The ship was built to be fast. It was conceived out of hubris and anxiety, at a time—1903—when Britain feared it was losing the race for dominance of the passenger-ship industry. In America, J. P. Morgan was buying up shipping lines in hopes of creating a monopoly; in Europe, Germany had succeeded in building the world’s fastest ocean liners and thereby winning the “Blue Riband,” awarded to the liner that crossed the Atlantic in the shortest time. By 1903 German ships had held the Riband for six years, to the sustained mortification of Britain. With the empire’s honor and Cunard’s future both at stake, the British government and the company agreed to a unique deal. The Admiralty would lend Cunard up to ￡2.4 million, or nearly $2 billion in today’s dollars, at an interest rate of only 2.75 percent, to build two gigantic liners—the Lusitania and Mauretania. In return, however, Cunard had to make certain concessions.
First and foremost, the Admiralty required that the Lusitania be able to maintain an average speed across the Atlantic of at least 24.5 knots. In early trials, it topped 26 knots. There were other, more problematic conditions. The Admiralty also required that the two ships be built so that in the event of war they could be readily equipped with naval artillery and brought into service as “armed auxiliary cruisers.” The Admiralty went so far as to direct the Lusitania’s builders to install mounts, or “holding-down” rings, in its decks, capable of accepting a dozen large guns. Moreover, the Lusitania’s hull was to be designed to battleship specifications, which required the use of “longitudinal” coal bunkers—essentially tunnels along both sides of the hull to store the ship’s coal and speed its distribution among the boiler rooms. At the time, when naval warfare took place at or above the waterline, this was considered smart warship design. To naval shipbuilders, coal was a form of armor, and longitudinal bunkers were thought to provide an additional level of protection. A naval engineering journal, in 1907, stated that the coal in these bunkers would limit how far enemy shells could penetrate the hull and thus would “counteract, as far as possible, the effect of the enemy’s fire at the water line.”
When the war began, the Admiralty, exercising rights granted by its deal with Cunard, took possession of the Lusitania but soon determined the ship would not be effective as an armed cruiser because the rate at which it consumed coal made it too expensive to operate under battle conditions. The Admiralty retained control of the Mauretania for conversion to a troopship, a role for which its size and speed were well suited, but restored the Lusitania to Cunard for commercial service. The guns were never installed, and only the most astute passenger would have noticed the mounting rings embedded in the decking.
The Lusitania remained a passenger liner, but with the hull of a battleship.