Uhtred Ragnarson
Knight at Arms
Archonsod said:"She had aboard 4,200 cases of cartridges, but they were cartridges for small arms, packed in separate cases... they certainly do not come under the classification of ammunition. The United States authorities would not permit us to carry ammunition, classified as such by the military authorities, on a passenger liner. For years we have been sending small-arms cartridges abroad on the Lusitania."Uhtred Ragnarson said:They didn't manage very well at times hence the Lusitana, a passenger ship that was sunk while smuggling arms to Britain. The US cried foul that the Germans sunk the boat, while neglecting to tell the public that it was running war material...
—New York Times, 10 May 1915
It wasn't sunk while smuggling anything, the cargo was listed on it's manifest before it left port. The reason for the controversy had nothing to do with what she was carrying, attacking civilian shipping was and still is perfectly legal under the naval articles of war. The controversy arose because the articles specified that preceding such an attack, the commander of the attacking vessel was to announce his attention to the target and give time for the civilians and crew to abandon the ship, which the captain of U-20 failed to do.
Germany maintained that the auxilliary cruiser class were military vessels and as such no warning was needed (Lusitania carried deck gun mounts, but the guns weren't fitted). The British and US position was that as she was unarmed she could not be classed as a warship.
Germany had to make her own arrangements for delivery, which would usually involve chartering her own ships to do so. To bypass the blockade however they chartered the ships from a neutral nation to ship the supplies to a neutral port, then transported them overland.Tiberius Decimus Maximus said:Ah, so the German merchant fleet takes the materiels? That still runs into the same problem, but I'm probably being very thick right now, so excuse me.
The problem isn't getting them delivered, it's that the costs rapidly spiral upwards since every country that handles them wants a slice of the pie.
That quote really doesn't matter because it still says that the US was running war material to Britain...