BIO: On May 7, 1915, towards the end of her 101st eastbound crossing, from NY to Liverpool, the R. M. S. "Lusitania," pride of the Cunard Line and one of the greatest ocean liners afloat, was sunk off the southern coast of Ireland by a torpedo fired from the German submarine U-20; she exploded and sank in 18 minutes, taking with her some 1200 people, more than half of the passengers and crew. Cold-blooded and deliberate, the sinking of the "Lusitania" shocked the world. It also jolted the United States out of its neutrality, 128 Americans were among the dead, and hastened the nation's entry into WWI. All that evening a ghastly procession of rescue ships drew alongside the quay at Queenstown, some 12 miles north of the disaster. Under flaring gas torches, they landed the living and the dead. Most survivors were in shock, wrapped in blankets and staring silently ahead. Those survivors who were strong enough were ushered into the rear rooms of the brightly-lit Cunard offices to register their names on the list of survivors and taken into the back of the Queenstown post office on the harbor front to wire their families that they were alive. Gradually survivors were dispersed to whatever accommodation could be found. Adult corpses were lifted ashore on stretchers to be stacked "like cordwood...among the pain kegs and coils of reopen on the shadowy old wharves." Sailors gently carried dead children and babies in their arms to an improvised mortuary in an empty Cunard freight shed. As the night wore on, it became clear that many vessels were carrying greater numbers of dead than of living. The day after the sinking, the local Irish coroner opened an inquest into the sinking in the town of Kinsale, near Queenstown. The main witness was the "Lusitania's" captain, William TURNER, now clad in an ill-fitting borrowed suit rather than the resplendent dark blue uniform in which he had been washed off the bridge of his ship. At the end of his evidence Captain TURNER bowed his head and burst into tears. Many of the "Lusitania's" survivors were never to make a complete recovery. They would be dogged by the mental and physical effects of the sinking for the rest of their lives. Officials in Ireland were struggling to deal with the aftermath of the sinking. On Saturday, 8 May, in Kinsale, county coroner John H. HORGAN had opened in inquest into the deaths. Horse-drawn hearses, supplemented by wagons and carts brought from all over County Cork, were rumbling over the cobblestones of Queenstown. They carried load after load of wooden coffins -- some shaped caskets with handles, other just plain pine boxes - draped with the Union Jack and chalked with numbers. The local undertakers had run out of coffins, and more had to be brought by train from Dublin and Kildare. Cunard had employed local photographers like Mr. O'KEEFE, "Photographer, Cycle and Antiques Dealer," to photograph the bodies of the unidentified victims inside them in the hope that this would later help to identify at least. "Packed in their tiny brown boxes like dolls, lay the babies and children killed in the disaster. Their faces held none of the terror which was stamped on those of the other dead. Mothers of Queenstown had piled the little coffins high with flowers," commented one observer. When the coffins had finally been closed, the funeral procession wound its slow way up Harbour Hill, past the great granite and limestone edifice of St. Colman's Cathedral, where a requiem mass was being held, to the Old Church cemetery two miles outside Queenstown. A military band played the somber strains of Chopin's "Funeral March." The townspeople closed their shutters as a mark of respect and stood silent and bareheaded along the streets. Flags on buildings and ships in the harbor were all at half-mast. Soldiers of the Fourth Royal Irish Regiment, Connaught Rangers, and Royal Dublin Fusiliers lined the route of the cortege. Men of the Royal Navy and Royal Garrison Artillery marched behind the hearses, followed by a stream of mourners on foot or in carriages and cars. As the mourners sang, "Abide with Me," the bodies of more than 140 unidentified victims were lowered into three cavernous common graves designated simply as A, B, and C, dug by soldiers the previous day. Two coffins contained infants buried with their mothers. A firing party loosed a volley of shots, and 20 buglers sounded "The Last Post." Other bodies were buried in Kinsale. The atmosphere in Queenstown* was almost too much for some distraught relatives who had arrived to search for their loved ones. "The place is alive with miserable creatures like ourselves." -- Excerpts, "Lusitania, An Epic Tragedy," Diana Preston (2002) *Queenstown (Cobh) Co. Cork