to sink and the other, nearly 3 hours. Two completely different situations with almost the same result.
If I had to guess, the ship continuing at full speed made launching impossible, as the lifeboats were intended to be launched when the ship stopped. Probably caused the boats to slam into the hull and all sorts of things
It was mostly because the boat was still moving the lifeboats are not designed to be lowered when your moving 25mph they almost had to wait for the ship to take on water to slow it down but by then it was too late. Not sure how they all managed to die unless it was freezing cold water, as 15 miles off the irish coast is a sailable distance with a life belt keeping you afloat. 10 hours of breast stroke, jobs a gooden.
@@UncalBertExcretes The fact that the ship remained in motion meant that the hole left by the torpedo acted like a scoop forcing even more water into the hull even faster.
That's what I was thinking. But there isn't any good answer. Even if you popped on a life vest and jumped overboard, the propellers never stopped, just get chopped up.
@@Quinna5537 It was actually 1201 if you count the people who died of serious injuries they had incurred in the disaster shortly after they were rescued.
One of the factors that doomed the Lusitania was the fact that her watertight doors had to closed by hand. She wasn’t equipped with the same electric doors that the Olympic class had.
@@alastair9446 What doomed the ship is that the Churchill knew there were U-boats in the area (he was First Lord of the Admiralty at the time) and did not warn Lusitania. He was hoping the sinking of a passenger liner carrying Americans would bring the US into WW1. It worked, but at a cost of so many innocent civilians.
18 minutes to us watching this through a screen seems like a lot, but 18 minutes to the poor souls on board at the time must've felt like absolutely nothing whatsoever. A terrifying experience to be sure.
@@SpicyTexan64 How? When doom is approaching time feels like it's speeding up.. The people trapped in the ship and those without a lifeboat it probably felt like 2 minutes.
Titanic barley had enough time to launch her lifeboats. If she had more lifeboats it probably wouldn’t have been enough time for each one The Britannic had less than 50 minutes to launch boats since the captain held the boats up and tried to beach her, but she had the advantage of more experienced crew and those lifeboat gantries. I’m not quite sure how many were on board her that trip, I think around 1,000 were saved and 30 lost
@@ChampaRealLordChampa all passangers managed to get off britannic. the people that died were the ones tht got choopped by the propeller blades,. chop chop chop chop
@@ChampaRealLordChampa it literally took 2 hours to sink, ofc they had plenty of time. There was just a lot of shit coordination and the captain’s dumb ass decision to lessen the life boats.
This is why people on the Titanic were so reluctant to get into the boats until it was quite obvious that the ship was indeed sinking. Launching a lifeboat can be very precarious and it's a miracle it went as well as it did with the Titanic (and even then there were a few close calls).
@@CameronM1138 And with only 18 minuets from start to finish AND with the electricity shutting off in the first few minuets i guarantee a lot of crew were panicking trying to get the lifeboats off as fast as possible to save as many people as possible.
The ship was still moving while attempting to launch the lifeboats. It traveled 2 miles in 20 minutes while capsizing. The lifeboats are hanging from rope, so they’re pretty much just bashing the side of the ship their whole way down.
Some of those lifeboats sank faster than the ship. Another similar tragedy was the sinking of the Empress of Ireland. Sunk, at night, in the St Lawrence river, in just 14 MINUTES. 1477 on board, 465 survived.
@@trossk if you are talking about the one im thinking then they didnt all sink. If you are talking about Violet Jessop, she did survive the sinking of Britannic and Titanic, but the other incident was on Olympic (who colided with another ship but didnt sunk).
My 4x great-uncle was a Second Class Bed Steward on the Lusitania and he drowned when the ship sank. Obviously I never knew him, but it’s sad to think that the 59 year-old man that he was, would likely have never left the ship. He had served on multiple passenger liners with the Cunard Line since he was 20.
@@gabesscottscott4070 obviously I never knew it but it's sad to think it likely would have chosen to go down with the ship for it had served many voyages with the ship and they had become lovers years prior
I'm wondering why isn't the last funnel smoking? Lusitania had 4 engines so why wouldn't the last one be puffing out smoke. Was she only at half speed when they were struck by the torpedo?
@@thomasmcginley7944 Ah, quite probably the animator was thinking it's a fake funnel like on Titanic (though it wasn't on Lusitania)? Her speed at the time of the sinking actually seems to be a contentious topic. It actually slowed down prior to the sinking for a triangulation of its coordinates and then after the torpedo hit, the captain's first order was to steam full speed towards the shore, but they couldn't turn the ship around anymore.
@@thomasmcginley7944 The last one was there for decoration and as a vent for the engines and boiler room, also it made the ship look even mire powerful
0:55 Lusitania hit by torpedo, opening a wide gash roughly the size of a two story house. Lifeboat 5 is destroyed 1:14 Second explosion, possibly coal dust, blows up causing the ship to immediately list 15 degrees 2:36 Turner orders a hard turn to starboard, hoping to beach the ship off the Irish coast. Steam pressure falls from 190 to 50 pounds per square inch, as the power weakens and engines stop responding 2:46 Distress calls are sent to the Admiralty in London 3:50 Boat 2 and 4’s pins break, causing both lifeboats to fall into the sea 4:00 all electrical power fails, plunging the ship into darkness. Sudden loss of power traps passengers in elevators 4:21 Lusitania rights herself once more as water reaches port side compartments 4:45 Captain Turner orders abandon ship 5:12 Boat 16 breaks apart 9:15 Boat 10 smashes against the side of the ship 9:38 Lusitania is now slow enough to safely launch lifeboats 10:53 Boat 17 tips over 11:07 Boat 9 fails to launch 12:07 Forecastle starts to submerge 12:14 Lifeboat 1 is released and launches successfully, while Boat 18 tips over, spilling its occupants into the sea 12:25 Boat 14 sinks immediately 15:51 Boat 9 is dragged under by the ship 16:31 Captain Turner is swept into the sea but survives 17:15 Boat 15 floats away but is then dragged down with the ship by rigging 18:10 The Lusitania sinks, 20 minutes after the initial torpedo strike *6/48 lifeboats (12%) were successfully launched, some filled with less than 20 people*
@@Littlefish1239 The ship actually hade over 4 million rounds of .303 british, artillarty rounds and blasting caps for the artillary on board. That was what most likely caused the second explosion.
@@eppygames8976 But that second explosion happened pretty quickly after the torpedo hit and that military hardware wasn’t being stored where the torpedo hit.
The scary thing is that it was assumed the ship's speed would keep her safe from U-Boats. However it only pushed water into the breach faster and her momentum (among other factors) made it nearly impossible to slow down enough the stem the flooding and launch more lifeboats. Lusitania's speed didn't save her. It killed her.
Her speed, or more correctly, potential speed, most cerainly did not 'kill' her. Lusitania and her sister Mauretania were the fastest passenger ships in the world at the time. Lusitania was capable of better than 26 knots with all her boilers blazing. Had she been going at all-ahead flank or full, it would've been nearly impossible to hit her with a torpedo. But, due to the wartime rationing of coal, she didn't have enough in her bunkers to achieve more than about 20 knots and still make the crossing. That made all the difference Kapitanlieutnant Walther Schweiger and crew needed to send a torpedo into RMS Lusitania's starboard flank. So it was really the false economy of some admiralty genius being stingy with the coal that contributed one more nail to her coffin.
even 18 knots was more than enough to outrun a WW1 uboat. for comparison, a WW2 Type Vll uboat could only do 14 knots surfaced and 8 knots underwater a WW1 Type l could only make 9 knots on surface and 3-4 underwater. It was pure chance that the uboat was lined up to hit her (as torpedoes need to hit on near 90 degree angles. if it comes in at too shallow an angle, then the detonator is missed and the torpedo simply bouces off) for the uboat crew this was pure luck. for the Lusitania is was sheer bad luck
If the ship had had Wellin davits things would have gone SLIGHTLY better, but 18 minutes isn't enough time to change a tire, much less load a lifeboat.
I was born in Southampton, England, so I know a fair bit about the sinking of the Titanic. Thank you for posting this so I can learn more about the Lusitania.
The U Boat captain testified that they only had one torpedo left and that none of the previous torpedo strikes on other ships had done sufficient damage to sink the ship. This time when the torpedo hit there was a moment later an enormous explosion which in his words, watching through the periscope, "lifted the superstructure off the hull"... whether it was the tons of blasting caps and ammunition the Lusitania was illegally carrying or the coal dust in the near empty coal bunkers lining the ships double hull we will never probably know, but the second explosion did fatal damage inas much as it severed the controls of the ship from the bridge and the rudder was jammed so they could neither slow down nor turn the ship toward the Irish coast to ground it. When it sank the bow actually struck the bottom since the water where it foundered was shallower than the length of the ship. 18 minutes of nightmare with people barely able to comprehend what had happened before it was all over..
@@shijoejoseph2011 The Lusitania was subsidized by the british government under the condition to use it in war times + it had ammunition on board. Therefore it was a legitimate target.
This is actually a pretty good rendering. If Lusitania looks this nice, I’m sure Real Time Sinking Titanic 3.0 will be worth the wait. Keep up the good work.
@@DJ-jn3on The Germans had a good hunch what the Americans were doing so they announced they couldn't guarantee the safety of any vessel in the Atlantic... Sadly it was discovered way later what actually happened - after WW1. The American government sent their own people into the Atlantic well knowing they'd die and still did it to frame Germany as some evil power attacking America so they could justify entering WW1 despite the US population being against it at first. Really sickening.
I would love to see you animate the sinking of SS Arctic in 1854 if possible. It was one of the worst maritime disasters I've read about, with crew members going against orders and choosing to save themselves over women and children. Just one bout of misfortune after another, especially for the captain, James Luce. I'm not sure how well-known the sinking is nowadays, but it's a fascinating one and I'd love for more people to know about it.
Not even close to the wilhelm gustof. Near the end of world war 2, 10000 germans were load on board, but amidst its crossing, it was torpedoed 5 times, and 9000+ people died.
Well the ships you're referring to, aren't like these ships at all, you're talking about Pleasure Cruise ships which dont really do deep ocean crossings. Sadly Ocean liners with their sleek knife like bow and classy appearance aren't really needed anymore, because of Airplanes.
@@RW4X4X3006 cruise ships. Sometimes Cruise ships will make crossings to do different routes, so they can do it, but it's not really what they're designed for and they're more likely to encounter problems/possibly sink doing actual crossings. Ocean liners still exist, Queen Mary 2 still does active transatlantic crossings, but she's designed very different to something you'd see on Carnival cruise lines.
@@RW4X4X3006 it's manageable but they don't do well. They're really more designed for shallower coastal waters, and they're dog-poopy in tonka tough storms.
I read that this ship as well as the Mauritania were actually very uncomfortable ships to travel on. The vibration from the engines at high speed was so bad the 2nd class decks were uninhabitable
Vibration was an ongoing problem for large, 4-screw steam turbine ships. Unlike the vibration from the massive reciprocating engines on earlier ships, this new problem was due to propeller cavitation. Many ships had a great deal of work done to strengthen their aft sections, but the real breakthroughs were in propeller design as the phenomenon of cavitation became better understood.
My great-great-grandmother was on this ship. We have the letter from one of her sons to her other sons ( one of whom was my great grandfather ) to tell them what happened and that he was going to join up and get revenge on the Germans, he died in the trenched of Ypres. Felt pretty emotional watching this
something the cerator forgot to mention was that the sinking of the Lusitania was actually justifiable because In 1982, the head of the Foreign Office's American department finally admitted that there is a large amount of ammunition in the wreck, some of which is highly dangerous and poses a safety risk to salvage teams
It was already known all the way back then because the ammo was listed in her cargo manifest, which is why the German embassy issued a warning against boarding auxiliary cruisers like Lusitania, which was largely ignored
A lot of lessons learned from these ships can still easily be seen today. Just about all the commercial ships I served on had MES + Link rafts instead of a more traditional boat on davit solution. The MES(marine evacuation system) are like the inflatable slide on jumbo jets except they have a large capacity canister raft at the end(usually 200 man raft). The link rafts are canister rafts mounted along the ships side or deck. These can be launched and brought round to link to the MES raft to transfer passengers as they fill up. MES still needs the ship to slow and preferably stop but aren't written off quite so easily if the ship starts listing over like will happen with a boat + davit system. On a number of shipping disasters life boats on one whole side where rendered near useless due to list. It also means we can evac an entire ship without anyone touching the water and much faster than with rope ladders or loading boats then lowering them not to mention far easier for the disabled and elderly to board via slide than clambering or being lifted in. Ships I worked on also had double the life raft space of the ships maximum carrying capacity and each raft had 100% overload capacity so in theory we could lose 3/4 of our total life rafts and still have enough space. Other features like Hydro Static Units on life boat/raft lines were brought in so even boats and rafts that where never launched will cut away as a ship goes down. A modern ferry goes down today for example and nearly all the rafts will cut away and deploy even if the crew never touch them. Even the MES are rigged with hydro static units so the system will deploy, inflate and raft + slide can cut away from the ship. Each raft also has a survival pack that includes knives so anyone in the raft/boat has the tools to cut the lines if they need to get clear fast. Canister rafts are also quite popular on commercial ships because even if they deploy upside down or get flipped over in waves, one or two crew can flip it back over in what is admittedly a scary maneuver that usually ends with a 100 or 200 man life raft landing on your head. Not as bad as it sounds though. One last big change are the crews. While there was crew training on older ships way back when, it wasn't to the same degree and also didn't involve all crew beyond basic "there's a life jacket and that's how you put it on". Now practically the entire crew(even cabin crew) are trained, drilled and are part of the muster when things go wrong. They are also rotated through different muster positions so everyone knows how to deploy life boats/rafts and who needs to go where to gtfo. There are even strict regulations in place to ensure a safe crew to passenger ratio. I've been on sailings that were delayed or even cancelled because we didn't have enough crew on ship to carry the passengers booked. The pissed off 800+ passengers demanding refund were way better than the massive fines and potentially being shut down if we'd sailed under crewed. I was never unlucky enough to have to abandon ship but did get several drills(usually during refit and ship was out of service anyway) deploying MES. Only balls up was one idiot who didn't listen when told to slow themselves down the slide with their legs. He shot down the slide, bounced off the end and went clear off the other side of the raft straight into Belfast Lough to then be fished out, shouted at and given a nice fat FAIL and stuck shore side until they quit a couple of months later. Lifejackets also advanced a lot from lessons learned. A modern lifejacket is specifically designed to keep you on your back so even if you're unconscious you won't end up face down in the water. Not many things as funny as a pack of trainees trying to front crawl in a lifejacket 😂 Each lifejacket has a whistle, high-vis reflective tape and a bright blinking light activated on contact with water. Generally only certain members of crew will have inflatable lifejackets so they can maintain mobility until they end up in the water. These will inflate either by pulling a cord or automatically when they hit water. Other things that came in are EPIRB(Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) & SART(Search & Rescue Transponder). Ships generally carry at least 2 of each and usually at least 1 EPIRB mounted externally(normally a bridge wing) so even if the ship encounters a total disaster, the EPIRB can cut away and pop to the surface to do it's thing. If the ship needs to be abandoned the EPIRB & SART units are portable and can be taken into the rafts. As long as the rafts stick together after the ships gone they still have the beacons broadcasting and the SART giving direction bearing to anyone near by with Radar. In theory a ship going down doesn't even need anyone to broadcast distress.
@@ScootsMcPoot if the titanic never hit an iceberg and sank it would not be famous and iconic as it is now and it will just be another steamer from the early 20th century.
Interesting thought. Still tragic, but appreciation of that extra time isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Good that you saw the positives in the different tragedies, so that we can remind ourselves, sometimes, that the people who were saved are because of that.
Factoid: The German government justified treating Lusitania as a naval vessel because she was carrying 173 tons of war munitions and ammunition, making her a legitimate military target.
@@airplanenut89 I agree somewhat but you would imagine that all sinking ships would behave similarly in this situation regardless if a U-boat is the ultimate cause of the loss.
@@airplanenut89 especially since it hadn't even been announced until the day she sailed that the German Imperial Navy were going to start permitting attacks against passenger ships.
1:20 Regarding the second explosion, I'd place my bets on multiple boiler explosions. Lusitania and Mauretania were built with engines capable of incredibly high speeds for the time, so much that upon completion the vibrating was so severe the entire after third of the ship had to be gutted and refitted with stronger frame supports. The torpedo penetrated a coal bunker adjacent to Boiler Room 1, which contained two full sized boilers and two half-sized boilers, which after seven days of continuous heating suddenly coming in contact with cold seawater would have caused steam explosions strong enough to damage bulkheads both forward and aft of the room, possibly causing the same effect if water was able to penetrate aft into Boiler Room 2
I knew an old lady whose name was Lucy. Come to find out later her real name was Lusitania :) Thanks so much for not including any crappy music in these animation videos!
I can't believe how fast the ship listed to one side so quickly. just think of the people in there cabins on the lower decks when the torpedo hit and how horrified they would be with water at there feet and quickly rising
Britannic made Titanic seem long, but Lusitania was downright scary that she sank SO FAST. 18 minutes is not good time at all to escape, especially when you're at the bottom of the ship. And, keep in mind, she was the largest ship before the Olympic came to life. Anyway, this video is WELL DONE.
Not just the bottom of the ship, but almost anywhere inside. There were many people who got trapped in its elevators and were unable to find their way to the exits through the rooms and hallways due to the lights going out so quickly.
I think here the reason it sank so quickly was, I was told, they couldn't get most of the watertight doors closed due to immediate power loss to the doors during the explosion. That's why it listed so heavily at first, then plunged so quickly near the end. With Titanic, the bulkheads were closed off, buying much more time than they otherwise would have had.
ans because she refused to respond and kept pushing forward as she sank, her speed pushed more water in at a much faster rate than if she had responded and stopped
to everyone nitpicking at little details, chill out. take a walk, touch some grass. it’s not that serious. enjoy the video and appreciate the work that went into making it
@@Warentester that's what gobbels wanted you to think. As if by 1945 they hadn't declared total war. Issued the Nero Decree and declared every civilian would fight to the last drop of blood for the Reich. And let's talk about the makeup of these "civilians." all of them were either werhmacht and SS troops and their families, pro Nazi collaborators from the Baltic states and colonists the Germans sent there as part of their plan to exterminate the Slavs and create lebensraum. All this on the Wilhelm Gustav, a former passenger liner seize and converted to a military transport, sailing in a military convoy, in a military operation to evacuate troops and equipment from the Baltic states to deny it to the soviets. No, there were no civilians on that ship. There were enemy non combatants and military assets. It was a legitimate target. You declare total war, you don't get to cry when someone calls your bluff. Would the Nazis have been so kind? In fact, don't answer! Because we have an answer. The Soviet evacuation of Chrimea and Savastapol. Where the Germans bombed and shelled military transports evacuating Soviet women and children. 10,000 dead from Luftwaffe gunners. The Reich had every opportunity to surrender in 1943 and they ignored it. They had every opportunity to surrender in 1944 and they refused it. They instead decided they would all burn together. That is what Hitler and the Nazis decided for Germany. You get what you fucking deserve. And I say that as a dyed in the wool anti-communist.
@@theknave1915 While I can accept that the Gustloff was a valid military target the way it was operated, I still strongly disagree with your sentiment that this was not a tragedy and that all on board had it coming. There were children on board. Hundreds, if not thousands. And just because the Nazi leadership wanted a total war that doesn't mean that every German is a Nazi or deserves to be killed. Operation Hannibal covered 2Mio civilians and and troops. You'll be hard pressed to show that they were all die hard Nazis. At the day of the sinking the Gustloff carried about 1.600 military and auxiliary personell and 9.000 civilians (of which only a small fraction was composed of the families of high ranking Nazi officials).
@@spicey4522 i know lol i was referencing planes when they are at too much of a steep angle to the side an alarms says bank angle to let the pilots know to level out before stalling
for people asking why there is an American flag on the ship, the British people in control of the vessel mounted an American flag once the ship got close to the UK as America (at that point in the war) was neutral, and they thought the Germans wouldn't fire on it if it flew a neutral flag.
Geez, 18 minutes feeling like half a lifetime here. And I say that from the safe comfort of my couch. I can't begin to imagine what it felt like for the people in that situation.
i like how once the animation started. it was straight forward and didnt spend time just there moving in water immediate start to the sinking. i like that lots
Imagine on top of everything else you look over the side to see the first life boat being lowered break apart and splinter into the sea just to reassure you how truly horrendous the situation is.
The thing that is surprising about this is how many people from the spilled boats survived passage through the propellers. The people waiting to board lifeboats got to see the wreckage from the failed launches being smashed into match sticks by the props. Truly a horrendous experience.
Imagine only having 18 minutes to escape from the depths of the ship. Your chances of survival were slim at best. Imagine on top of that you didn’t know the layout of the ship. It’s safe to say you would be a goner.
This was suspenseful to watch. I tried to give the passengers more time to get to the life boats by pausing the video for a while. R.I.P all who perished!
Recent investigations suggest that the second explosion was a high pressure steam explosion. The steam lines that carried high pressure steam from the boilers to the steam turbines were weakened by the torpedo blast. With not enough steam pressure, electric generation was not possible.
Counterpoint: there is a large amount of coal found at the wreck site, more so then the ship had any right to have that late in the voyage. Is it possible Lusitania was in fact running war materials like coal, and when the torpedo hit ignited that coal causing the accelerated sinking.
..Ship sinking is one of those MOST nightmarish & ultimate terrifying event all we can ever imagine!!...The fact that you're slowly or rapidly marching towards a definite painful death. .with only 20% chance to get help & be rescued from the nowhere of a cold, deep, open ocean....And the survivors on the lifeboats is forced to watch the massive sea vessel slowly disappearing from the surface right in front of their naked eyes. . & hear every scary sounds being generated by it. . .which they're never gonna forget the rest of their lives ! 😔
