Lusitania R. E. X (ePub)

As the Lusitania sails from New York on May 1, 1915, local newspapers carry a warning from the German Embassy ignored by passengers confident the fastest ship in the world can outrun German submarines. Among them is Alfred Vanderbilt, possessed of a vast fortune from the age of twenty-two. When a single torpedo hits the Lusitania, she sinks in only eighteen minutes at a list so severe that only eight of the forty-two lifeboats are launched. The loss of life rivals the Titanic, with 1192 drowned and 768 surviving.Alfred Vanderbilt smuggles a rocket prototype aboard the Lusitania because he believes a demonstration of its power will convince Germany to end the war in 1915. Alfred and other members of his college secret society, Skull and Bones, develop the rocket initially for commercial purposes in a laboratory they fund at Yale University. Members of Skull and Bones in 1911 include the President of the United States, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Treasury, scions of the wealthiest families in America including Alfred Vanderbilt, Percy Rockefeller and Harry Whitney, the President of Yale and the renowned preacher Henry Sloane Coffin. Alfred learns of the horrors of trench warfare from his nephew Blandford, the son and heir of the Duke of Marlborough, who is serving at Ypres with the First Life Guards. When Alfred learns of the first German zeppelin raids from the 9th Duke, he asks his fellow bonesmen to give the rocket to the British so they can demonstrate its military potential to Germany. He fails to achieve the required unanimous vote because the bonesmen are making fortunes selling war materials to Britain, Russia and France. The first use of poison gas at Ypres on April 22, 1915 galvanizes Alfred to action and he steals the rocket and smuggles it aboard the Lusitania. Irish nationalists watching Alfred attempt to seize the rocket and deliver it to German agents.