Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies. The date on Wilson's desk calendar is October 8, 1916, a day on which German submarine U-53 sank five vessels — three British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian — off Nantucket, Massachusetts. One of the British ships was a passenger liner traveling between New York and Newfoundland.
Re-elect President Woodrow Wilson! An October 18, 1916 cartoon from the British magazine Punch. The German sinking of ships that killed American citizens and sabotage such as the July 30, 1916 attack that destroyed the Black Tom munitions plant in Jersey City, New Jersey, were not enough to make Wilson call for a declaration of war on Germany, much to the distress of Great Britain and the other Entente allies.Text:Bringing it home.President Wilson. 'What's that? U-boat blockading New York? Tut! Tut! Very inopportune!'Vote for Wilson who kept you out of the War![Calendar date:] October 8, 1916
"The German submarine, 'U-53,' appeared off Newport, R.I., October 7th [1916], and after the commander had landed and sent a message to Ambassador Bernstorff, the boat left the port. On the next day, when off Nantucket, this submersible raider sank five vessels—three British, one Dutch, and one Norwegian. On one of the British vessels, the Stephano, a passenger liner plying between New York and New Foundland, there were several Americans. Luckily the attack on these vessels had been observed by the commanders and crews of several nearby American destroyers, who rescued all the victims."
Declared after Great Britain imposed a blockade of Germany, and suspended after the May 7, 1915 sinking of the passenger liner Lusitania in which 1,195 civilians, 128 of them Americans, Germany suspended, to some extent, its campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare. Accusing Britain of flagging its ships with the flags of neutral nations, German submariners sometimes continued to sink the ships of neutral nations, like Netherlands, Norway, and the United States.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 260, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
1916-10-08, 1916, October
