President Wilson gave notice on February 10, 1915, that if, by act of the commander of any German warship, an American vessel or the lives of American citizens should be lost on the high seas, the United States “would be constrained to hold the Imperial government of Germany to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities and to take any steps that might be necessary to safeguard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyments of their acknowledged rights on the high seas.”
On the same day, a note to Great Britain voiced our objection to the “explicit sanction by a belligerent government for its merchant ships generally to fly the flag of a neutral power within certain portions of the high seas which are presumed to be frequented with hostile warships.”
To this Sir Edward Grey replied that “the British government have no intention of advising their merchant shipping to use foreign flags as a general practice or resort to them otherwise than for escaping capture or destruction.”
Such “sailing under false colors” to fool the enemy’s cruisers is an old and well-established right of merchantmen of belligerent countries. Its abuse, under present-day conditions, however, might have given the German submarine commanders a plausible excuse for sinking neutral vessels. To avoid this, neutral shipowners began to paint the name, port, and national colors on the broadside of each of their steamers, plain enough to be read from afar through a periscope.
Then the time came for the war-zone decree to be put into effect, and the world watched with great interest and no little apprehension to see what the submarine blockaders could do.
German Submarine Pursuing English Merchantman.
(Note stern torpedo-tubes, and funnel for carrying off exhaust from Diesel engine.)]
Seven British ships were sunk during the first six days. Then came a lull, followed by the announcement by the British Admiralty that between February 23 to March 3, 3805 transoceanic ships had arrived at British ports, 669 had cleared and none had been lost, while two German submarines had been sunk. During the eleven weeks between the establishing of the blockade and the sinking of the _Lusitania_, forty-two oversea vessels and twenty-eight fishing boats of British registry had been sunk by the submarines, but 16,190 liners and freighters had safely run the blockade. The largest number of vessels sunk by the “U-boats” in any one week was thirty-six, between June 23 and 30; while nineteen British merchantmen, with a total tonnage of 76,000, and three fishing vessels were destroyed either by submarines or mines during the week ending August 25. The total number sunk in the first six months was 485. But with more than fifteen hundred ships coming and going every week, the submarine blockade of the British Isles was obviously a failure.