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
RMS Lusitania Guild had designed and constructed most of the trim on "Lusitania". Waring and Gillow tendered for the contract to furnish the whole ship, but failing to obtain this still supplied a number of the furnishings. "Lusitania"s keel was laid at John Brown on Clydebank as yard no. 367 on 16 June 1904, Lord Inverclyde hammering home the first rivet. Cunard nicknamed her 'the Scottish ship' in contrast to "Mauretania" whose contract went to Swan Hunter in England and who started building three months later. Final details of the two ships were left to designers at the two yards so that