When fully loaded with crew, passengers, luggage, stores, and cargo, the ship weighed, or displaced, over 44,000 tons and could sustain a top speed of more than 25 knots, about 30 miles an hour. With many passenger ships withdrawn from service or converted to military use, this made the Lusitania the fastest civilian vessel afloat. Only destroyers, and Britain’s latest oil-fueled Queen Elizabeth–class battleships, could move faster.
