Hello, again.
Sometimes working in a library is a really cool thing. I just went down to our basement, elbowed the rats out of the way, and fished up the Illustrated London News for May 15, 1915. As it happens, the picture of the drydocked ship with the hole in the port bow is right on the front cover.
The caption reads: "THE FORCE OF A TORPEDO OF THE KIND WHICH SANK THE "LUSITANIA": DAMAGE DONE TO A SHIP BY A GERMAN SUBMARINE"
"This photograph, showing the damage done to a ship's side by a torpedo from a German submarine, makes it possible to realise the injuries which caused the sinking of the "Lusitania". The vessel in the photograph (taken in a graving dock at North Shields) is the Norwegian oil tank steamer "Belridge", which was similarly torpedoed by a German submarine a few weeks ago, but was able to keep afloat, as the damage was well forward, in advance of the foremost bulkhead. The explosion tore rents right across the ship and through the plating on the opposite side of the bows. The whole hull was severely shaken, rivets were everywhere displaced, and nearly fifty skin-plates along the sides were damaged. The Schwarzkopf 21-inch torpedo, used by the later German submarines, is charged with over 2 1/2 cwt. of high explosive."
And on the same picture, slightly cropped, in Man-Made Catastrophes, Revised Edition by Lee Davis for the Facts on File Science LIbrary, 2002, we get: "The gigantic hole ripped in the hull of the Lusitania by a torpedo from a German U-boat on May 1, 1915. (Illustrated London News).
Methinks the Revised Edition needs to be revised again.
Pat W.
