RMS Lusitania, 31,500 tons, was built by the Cunard Line in 1906. (The vessel was named for a province of the Roman Empire, a region roughly corresponding to the Portugal of today.) On 7 May 1915 she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat off the south coast of Ireland, en route from New York to Liverpool, resulting in the loss of nearly 1,200 lives, 128 of them American. Allegations of