The sinking of the Lusitania
The sinking caused a storm of protest in the United States because 128 American citizens were among the dead. The sinking helped shift public opinion in the United States against Germany, and was a factor in the United States' declaration of war nearly two years later. After World War I, successive British governments maintained there were no munitions on board Lusitania and the Germans were not justified in treating the ship as a naval vessel. In 1982, the head of the British Foreign Office's North America department admitted that there is a large amount of ammunition in the wreck, some of which is highly dangerous and poses a safety risk to salvage teams.[13][14]