The Sinking of the Lusitania

(1918)
Directed, Written, and Drawn by Windsor Mckay
Wikpiedia Entry
Full Movie on Youtube

Name a shipwreck.

Chances are, you thought of the Titanic. And that’s not surprising, given how it has been talked about and turned into blockbuster movies. But for many years, the Titanic had faded into obscurity, not to be revitalized until Walter Lang had a best seller with his book A Night to Remember in 1955. Up until  then, however, the shipwreck people remembered was the Lusitania.

This main reason was its historical importance. The ship was sunk by a German U-Boat, at a time they claimed the right to sink any ship, passenger or warship, and became a catalyst for the US entering World War I.*

Windsor McKay was one of the great cartoonist of all time, creator of Little Nemo in Slumberland and Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend, both of which are still influential over a century after they were created.  He also was arguably the inventor of the animated film.**

The movie begins with a look and McKay  and his studio looking at photos of the ship and talks briefly of the 25k drawings needed to make the film and the technical issue of creating the look of the sea. It then tells the story of the ship, how it sailed and was hit by German torpedoes. It’s a propaganda film, or course, filled with remarks about the heartless hun torpedoing a passenger ship.***

The images are arresting and the ship was probably a pinnacle of animation in its time, filled with attention to detail. It ran for twelve minutes, making it the longest animated film up to that point. It’s still a powerful statement.

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*It raised outrage at the time. The sinking caused them to back off, but when they tried to reinstate it, the US declared war.

**It’s always iffy to call someone the inventor of an art form, but McKay was clearly one of the first, and the first to make a name for himself doing it. His Gertie the Dinosaur is still listed as one of the greatest cartoons of all time.

***The point of unrestricted submarine warfare was to prevent the allies from sneaking munitions into the UK on passenger ships. Afterwards, the UK insisted there was nothing of that nature aboard, until 1982, when the finally admitted there was ammunition on the ship.