In any maritime disaster—such as collision, grounding, or sinking—a chain of events leads to the mishap. Take out almost any link, the chain breaks, and calamity is avoided. But when the chain is complete, the results can be catastrophic.
Such was the case a century ago, as portrayed in Erik Larson’s superb new book Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (Crown Publishers, 2015). On the sunny afternoon of 7 May 1915, the tiny German submarine U-20 torpedoed and sank the majestic British liner off Ireland’s southern coast. With World War I not yet a year old, a chain of events had to coincide perfectly for the U-boat to administer the killing blow.
The advent of war caused a dramatic reduction in ocean travel, so the Cunard Line saved money by directing the use of only three of the ship’s four boiler rooms. The reduction in speed added a day to the transatlantic journey.
On the day she was to leave New York for England, the Lusitania had to delay her departure because the British Admiralty had requisitioned the passenger liner Cameronia for military duty. The bigger ship dutifully waited until the displaced passengers and crew members arrived. Still another delay was an embarrassment for the Lusitania’s master, Captain William Thomas Turner. His niece came aboard to see him off, but she didn’t leave in timely fashion, so the gangway had to be rerigged for her exit.
The Admiralty played a murky role in the events—malign neglect. The Royal Navy did not provide an antisubmarine escort. The navy said the big ship’s superior speed—certainly faster than that of a submarine—was sufficient protection. Concurrently, however, the Royal Navy was escorting its own big ships and providing them reports on intelligence about submarines. Through the code-breaking in its super-secret Room 40, the navy knew of the presence of the U-20 in the vicinity of the Lusitania’s path but provided no warning.
Here and there, author Larson drops hints of a possible conspiracy—that the British had hoped that the liner, which carried dozens of American passengers, would be torpedoed and thus bring the still-neutral United States into the war. Lacking any “smoking gun” of incriminating evidence, Larson does not draw a firm conclusion but does quote British historian Patrick Beesly, who was convinced the Royal Navy enabled the sinking. Alas for the British, the United States didn’t enter the war until almost two years later.
Mother Nature provided a few links in the fatal chain. Because of the depth of water at the Mersey Bar outside Liverpool Harbor, Captain Turner slowed the ship to time his planned arrival at high tide. On the morning of the 7th, fog bathed the liner’s path. That both diminished her speed and provided the invisibility that would cloak her from a submarine. But the fog cleared, and the U-20 lay in wait. Then came still one more link. In the early afternoon, the Lusitania steered a steady course parallel to the Irish shore in order to obtain a precise navigational fix. The course brought her right in front of the submarine, lined up to shoot the fatal torpedo.
The final kick in the teeth came courtesy of a Royal Navy policy regarding at-sea rescues. In 1914 a U-boat had sunk three British cruisers in one day. The second and third were torpedoed because they lay dead in the water while trying to rescue survivors of the first. This led to a doctrine of not allowing Navy ships to be used for rescue. The cruiser Juno set out from Queenstown, Ireland, to aid Lusitania passengers. But she was recalled to protect her from danger, leaving slower vessels to recover survivors.
Larson, whose previous books have marked him as a master storyteller, has an eye for the personal, describing scores of individuals and their relationships to the disaster. An indelible image is that reported by one survivor—that he had seen a pregnant woman giving birth in the sea. Another passenger was newlywed Margaret Gwyer. As the ship went down, the force sucked her into one of the tall smokestacks. A belch of steam sent her flying back out, alive. She looked completely black—except for the white of her eyes and teeth.
President Woodrow Wilson was trying to formulate wartime policy while distracted by his grief over the death of his first wife and by the courtship of his second. Admiral Jacky Fisher, the British First Sea Lord, came across as an overage sailor who was out of his depth in modern war. Captain Turner was frustrated in trying to run a first-rate ship with second-string personnel because so many able seamen had left the merchant service to join the military. The U-boat skipper, Walther Schwieger, was both aggressive and skillful. His log of the voyage provides a counterpoint to the narrative of events on board the liner. Larson’s book also contains numerous interesting side trips. Mentioned in passing, for instance, is Georg von Trapp, the paterfamilias depicted in the movie The Sound of Music. He was skipper of an Austrian submarine.
Larson’s research was thorough and hands-on, carrying him to archives in a number of countries. As a result, he masterfully demonstrates an understanding of submarine warfare, ocean-liner operations, the brotherhood of the sea, and the process of rescuing those who unwillingly get dumped into it. In the interplay of various accounts, one views the cat-and-mouse game through the eyes of both. In this case the mouse was both the predator and the victor.