In 1915 the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat, dragging nearly 1,200 lives and all of the historical data relating to the state of the ship to the bottom of the Atlantic.
On September 15th Swann will offer a rare piece of Lusitania history in The Eric C. Caren Collection: How History Unfolds on Paper; Part 1. This document, lot 309 in the sale, is the original mechanical plan of the ship's steam piping, drawn by its builders in 1907.
The ill-fated ship remains in the news due to the efforts of American millionaire Gregg Bemis to recover artifacts that may uncover the reason for its unusually rapid sinking.
Labels: Americana, Gregg Bemis, Lusitania, printed and manuscript americana, Rick Stattler, WWI
