Dead Wake

On 1 May 1915, RMS Lusitania leaves New York for Liverpool while the First World War has turned the waters around Britain into a declared German war zone. Captain William Thomas Turner trusts the liner’s speed and the established conventions protecting passenger ships, while President Woodrow Wilson tries to keep the United States neutral. At sea, Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger and U-20 search for targets along the Irish coast as British naval intelligence tracks German submarine movements without giving the liner a clear warning of the danger ahead.

On 7 May, U-20 torpedoes Lusitania off the Old Head of Kinsale, and the ship sinks with catastrophic loss of life. Larson reconstructs the voyage through passengers, crew, submarine logs, official messages and later inquiries, showing how wartime policy, secrecy, misjudgement and chance converged in a disaster that transformed public opinion without immediately bringing the United States into the war.