Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

4.4 | 32,615 ratings

Price: 17.72

Last update: 01-09-2025

About this item

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the bestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania

“Both terrifying and enthralling.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Thrilling, dramatic and powerful.”—NPR
“Thoroughly engrossing.”—George R.R. Martin

On May 1, 1915, with WWI entering its tenth month, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were surprisingly at ease, even though Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds”—the fastest liner then in service—and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger’s U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small—hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more—all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

It is a story that many of us think we know but don’t, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour and suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope to President Woodrow Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love.

Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster whose intimate details and true meaning have long been obscured by history.

Finalist for the Washington State Book Award One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Miami Herald, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, LibraryReads, Indigo

Yiqun Pan

A nice experience of reading

Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2017

The book is about:
The book Dead wake is a historically based novel- like non-fiction that relates to the sink of Lusitania, one of the major reasons why did America get involved in the world one. Unlike the textbook or the objective documents that represent the official recording of this event. This book gradually brings the whole events out from all the small perspectives of people who got involved or lost their lives in it. The author’s big motivation for writing this book is to let people experience the whole events from the basic stories. Normally the information we received from those world war 1 documents is simple and unemotional. Without the name of dead people, there are not strong feelings through reading the death numbers. Without the background information, there is no explanation to why the boat was sunk by torpedoes. The author of this book drew the world of readers back to the last century, the happiness, desires, hopelessness from people are all seems close enough to touch. Even though the book itself focused mostly on the Boat and the submarine U-20 which sunk it, the characterization of other passengers on Lusitania is attractive and interesting. The movement of different organization and famous people such as American president Wilson were all caught by Erik Larson.

More than a normal non-fiction, Dead Wake shows its strength on imitating the humanity and atmospheres. The whole book is having a comparably easy and comfortable rhythm at the first chapter. Rather than just talking about the big historical event itself, Erik Larson fills in more small details and personal life parts into the skeleton of the book, to make it more vivid. On the other hand, the people on lusitania are not all the characters he focuses on. For example, the one who received the order to sank the boat with torpedoes, Captain Schwieger of the submarine U-20 is actually a pretty hard-working and nice captain in his normal life. ‘Yet among his peers and crew Schwieger was known for this kindness and good humor and for maintaining a cheerful atmosphere aboard his submarine.’ However, the war is cruel and cold-bloody, the perspective of enemies helped me understand the conception of the war better. Overall, this book is pretty nice book that can bring the readers into the experiences of the events happened in the past. Also, for one who is learning the First World War, this book gave me more new knowledge and brought me a historical event that I did not even hear before. The relationship between this book and the First world war build me a bridge on the way of studying this part of the history.

Relationship to the world war 1
Before America participated in the first world war, German started to attack any boats that had the British relationships near the British sea areas. They posted the news on the newspaper and this truly caused a lot of people to change their ideas. However, the passengers on lusitania didn’t see the risk they taking, because the boat they are taking was having the greatest speed in the whole world thanks to its newest technology. All the people believed that there weren’t any submarines able to catch the boat due to its unbelievable speed at that time. Unfortunately, the extrema of fog happened on the open sea of the Ireland. This accidentally triggered the following tragedy. The meeting of U-20 submarine and lusitania was not predicted by room 40, an organization which mainly focused the interception of telegrams from German in that period this time. This time, the speed of lusitania did not function as much as they thought. The boat is stucked in the fog, without the eyesight for speeding up. The U-20 caught the boat and gave the first torpedo under the order of captain Schwieger. The boat was hugely impacted and shook. People were running around and spreading out the scare. Then, not until most of them reached the bridge of the boat, the second the torpedo was launched without any hesitation. This one ensure the sink of the boat and caused nine tenth of the passengers on the boat fell into the deep water with the boat. Among the 1200 passengers who died in this event, there were nearly a hundred Americans. Only 300 corpse of were found after the boat was sunk by the U-20. This, undoubtedly, stimulate the anger of Americans. All the citizens want to give Germany punishment for their evil behaves. By the fact of other events, America was involved into this war finally.

The reflections after reading the books
Although I am reading a book of historical event, the feeling I received from the book is not limited on just a historical event. It is something deeper and was truly impacting my emotions. After reading the 300 pages in the book, most passengers became true people who used to live somewhere in the world vividly. I would love to talk with them if I was there. However, 1200 lives were end only because of two torpedoes. One of the greatest boat at that time was sunk. The declaration of Germany proved that they need an enemy who could teach them an unforgettable lesson. And that was what America did. I was usually imagining that what kind of fear was spreading at the last moment before the boat sunk. The mixture of 1200 people’s emotion before their death must be filled by darkness and blood. Many people on the boat was trying to look for someone they knew on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The captain of the boat was not concerning of the disaster at all. No one could predict the existence of both fog and German submarine until they met. ‘Turner had no concern about the German warning. Shortly before departure, he was standing on the ship’s promenade deck, talking with Alfred Vanderbilt and Charles Frohman, when one of the ship-news man --- apparently not Jack Lawrence --- approached and asked Vanderbilt if he thought he’d be as lucky this time as he had been in deciding not to sail on the Titanic. Vanderbilt smiled but said nothing.’ The people on the whole boat could not noticed the event. How many people died without noticing their situation? This is my biggest question after reading the book.

Lusitania was definitely a boat that can let the people inside feel the atmosphere of happiness. ‘“Ships do have personalities,” wrote Jack Lawrence, the shipping writer for he New York Evening Mail. Some ships “have warm, friendly atmosphere while others are only steel plates riveted around throbbing turbines.”’ There were some children and infants on the boat and only one tenth of them finally survived. ‘The passenger manifest listed ninety-five children and thirty-nine infants’ It told me that no one can be ignored by the war when the enemy catches you. The fearness of war is remained in my mind by this book after seeing the innocent death under the big environment of the war. Thanks to this book, I learnt the fearness of the war.

The reasons for people to read this book
In conclusion, this book is definitely recommended for readers, even for those who are not interested in the world war one. From my perspective, the book focused more on people instead of events. The details in a person’s life usually appear for characterizing the personality of this person. The intention of For example, ‘Lauriat took the scrapbooks back to his home in Cambridge, where he inspected them in the company of his wife, Marian. He then packed them carefully, in his extension suitcase, and locked it. At the station later that night, he checked his trunk and shoe box for transport direct to the lusitania but held back his other three pieces. He kept these with him in the calendar.’ the characteristics of one of the passengers on the boat, Lauriat, a bookseller who usually went to Britain for transporting books, is fully shown for the readers. The introduction of boats or submarines are also comprehensive and informational for those people who want to learn more about the world war One. ‘U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.’ The professional explanation like this line appeared commonly in the book. In short, the book is fascinating and interesting, feeling the past historical events from it is the attraction no readers can reject.

dtobisk

Larson Delivers in DEAD WAKE

Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2015

Though I’ve read a few of Erik Larson’s books before, I didn’t expect this one to be a page-turner, since the climactic event is pretty well known and some of the nightmarish details that followed it might be easily imagined if one has seen the movie TITANIC or read A NIGHT TO REMEMBER. However, in the last third or so of this book, I did find myself driven to consume pages as quickly as possible.

It took a while to get to that point, though--not that the build-up was totally unrewarding. Larson weaves together a number of strands to make up the story of the Lusitania’s last voyage: Woodrow Wilson’s grief over his wife’s death in August 1914 just weeks after Europe went to war and, beginning several months later, his protracted courtship of the woman who would become his second wife; Germany’s strategic aim in declaring a war zone around Great Britain that made even ships of neutral nations a target; the daily routine and dangers of hunting in a U-boat; England’s breaking of the German naval code (and cautious use thereof, reminiscent of a key scene in the movie THE IMITATION GAME); and, of course, the joys of life aboard a huge transatlantic luxury liner. In addition, Larsen provides somewhat detailed sketches of a number of Lusitania’s passengers. (Publishing friends may be interested to know that one traveler in first class was Charles Lauriat, president of the book company that bore his name until it went out of business in 1999, who was transporting valuable original work by Thackeray and Dickens from New York to London. Guess how that turned out.)

Personally, I wasn’t much interested in Woodrow Wilson’s romantic yearnings and would have welcomed less of that story line. On the other hand, the insights into a U-boat’s operation, which correct any impression that as a predator it was totally invisible and invincible, were fascinating.

I also could have used less of Larson’s frequent use of ominous, cliffhanger type scene changes at the ends of sections. After one or two, they seemed much less artful than artificial. Some examples:

-“Whether out of professional pique or some instinct of fear, the ship’s mascot--a cat named Dowie…--fled the ship that night, for points unknown.”
-“The envelope was postmarked ‘Hudson Terminal Station.’”
-“Relative to the turmoil that ordinarily existed in its halls, the Admiralty now became quiescent, if not to say inattentive.”
-“The quiet meant nothing. At some point U-20 would make its presence known.”
-”The monotony was crushing, but there was, at least, a porthole through which the boy could watch the sea.” (Oh, kid. Please close that porthole!)

But once that single fatal torpedo is launched, the momentum of the narrative moves swiftly and surely. Larson sets the scene strikingly: “The smoothness of the sea presented some passengers with a view of the torpedo that was startling in its clarity.” The impact of the blast and the various reactions, from denial to panic, are told from multiple points of view, seemingly minute-by-minute. Some lifeboats are boarded and launched successfully; others are mishandled by the crew and end up dumping passengers in the 55-degree water. A few of the survivors attest to amazing thoughts during their ordeal (for instance, one says “I thought about how wondrously beautiful the sunlight and water were from below the surface...I thought, ‘Why, this is like being in my grandmother’s feather bed, ’” and another “Then I sank back, very relieved in my mind, for I decided it was too horrible to be true and that I was dreaming….”), and one wonders, was this an after-the-fact fabrication of memory or a kind of poise that became extinct a century ago?

Aside from a few quibbles, then--besides what’s mentioned above, some historical simplification about the war that I guess is understandable--I’d say that DEAD WAKE’s place on the bestseller list is very well deserved.

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