The U-Boat commander could not miss. The day was bright, the fog that had greeted the dawn had burned off in the sun, and here it came, a giant of a ship, steaming straight across his path, making no effort to zig-zag, the standard and proven manoeuvre for deterring submarine attacks.

At 2.10pm, Kapitanleutnant Walther Schwieger, U-20′s commander, gave the order to fire. Charles Voegele, a young conscript electrician from Alsace, protested that the target was a passenger ship, carrying women and children. He was ignored. The torpedo shot out of its tube, sped across the 2 000 feet of water and struck the liner amidships with a shattering roar.

It was 2.12pm, on May 7, 1915. The ship was the Lusitania, and she would take just 18 minutes to sink, taking 1 200 people with her.

The Kinsale lifeboat pulled hard to the scene of the wreck. The lifeboat secretary wrote later in his report: “Everything that was possible to do was done by the crew to reach the wreck in time to save life but as we had no wind, it took us a long time to pull the 10 or 12 miles out from the boat house … if we had wind or any motor power our boat would have been amongst the first on the scene. It was a harrowing sight to witness. The sea was strewn with dead bodies floating about some with lifejackets on others holding on pieces and rafts — all dead. I deeply regret it was not in our power to have been in time to save some …”

This tragedy played out a few miles off the Old Head of Kinsale on the southern coast of Ireland, and the Irish, who are a sentimental and kind people, have taken care to remember the day, and honour its victims, as they do with all those who are lost at sea off their shores.

On a quiet street in the harbour town of Cobh is a pub called The Lusitania. On any given day it will be alive with Irish rumbunctiousness, with Murphy’s-drinking regulars lining the bar, and maybe a couple of others having a quick nap by the fire at the back.

The owner, Mark Donnachie (yes, that’s him under the poster), is passionate about the Lusitania story. The walls of the pub are covered in newspaper front pages about the sinking, photographs, posters and documents.

When he’s not pulling pints, Donnachie takes tourists around Cobh’s shipping sights. The last and most sobering is the old cemetery on the reverse side of the hill behind the town where hundreds of the Lusitania’s unknown victims are buried in three mass graves. Thick, leafy conifers grow on the corners of each grave. The headstones of other victims stand nearby.

Back in the bar, Donnachie is sanguine about the tragedies. They are part of Ireland’s history now, and something he wishes would generate more business for Cobh. “This is a passenger harbour,” he says, “and the streets should be full of people getting off ships.”

So, if you’re ever in Cobh, across the bay from Cork, drop by the pub for a pint and a chat, not least of all because it’s pubs and places like this that make for real – if sobering – travel.

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