VIDEO: Lusitania Centenary - ‘Tragic deaths should be honoured and remembered with due respect’

The sinking of the Lusitania is a story that has gripped the imagination of the world over the intervening decades and filled the pages of many books and articles, President Michael D Higgins said in his speech marking the centenary commemorations.

He said from the accounts of the survivors, we have some sense of the almost unthinkable horror that the ill-fated passengers on board faced — a shortage of lifeboats, the injuries suffered from the initial hit and explosion, the desperation as passengers and crew tried to save loved ones, including the pathetic account of parents trying in vain to save their children, the treacherous flotsam and the violence of the rapidly sinking ship, and the dreadful wait for help in an ice-cold sea surrounded by the bodies of the dead.

We come here today to think of those men, women and children, and of what they endured, he said.