Concerns surface over Lusitania cover-up

British government officials had first expressed concern — almost 70 years after the sinking of the Lusitania — about a cover-up of the truth of the tragedy.

A salvage company’s divers had been warned in the early 1980s the ship could contain explosives — despite decades of denial by the minister for defence.

Official state papers from 1982, released yesterday by the National Archives at Kew, reveal how secret Whitehall misgivings emerged at that time about the official account of one of the most controversial and tragic episodes of the First World War.