LH, I was concentrating only on the USA. We could have stayed out of it simply by not shipping munitions to England in a passenger ship and denying that we were doing it. History has proved that the Germans were right in sinking the Lusitania.(From their point of view)

The fact that we wanted to get into it to support England is another matter." – Kendall

"There has always been some controversy over whether or not the Lusitania was merely a civilian liner. Some claimed it was being used to transport munitions and the Germans knew this somehow. In support of that claim was the fact it sank so rapidly after two large explosions tore open its hull (one might have been the torpedo, the other munitions exploding). It sank in about 20 minutes if I'm not mistaken. There was no real proof though until last year when a salvage team went down and among other things they found thousands upon thousands of rounds of ammunition, some of it still boxed up. They brought some samples to the surface." – Nickhere

"Since a lot of the ammunition would have blown up in the explosions that sank the liner, the recent find is probably only the tip of the original iceberg, so to speak.

This would suggest that the Lusitania was carrying ammunition from the USA to Britain. The US and British authorities must have been aware of the risk to the civilian passengers involved in placing munitions on a civilian liner. They deliberately placed munitions among civilians on a civilian liner as a kind of camouflage - knowing the Germans would definitely have torpedoed any merchant ships thought to be carrying munitions.

The fact it's taken 80 years or more for this story to be known in its entirety is a good reminder of why we should bear in mind "the first casualty in any war is the truth" – Nickhere.

None of the above is "new" – Look up the article in Wikipedia relating to the loss of the Lusitania, the "discovery" last year by the members of Cork Sub-Aqua Club of the ammunition merely confirms what was made public in 1915 when the vessel's manifest became public knowledge – 4.2 million .303 rounds plus some 3" fragmentation shells. The article also goes into the causes of the second explosion:

-        Ammunition exploding (Highly unlikely)
-        Coal dust explosion (Possible but unlikely)
-        Catastrophic failure in the vessel's high pressure steam System (Highly probable and most likely)