Dead Wake

In May 1915, a British passenger liner named the Lusitania set sail from New York, bound for Liverpool. Most of the 1,959 people on board believed they were embarking on a routine Atlantic crossing. They were wrong. The ship never made it to England. On May 7, a German submarine fired a single torpedo into its hull. Eighteen minutes later, the Lusitania was gone. The disaster killed 1,198 people. And it ultimately drew the United States into World War I.

But how did this happen? Erik Larson's Dead Wake traces the final journeys of two vessels: the Lusitania and the German U-boat U-20. The book argues that the sinking wasn't inevitable. It resulted from what Larson calls a "convergence of disparate forces"—a chain of small decisions, delays, and coincidences that brought these two ships together at exactly the wrong moment.

The Lusitania itself was born from competition. In 1903, Britain feared it was losing the race for dominance of the passenger-ship industry. Germany had been building faster, more luxurious ocean liners, and the British wanted to catch up. So the British government financed the construction of the Lusitania and its sister ship, the Mauretania. The ship was built for speed, conceived out of what Larson describes as "hubris and anxiety." When it launched in 1907, the Lusitania immediately set records, stealing the coveted Blue Riband away from Germany for the fastest Atlantic crossing.

But the Lusitania was more than a passenger liner. In exchange for government financing, the British required the ship to be capable of warfare. Though these requirements were later scrapped as impractical, the result was a vessel that Larson calls "a passenger liner that has the hull of a battleship." The ship was massive, fast, and seemingly invulnerable. That appearance would prove deadly.

By May 1915, World War I had been raging for nearly a year. Germany and Britain had become embroiled in a deadly naval war. Germany's U-boats—the submarines—proved devastatingly effective, sinking British warships with shocking ease. In the months before the Lusitania's final voyage, German submarines had begun targeting merchant ships too, placing civilian lives at risk.

President Woodrow Wilson watched with growing alarm. He had declared America neutral, hoping to keep the country out of Europe's conflict. But German attacks were killing American citizens. Wilson faced mounting pressure to respond.

Meanwhile, the British Admiralty possessed a secret weapon: Room 40, a highly secretive operation that intercepted and decoded German naval communications. Room 40 tracked German U-boats as they moved through British waters. They knew where the submarines were. They knew the Lusitania was heading into danger.

But they didn't warn the ship. They didn't change its course. They didn't send an escort.

Why? The Admiralty feared that acting on the intercepted communications would reveal that German codes had been broken. There was another possibility too. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, had written memos suggesting that a German attack on a neutral ship could "embroil" the United States in the war. Some historians have wondered whether the Admiralty's inaction was negligence—or deliberate strategy.

The Lusitania's captain for this voyage was William Thomas Turner, a highly experienced officer who had set the ship's speed records. He was known as a "stickler for detail and discipline." But he faced serious challenges. The war had drained the pool of skilled sailors, forcing him to hire a less experienced crew. And the ship carried mostly collapsible lifeboats—boats with canvas sides that could be folded for storage but were riskier than standard lifeboats.

The German submarine U-20, commanded by Walther Schwieger, had been ordered to patrol the waters between Britain and Ireland. Schwieger was known for his skill and ruthlessness. U-boats operated in isolation, giving their captains total authority over life-and-death decisions. Life on a submarine was cramped, uncomfortable, and filled with constant fear. The crew knew they faced what Larson calls "the worst kind of death imaginable: slow suffocation in a darkened steel tube at the bottom of the sea."

As the Lusitania departed New York on May 1, the German Embassy published a warning in American newspapers: British ships were "liable to destruction." Most passengers ignored it. They believed the Lusitania was too fast and too large to be vulnerable. The crew falsely assured them that the Royal Navy would provide an escort. They were all operating on what Larson shows was a false sense of security.

The two ships began their journeys toward each other. The Lusitania steamed east across the Atlantic. The U-20 crept around the coast of Scotland, then down the western coast of Ireland. Fog, bad weather, and mechanical problems plagued both vessels. Schwieger grew frustrated as he failed to sink several ships. Turner received vague warnings from the Admiralty but no clear instructions.

Then, on the morning of May 7, the fog cleared. The Lusitania entered the waters off the southern coast of Ireland under a bright sky. The passengers came on deck to enjoy the sun. They didn't know that the U-20 was lurking nearby.

Captain Turner needed to determine the ship's exact location to time its arrival at Liverpool for high tide. He ordered a maneuver called a four-point bearing. This required the ship to change course, turning closer to the coast. The maneuver placed the Lusitania directly in the U-20's firing line.

Schwieger couldn't believe his luck. He had been trailing the Lusitania, but the ship was outrunning him. Then it changed direction, coming straight toward his submarine. He called it a miracle.

At 2:10 p.m., sailor Leslie Morton spotted something in the water: a "burst of foam," then the "dead wake" of a torpedo heading toward the ship. The torpedo struck the Lusitania's hull, creating a massive explosion. A second, smaller explosion followed, likely from a boiler or munitions. The ship immediately began to list to its starboard side.

What followed was chaos. The severe tilt made it nearly impossible to launch the lifeboats. Passengers had not been properly instructed on how to use life jackets. One lifeboat crashed down on top of another, killing everyone inside. Survivors floated in the icy water for three hours before rescue ships arrived. Many died from hypothermia.

The final death toll was 1,198 passengers and crew, including 123 Americans.

In the aftermath, the British Admiralty tried to blame Captain Turner. They claimed he had failed to follow orders to sail a midchannel course and maintain a zigzag pattern. But an official inquiry cleared Turner, declaring Germany solely responsible.

President Wilson was outraged but still unwilling to enter the war immediately. It would take another two years—and the interception of the Zimmermann Telegram, in which Germany proposed an alliance with Mexico against the United States—before America finally declared war on Germany in April 1917.

Dead Wake tells this story by weaving together four threads: the Lusitania, the U-20, Room 40, and the White House. Larson argues that the sinking wasn't the result of a single cause or a single villain. It emerged from a web of small decisions, hidden secrets, and sheer bad luck. The ship was built for speed out of hubris and anxiety. It was sunk because of a convergence of forces that no one could have predicted. And its destruction changed the course of the twentieth century.

But as Larson makes clear throughout the book, it didn't have to happen that way. The smallest alteration—a different departure time, a different route, a more specific warning—could have saved the ship. And that raises a haunting question: How many other disasters in history have turned on moments just as small, just as accidental, just as fateful?