Why did it not receive a British military escort, as other civilian liners had in the past and as its passengers generally believed it would, to help protect it from U-boat torpedoes? Why was the actual danger it was in, as the British intelligence services knew U-20 was very near its route, not properly transmitted to its captain? There’s also the question of how much the Germans were to blame were they at heart, vicious murderers with no compunction in taking civilian lives or were they provoked by the British who allowed munitions, that could be used against German troops, to be carried by these liners, as the Lusitania did, and who often pretended that British ships were actually neutral ones? Dead Wake, takes the former view, one of many approaches to the tragedy in which Larson differs from King and Wilson.Īctually, reading the two non-fiction accounts books back to back, as I did, is quite astounding there are so many pertinent facts, left out of one or the other book and each with a decidedly oppositional look at the background of the tale. Outside of those facts, however, there are any number of interpretations, and the two books bear that out, as to how and why the Lusitania was allowed to sink, considering it was entering a declared (by Germany) war zone and had, obliquely, been warned that it could be targeted, in an ad, put into various New York newspapers just before the Lusitania sailed, by the German Embassy in Washington, D.C. The sinking of the large ship, and the loss of some famous people aboard, shocked the world and prompted many cries for the then-neutral U.S., which lost 128 of its citizens in the sinking, to declare war on Germany, something that did not happen for another two years.

On its second to last day of its New York to Liverpool run, the Lusitania, which upon its launch in 1907 had been the largest ocean liner in the world, was sunk by a German U-boat (U- 20), under the command of Walther Schwieger, with the attendant loss of 1,198 of its passengers, including three German stowaways locked in the ship’s brig. The facts surrounding the sinking are not in dispute. Martin’s Press), both delve into the sinking. Two new books, Erik Larson’s Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (Crown) and Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy, and the End of the Edwardian Age by Greg King and Penny Wilson (St. It may never have attained the fame of the Titanic but the Lusitania, the massive British cruise ship sunk by a German U-boat one hundred years ago today, on May 7, 1915, still had the makings of a terrible, lasting tragedy. RMS Lusitania coming into port (1907-13).

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