Lusitania puppet Kingdom of Northern Lusitania as one of the successor states to Portugal under the assumption that such a campaign would result in an easy French victory. The province was also the namesake of the North Atlantic Ocean Liner RMS Lusitania infamous for being torpedoed by a German Uboat in 1915. The ship’s owners the Cunard Line commonly named their vessels after Roman provinces with the Lusitania so being called after the Roman Iberian province to the north of the Strait of Gibraltar while her sistership RMS Mauretania was named after the Roman North African province on the south side
The Sinking of the Lusitania that had begun circulating in the years before the film's release. Scholar Ulrich Merkl suggests that as a newspaperman, McCay was likely aware of Freud's widely reported work, though McCay never publicly acknowledged such an influence. "The Sinking of the Lusitania" was noted as a work of war propaganda, and is often called the longest work of animation of its time. The film is likely the earliest animated documentary. McCay's biographer, animator John Canemaker, called "The Sinking of the Lusitania" "a monumental work in the history of the animated film". Though it was admired by his animation contemporaries, Canemaker wrote