They had been warned.
With war raging across the ocean, an eclectic group of passengers gathered in New York City in May 1915 for a trans-Atlantic voyage aboard the great Lusitania, a majestic, swift and towering vessel that catered to the pampered classes and was the pride of the safety-conscious Cunard shipping line.
Everyone knew the risks. En route to Liverpool, the Lusitania would be passing through a German-declared war zone off the coast of Ireland during an era in which submarine warfare was ascendant. The German embassy in Washington, D.C., had gone so far as to place an ad on the shipping pages of New York’s newspapers that leveled a veiled yet unmistakable threat at the Lusitania.
Many shrugged off the peril. Built sturdily — a “passenger liner, but with the hull of a battleship” — the Lusitania also found protection in the hubris of man. Its experienced and unflappable captain, William Thomas Turner, was skeptical that any German submarine could match his vessel’s speed. His bosses felt the same.
“The truth is that the Lusitania is the safest boat on the sea,” the company said. “She is too fast for any submarine. No German war vessel can get her or near her.”
A U-boat’s single torpedo sank her in 18 minutes.
In the hands of a lesser craftsman, the fascinating story of the last crossing of the Lusitania might risk being bogged down by dull character portraits, painstaking technical analyses of submarine tactics or the minutiae of WWI-era global politics.
Not so with Erik Larson. In “Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania,” the author’s latest masterful fusion of history and storytelling, the former Wall Street Journal reporter effortlessly re-creates the collision course taken by Capt. Turner and the man who would destroy his ship, Kptlt. Walther Schwieger, commander of Unterseeboot-20.
With a book release cleverly pegged to two months shy of the centennial of the ship’s sinking, Larson and his star power don’t have to rely on Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet to bring center stage the gripping story of the lesser-publicized of the 20th century’s major maritime disasters.
“Dead Wake” deftly weaves together a number of Larson’s fascinations from previous books — technology, weaponry, wartime, Germany, weather and period pieces.
Larson reading
Erik Larson will be reading from and signing his new book, “Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania,” at 6 p.m. April 11 at the University Book Store, 4326 University Way Northeast, Seattle. The event is free. Larson will share the intimate details of its fascinating and tragic unfolding with us.
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