Last Crossing

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania - Erik Larson

Larson’s forte is writing popular history that reads like adventure fiction with a lot of human interest. This book tells the story of the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania by a torpedo from a German U-boat in May 1915. This incident is little-known today because the sinking of the Titanic overshadows other maritime disasters that occurred at the beginning of the 20th century.

Plus, the loss of the Lusitania tends to be subsumed in the history of the protracted and complex entry of the US into WWI. Larson points out that in fact the sinking of the Lusitania should not be compared to Pearl Harbor, because even after the sinking American public opinion was not in favor of joining the war. Look at the dates: the sinking was in 1915 and the US didn’t enter the war until 1917. The majority of the American people did not want the Lusitania to be the cause for entry into the war nor did President Wilson. He thought that Americans did not understand what total war would cost the US.

Larson reads voraciously between book projects so he likes to conduct research.  He read memoirs, letters, diaries, and court testimonies in order to capture the human dimension of the tragedy. By the end of this book we have enough knowledge of many of the passengers so that when they meet their various fates as the ship goes down we really feel sorrow for them. In an interview with Europa Press, Larson explained that one of the reasons that led him to narrate this story is the fact that it does not last in memory as “a simple geopolitical episode. …My goal was to bring this story to life so that readers could experience what the people of that time were experiencing.”

He does equally impressive study of the shipping company, the ship, capsule biographies of the most interesting principles, trade routes and the increasingly important role of German submarines during WWI. The historical account also covers political and economic background, the social and political life of the President Woodrow Wilson, Sea Lord Winston Churchill in the British admiralty and the captain of the U-20, the submarine that sank the liner.

Larson makes clear that like many events, from KAL 007 to 9/11, a variety of factors had to come together for the atrocity to occur. If they the ship had left New York a couple hours earlier, the sub would not have seen them in the spot where they were a perfect target. If the weather hadn’t been perfect, the sub would not have gotten off the shot. About 60% torpedoes failed for various reasons. But not this one. Factors meshed and the deaths of civilians just minding their own damn business had to happen.

Of Larson’s various books, I’ve only read Isaac’s Storm, the one about Galveston hurricane in 1900. I found Dead Wake to be as respectful of his subject and the victims and survivors as in Isaac’s Storm.