The Sinking of the Lusitania
The film opens with a live-action prologue in which McCay busies himself studying a picture of the Lusitania as a model for his film-in-progress. Intertitles boast of McCay as "the originator and inventor of Animated Cartoons", and of the 25,000 drawings needed to complete the film. McCay is shown working with a group of anonymous assistants on "the first record of the sinking of the Lusitania".
The liner passes the Statue of Liberty and leaves New York Harbor. After some time, a German submarine cuts through the waters and fires a torpedo at the Lusitania, which billows smoke that builds until it envelops the screen. Passengers scramble to lower lifeboats, some of which capsize in the confusion. The liner tilts from one side to the other and passengers are tossed into the ocean.
A second blast rocks the Lusitania, which sinks slowly into the deep as more passengers fall off its edges, and the ship submerges amid scenes of drowning bodies. The liner vanishes from sight, and the film closes with a mother struggling to keep her baby above the waves. An intertitle declares: "The man who fired the shot was decorated for it by the Kaiser! And yet they tell us not to hate the Hun."
tragedy