Rossa’s Grave, Kinsale Waters
The most immediate catastrophe occurred off County Cork. On 7 May the German submarine U-20 torpedoed the Cunard liner RMS Lusitania south of the Old Head of Kinsale. The ship had sailed from New York for Liverpool and sank rapidly. About 1,198 passengers and crew died, although totals in contemporary and later accounts vary slightly as the identities of victims and survivors were established. The disaster made the Irish coast a place of international consequence: rescue work, the recovery of bodies and hurried burials centred on Queenstown, now Cobh. Local people encountered the human wreckage of a global naval war directly, rather than merely reading battlefield reports in newspapers.