Sinking of the Lusitania: Terror at Sea (also known as Lusitania: Murder on the Atlantic, in German: Der Untergang der Lusitania: Tragödie eines Luxusliners) is an English-German Docu-drama produced in 2007. This 90-minute film is a dramatization of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania

RMS Lusitania

RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner designed by Leonard Peskett and built by John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland. The ship entered passenger service with the Cunard Line on 26 August 1907 and continued on the line's heavily-traveled passenger service between Liverpool, England and New...

on May 7, 1915 by a German U-boat

U-boat

U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...

, U-20. The outside filming was done in South Africa; the inside submarine scenes were filmed in Munich using the 25-year-old U-boat-model of the film Das Boot

Das Boot

Das Boot is a 1981 German epic war film written and directed by Wolfgang Petersen, produced by Günter Rohrbach, and starring Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer, and Klaus Wennemann...

.

Editorial reviews

Documentary filmmaker Christopher Spencer uncovers the truth about the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in this film that gets to the heart of the mystery by leaving no theory unexplored. May 7, 1915: The RMS Lusitania, a luxury Atlantic liner, is carrying approximately 1900 passengers and crew when a German torpedo suddenly strikes just beneath the ship's bridge. In the eighteen minutes that it took the Lusitania to sink, 1200 passengers and crewmembers perished at sea. In the aftermath of the sinking, numerous conspiracy theories began to emerge: Was the British government secretly using a passenger ship to transport explosives? Had Winston Churchill sacrificed the ship in order to draw America into a war she had been reluctant to join? Now, nearly a century later, the facts are separated from the fiction as Spencer and his researchers sort through the details on a painstaking quest to finally raise the truth up from the depths. Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide.

Plot

"Remember the Lusitania! Avenge the Lusitania!" These are the words that inspired many young Americans to volunteer for service during the First World War. The sinking of this great British oceangoing liner provoked outrage around the world on an unprecedented scale. On May 7, 1915, a German torpedo sent the ship to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean in just 18 minutes—its speedy descent into the depths occurring far too fast for most of those aboard to make it to the lifeboats. Of the 1,962 passengers and crew on board, 1,200 were lost, including 94 children and, crucially, 128 Americans, many of whom were prominent figures. President Woodrow Wilson's neutral stance started to crack. All over America there were calls for the United States to take up arms against Germany. In many ways, the Lusitania tragedy was the major turning point of the Great War, and perhaps the single greatest factor that eventually brought America into the war in April 1917.

Cast

• John Hannah
  John Hannah (actor)
  John David Hannah is a Scottish actor of film and television. He has appeared in Stephen Sommers' Mummy Series, Richard Curtis' Four Weddings and a Funeral and Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow...
  
   - as Professor Ian Holbourn
• Kenneth Cranham
  Kenneth Cranham
  Kenneth Cranham is a film, television and stage actor. He starred in the title role in the popular 1980s comedy drama Shine on Harvey Moon. He also appeared in Layer Cake, Gangster No. 1, Rome, Oliver! and many other films. He is probably best known to horror genre fans as the deranged Dr...
  
   - as Captain William Turner
• Michael Feast - as Hobbs
• Madeleine Garrood - as Avis Dolphin
  Avis Dolphin
  Avis Gertrude Dolphin-Foley was a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania....
  
  
• Florian Panzer - as Walther Schwieger
  Walther Schwieger
  Lieutenant Walther Schwieger was a German U-boat commander during the First World War, noted for his role in the sinking of the Lusitania....
  
  
• Peter Benedict - as Lanz
• Adrian Topol - as Charles Voegele
• Martin Le Maitre - as Winston Churchill
  Winston Churchill
  Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
  
  

Television premiere

It aired on the Discovery channel in the US on May 13, on BBC 1 in the UK on May 27, 2007, in Germany on December 28, 2008 on ARD

ARD (broadcaster)

ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...

 and on ABC1

ABC1

ABC1 was a United Kingdom based television channel from Disney using the branding of the Disney owned American network, ABC.The channel initially launched exclusively on the British digital terrestrial television platform Freeview on 27 September 2004. On 10 December 2004 it was launched on...

in Australia on January 11, 2009 and the History Channel in New Zealand on February 3, 2009

External links

• The Sinking of the Lusitania: Terror at Sea, Discovery Channel
• Lusitania: Murder on the Atlantic, Discovery Channel Canada