page_title: The Sinking of the Lusitania
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The Sinking of the Lusitania / Background
caption_attribution_description: RMS Lusitania coming into port, possibly in New York, 1907-13
context_page_description: The Sinking of the Lusitania is an American silent animated short film by cartoonist Winsor McCay. It is a work of propaganda re-creating the never-photographed 1915 sinking of the British liner RMS Lusitania. At twelve minutes it has been called the longest work of animation at the time of its release. The film is the earliest surviving animated documentary and serious, dramatic work of animation. The National Film Registry selected it for preservation in 2017.
  In 1915, a German submarine torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania; 128 Americans were among the 1,198 dead. The event outraged McCay, but the newspapers of his employer William Randolph Hearst downplayed the event, as Hearst was opposed to the U.S. joining World War I. McCay was required to illustrate anti-war and anti-British editorial cartoons for Hearst's papers. In 1916, McCay rebelled against his employer's stance and began work on the patriotic Sinking of the Lusitania on his own time with his own money.
  The film followed McCay's earlier successes in animation: Little Nemo, How a Mosquito Operates, and Gertie the Dinosaur.
context_section_description: Winsor McCay (c. 1869–1934) produced prodigiously detailed and accurate drawings since early in life. He earned a living as a young man drawing portraits and posters in dime museums, and attracted large crowds with his ability to draw quickly in public. He began working as a newspaper illustrator full-time in 1898, and in 1903 began drawing comic strips. His greatest comic strip success was the children's fantasy comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, which he began in 1905. In 1906, McCay began performing on the vaudeville circuit, doing chalk talks—performances during which he drew in front of a live audience.
  Inspired by the flip books his son brought home, McCay said he "came to see the possibility of making moving pictures" of his cartoons. His first animated film, Little Nemo (1911), was composed of four thousand drawings on rice paper. His next film, How a Mosquito Operates (1912), naturalistically shows a giant mosquito draw blood from a sleeping man until it burst. McCay followed this with a film that became an interactive part of his vaudeville shows: in Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), McCay commanded his animated dinosaur with a whip on stage.
  The British liner RMS Lusitania briefly held the record for largest passenger ship upon its completion in 1906. McCay displayed a fondness for it, and featured it in the episode for September 28, 1907, of his comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, and again in the episode for November 10, 1908, of A Pilgrim's Progress by Mister Bunion, where Bunion declares it "the monster boat that has smashed the record".
  The Germans employed submarines in the North Atlantic during World War I, and in April 1915 the German government issued a warning that it would target British civilian ships. The Lusitania was torpedoed on May 7, 1915, during a voyage from New York; 128 Americans were among the 1,198 who lost their lives. Newspapers owned by McCay's employer William Randolph Hearst downplayed the tragedy, as Hearst was opposed to the U.S. entering the war. His own papers' readers were increasingly pro-war in the aftermath of the Lusitania. McCay was as well, but was required to illustrate anti-war and anti-British editorials by editor Arthur Brisbane. In 1916, McCay rebelled against his employer's stance and began to make the pro-war Sinking of the Lusitania in his own time.
  The sinking itself was never photographed. McCay said that he gathered background details on the Lusitania from Hearst's Berlin correspondent August F. Beach, who was in London at the time of the disaster and was the first reporter at the scene. The film was the first attempt at a serious, dramatic work of animation.
caption: German submarines torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania in 1915; the incident contributed to the U.S.'s entry into World War I.
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