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

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Winsor McCay (c. 1869–1934) produced prodigiously detailed and accurate drawings since early in life. He earned a living as a young man drawing portraits and posters in

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The Sinking of the Lusitania took twenty-two months to complete. McCay had assistance from his neighbor, artist John Fitzsimmons, and from Cincinnati cartoonist William Apthorp "Ap" Adams, who took care of layering the cels in proper sequence for

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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.

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1. ^ Different accounts have given McCay's birth year as 1867, 1869, and 1871. His birth records are not extant.
2. ^ Bill Mikulak notes that at 25,000 frames at 16 frames per second would make the film 26 minutes long, not 12, assuming that one drawing was produced per

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• Wells, Paul (2002). Animation And America. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-85331-203-8.

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The animation combines editorial cartooning techniques with live-action-like sequences, and is considered McCay's most realistic effort; the intertitles emphasized that the film was a "historical record" of the event. McCay animated the action in what animation

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