At 2;10 pm on 7 May 1915 the Lusitania was torpedoed twelve miles off the Old Head of Kinsale , and after a large internal explosion , sank within eighteen minutes with the loss of 1, 201 lives . 124 of the victims were American . The atrocity has always appeared to have been the work of a German U- boat . But suppose it had been , instead , a brilliantly daring attempt to bring the United States into the War ............