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    Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
    Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
    Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
    Ebook619 pages9 hours

    Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

    By Erik Larson

    4/5

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    #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
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCrown
    Release dateMar 10, 2015
    ISBN9780553446753
    Author

    Erik Larson

    Erik Larson is an author of two previous books, including the critically acclaimed ‘Lethal Passage’, about a boy and a gun. Currently an award-winning writer for ‘Time’ magazine, he formerly wrote features stories for the front page of the ‘Wall Street Journal’ and taught non-fiction writing at the Johns Hopkins Writers’ Seminars and San Francisco State University. He lives in Seattle.

    Read more from Erik Larson

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    Reviews for Dead Wake

    4/5

    1,545 ratings174 reviews

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    • 5/5

      Jun 4, 2025

      Great book that really brings the story to life.
    • 3/5

      Nov 26, 2024

      I walked away from reading Dead Wake with mixed feelings. On the one hand, Larson painted a superb portrait of what a passenger voyage in that time period could look like, and did a good job explaining the shock that the sinking of the Lusitania caused at the time, however, as a history book it fell flat, as Larson opted to insert an excessive amount of heart wrenching details in lieu of quality discussion of the bigger picture.

      This book wanted to be a novel, and in the spirit of a novel, Larson introduces us to many of the passengers in a delightful and conversational way, painting a portrait of their lives before, during, and for some, after the voyage. While this was of immense help in conceptualizing the humanity aboard the Lusitania, towards the end I felt that it just detracted from the larger tragedy and impact of the event.

      Larson gives helpful details about the operation, construction and role of the passenger liner, few sections go beyond a casual perusal of the facts with a dash of novelistic prose, but that was often all that was needed. For some strange reason, Larson opted to make President Wilson's budding romance with his soon-to-be second wife a main topic of the book. I presume this was to provide a lighthearted sideline to the tragedy of the sinking, but it was misplaced. What struck me towards the end was how little Wilson had to do with the sinking of the ship, and by saying that, I mean he had practically no bearing or impact on the Lusitania either before or after its sinking. I would much rather have learned more about what led the Kaiser towards unrestricted submarine warfare, or what was impacting people in the British Admiralty or Cunard's main office rather than a host of extraneous details about Wilson.

      I was very disappointed by the post-sinking section and its analysis of the responsibility of the sinking. This is such a controversial topic, containing one of the few plausible conspiracy theories of great magnitude, mainly, did the British Admiralty deliberately place the Lusitania in harms way in hopes to turn American public opinion against Germany? This was one of the primary reasons in my reading this book, I wanted thoughtful and up-to-date analysis of the conspiracy theory. A large amount of sensationalistic writing abounds in this subject, and I was hoping that Larson would delve into it. Sadly, he didn't analyze this at all, and devoted not more than a page or two to the subject, the keystone of this being a quote from another book plopped into the text with only the most vapid analysis.

      If you're wanting to read a page-turning history book that describes the sinking of the Lusitania and nothing else then this is for you. If you're hoping to get into the meat of the subject look elsewhere.
    • 5/5

      Sep 28, 2024

      Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania is a book that was seriously researched. It took a tragic incident and made it seem like the reader knew some of the travelers on board the ship. A lot is to be learned by the reader with this book. Five stars are given in this review.
    • 5/5

      Sep 21, 2024

      So much history told in a fiction like way. Mr. Larson has a wonderful way of weaving the horrible happenings of WWI in with the intimate details during the ship’s voyage to create this amazing story.
    • 4/5

      Jan 10, 2024

      Its an interesting tidbit of history and information to process. Im not really sure why it ranks so high other than its "entertainment" style or story? Theres a lot of excess details that are loosely connected to the over all story, that it really feels like filler fluff than actual explaination, which seems to be a standard for Larson. At least this book doesn't end right in the middle like the one about Churchill does. I think I agree with some of the other reviewers though, that more detail could have been given into the whys of the government coverups, the conspiracy theories if you will.
    • 3/5

      Dec 19, 2023

      Book club read. Not really my thing, breezy and light on analysis, but it was a pleasant enough read. Well-researched, and I learned quite a lot about submarines.
    • 4/5

      Aug 21, 2023

      This is the story of a ship being torpedoed, but more than that it's the story of how the US got into world war one. It's not quite the gruesome tale of the Wager, but it's still a tragedy of massive loss of life that could have been avoided with more foresight and precautions. There's a lot more politics and less adventure in this than other shipwreck stories, but it's still an informative and fascinating read.
    • 5/5

      Aug 3, 2023

      Larson’s narrative style applied to the sinking of the Lusitania and how it brought America into WWI. Loved it. Always love Larson’s stuff. He’s on auto-buy for forever.
    • 4/5

      Jul 4, 2023

      I really enjoyed this. Erik Larson laid out the events surrounding the Sinking of the Lusitania in a way that reads like a novel. It's informative and quite engaging. I learned all about passenger liners, The British Navy, German submarines, Woodrow Wilson, and tons of events leading up to the American involvement of WWI. I will certainly be reading more Erik Larson. His style of writing is very enjoyable, it carries a lot of tension.
    • 3/5

      Jul 1, 2023

      An excellent history of the sinking of the Lusitania. The description of the act itself and its consequences are riveting. The introductory material is less so; the author finds President Wilson's love letters more interesting than I do. The subsequent attacks on Captain Turner interested me. They are completely analogous to the hoary description of the third stage of a project (the stages are: euphoria, disillusionment, persecution of the innocent and adulation for the uninvolved). I have, like so many, sadly fallen into this category myself, although admittedly in less disastrous circumstances. Churchill, great man though he undoubtedly was, is shown here as the weasel that he could be. I recommend reading the notes, even if after you've finished the text, there are some entertaining stories there.
    • 4/5

      Jun 7, 2023

      Erik Larson makes nonfiction read like a novel without any of the artifice employed by some authors, and Dead Wake is a perfect example. Well-researched and filled with details, Larson tells the story of the Lusitania by moving back and forth between the people on the boat, the governments of the major players, and the crew of the U-boat that shot the deadly torpedo. Dead Wake is an excellent book for readers who want to learn more about the start of WWI, those interested in sea disasters or just looking for a well-written historical narrative.
    • 3/5

      Apr 14, 2023

      One of the 3 things I thought I knew about the sinking of the Lusitania turned out to be incorrect. It did not actually cause the U.S.A. to enter The Great War. I was not charmed by this narrative and the mechanics of "she/he wrote" signalling the survivors with 3rd person reports indicating those who didn't became annoying. It was readable but I did not find it absorbing, but I now know more than 3 things about the Lusitania and they are more likely to be accurate.
    • 3/5

      Apr 29, 2023

      Reason read: TIOLI read a nonfiction book about an ocean liner.
      It was okay, well done in fact, I just did not enjoy it. I don’t find a lot of pleasure about reading about tragedies. I don’t like ships sinking and airplanes falling out of the sky.
    • 4/5

      Feb 18, 2023

      Informative! Haunting! Writing was very engaging.
    • 4/5

      Dec 9, 2023

      On May 15,1915, 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. For months, 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 th era’s greatest transatlantic “greyhounds.” Its captain place tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that kept civilian ships safe for. Attack.
      Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game.
    • 5/5

      Aug 29, 2023

      December 10, 2023
      Lusitania
      Erik Larson

      On May 7, 1915, the Lusitania, the fastest merchant ship of its time, was traveling from New York to Liverpool. The ship never arrived as it was sunk by a German submarine during World War I. This book is an impeccable work of research from the day the ship set sail until the fateful moment of its sinking, featuring testimonies from passengers, the logbooks of both the ship and the submarine, and a question: could it have been avoided? (Translated from Spanish)
    • 4/5

      Dec 23, 2022

      What a fascinating and depressing story, and like so much of history, something that could have been completely avoided.
    • 4/5

      Dec 8, 2022

      This is very readable and interesting, if you are into history and disasters, like the Titanic, but has a little too much non-essential details. It seemed to take forever before it got to the actual torpedo hit and sinking. Learned more about U-boats in the first World War, and how it took two more years before Wilson was able to get the USA into the War. Some more overall perspectives and information could have been included, like how Wilson's second wife later took charge. Still very worthwhile.
    • 5/5

      Oct 31, 2022

      Erik Larson has written a historical account of the last voyage of the Lusitania in the style of a suspense-filled novel. A massive amount of research was involved, as evidenced by the myriad of footnotes and extensive bibliography included at the end. It provides a perspective on the numerous small details, as well as major international decisions, that could have prevented the tragedy. His descriptions of the passengers' stories provide insight into what it was like to live in the era. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys books centered around historical events. Although this work is non-fiction, readers of historical fiction would likely enjoy it too.
    • 5/5

      Oct 29, 2022

      Novelistic nonfiction is the moniker attributed to Erik Larson's particular brand of history writing, meaning, he chooses what to write about based on his ability to find a narrative embedded naturally in an historic event, and Dead Wake is no exception. The "narrative" found in Dead Wake is really a blend of about ten narratives, switching between the passengers on the ill-fated Lusitania, its captain, the commander of the U-boat that sank it, the employees of the mysterious Room 40, as well as Churchill and President Wilson.

      Through alternating narratives (not points of view), readers are able to come to an understanding of the intricate details of the sinking of the Lusitania in Larson's account of the disaster. And therefore, invariably, every reader, regardless of their previous knowledge and study of the event and circumstances, will learn something new. For most, the shocking and new information centers on the Germans and new revelations of The Sound of Music's protagonist Georg von Trapp, or discovering the existence of the Royal Navy's Room 40 which decoded German transmissions. However, as a student of German history, of these two narratives I was already aware and it was simpering, lovesick Wilson that befuddled me. The leader of isolationist America was alternatively heartbroken and lovestruck and not particularly focused on the war going on in the world around him, which was news to me. I had always defended the visionary of the League of Nations to his critics, but I need to revisit my position on it now.

      I had reservations about Dead Wake, but after reading it, and hearing Erik Larson speak, they were quickly squashed. I highly recommend Dead Wake to anyone who truly enjoys a compelling retelling of historical events.
    • 5/5

      Sep 24, 2022

      A well told and researched story of the last crossing of the Lusitania. Larson tells the story of of the Lusitania but also tells about the U-boat commander that crosses her path, some of the passengers onboard and what the British military officials knew and passed on as well as crucial information at was not forwarded. Many small coincidences that did not mean much at the time but loomed large later.
    • 5/5

      Sep 2, 2022

      Excellent. Fascinating. Very well researched. Compellingly readable. Will put the Lusitania sinking in a whole new light from what you learned in school.
    • 5/5

      Apr 29, 2022

      On May 7, 1915, the luxury liner Lusitania enter waters off the coast of Ireland on its voyage from New York to Liverpool. As it closed in on the end of its voyage, it crossed the path of German submarine, U-20. One torpedo fired by U-20 led to the liner sinking very quickly within sight of land throwing the unprepared crew and passengers into the cold but calm waters of St. George's Channel.

      Larson crafted a wonderful book that examines the diaries, memoirs, ship logs including U-20's, newspaper stories of the time, Admiralty records, and other books about the sinking. There was an inquiry almost immediately called by the Admiralty that was to find out what went wrong but really focused on blaming the liner's captain.

      Because there were many Americans among the passengers, Larson examines why the USA didn't immediately enter the war even though it had warned Germany not to attack passenger vessels that may be carrying US citizens. During this period of the war, President Wilson was in personal crises having lost his first wife and then falling in love with a woman who was reluctant to marry the president which caused him to be less focused on the war and the increasing deadly submarine war part of it. We also learn about Room 40 which was an Allied code breaking team which had broken German navy codes and knew where German subs including U-20 were by the many messages they sent to headquarters. Afraid that by revealing too much information they learned through Room 40 would tip off the Germans that their codes had been cracked, they never told the Lusitania that it was in danger and didn't send out naval support as it approached the Irish coast. This reminds one of the Ultra story of WWII. Winston Churchill is a significant player in this part of story.

      Through Larson's amazing detail research we learn a great deal about many of the passengers and crew of the liner and what happened to them that deadly sunny afternoon.
    • 5/5

      Nov 13, 2021

      The recreation of such a tragic event requires a lot of documentation, not only historical but also about seamanship, submarines, and all types of ships. The description of life in a submarine, how they ate, slept, and fought is simply chilling.
      The narrative of the 18 minutes from the impact to the sinking is undoubtedly one of the most shocking and realistic things I have read.
      Then, the investigation. Many factors seem to indicate that there was no intention to protect the Lusitania in order to, in case of an attack, force the U.S. to enter the war. The company tried to blame the captain of the Lusitania against the conspiracy theory. Either that, or it was a colossal blunder.
      In summary, we are faced with a masterpiece of documentary literature. (Translated from Spanish)
    • 4/5

      Jul 3, 2021

      adult nonfiction; 1915 sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania and Wilson's eventual entering of WWI. Also german u-boats. Extensively researched and compiled, per Larson's usual high standards. I kind of wanted to see some of the photos referenced, but he did describe them fairly. I think I enjoyed "Thunderstruck" more--more suspense and a bit more exciting than watching an ocean liner traverse the Atlantic. I would not recommend this to those who prefer a plot-driven narrative, but for fans of Larson it does nicely.
    • 5/5

      Mar 7, 2021

      A very well composed narrative. Since this is a work of non-fiction, there are so many more names and places that come into play then when reading a work of fiction. However, at least if read over a short period of time, Larson writes in a way that it is overall easy to follow along the jumping between different locations and groups. (Often if a person had not been mentioned for some time he included some extra detail or description to help readers recall the person being talked about) He also shows the complexity of the situations - planting the Lusitania solidly within it's historical context - but does so in a way that doesn't take a high level of expertise to grasp.
      Towards the end, some of the descriptions are a bit hard to read through, because he paints such a vivid scene. Yet he does it without going into great graphic detail, either.
    • 4/5

      Feb 2, 2021

      The story at first seemed to drag and it was hard to keep the characters straight, but during and after the sinking of the ship, the book came together in an exciting way. It was interesting to learn how calm most people were in the face of this terrible tragedy and it raised some historical questions that I found perplexing.
    • 4/5

      Nov 7, 2020

      Good book, but it did not grip me and pull me into the story in the same way many of Larson's other books have done. In many of those books, like "Devil in the White City", "Thunderstruck", or "In the Garden of the Beasts", half the fun for me is in seeing the larger history we are all familiar with through the specific experience of real people we otherwise likely wouldn't have heard of.

      Here there isn't a single "story within the story" in that same way. Larson does a great job telling the larger story, including the amazing breadth of detail about the things going on around the sinking of the Lusitania that you expect from him. But the story of Woodrow Wilson falling in love (which seems to be meant to give the reader that same "in" as in his other books) mostly felt like a distraction from the larger story to me.

      Still and all, a fascinating story well told.
    • 5/5

      Sep 6, 2020

      Erik Larson can make history come alive. He really tells this story well. I will read all of his books.

      I was amazed at the wealth of knowledge I gained about this horrible and interesting period of history. The lives and stories of the passengers and crew give us a full accounting of this event.

      WWI was the last of the great wars fought by Europe's aristocracy. For hundreds of years the Kings and Queens of Europe had sent the peasants to the battle field for empire expansion. WWI was no different. Germany's decision to attack civilian ships could draw America into the war but they did it anyway. The sinking of the Lusitania was a major straw in breaking the camels back.
    • 4/5

      Jun 21, 2020

      Very interesting book with great research work by the author that immerses us (and never better said) in the story of this Titanic of wartime, covering large-scale diplomatic relations and the small stories of passengers and crew of the doomed transatlantic, as well as the submarine responsible for the sinking. If anything, the subtitle "The sinking that changed the course of history" is quite exaggerated because, as far as changing goes, it didn't change anything, apart from the tragedy it meant for the passengers and crew, but nothing regarding the course of the war and even less of history. (Translated from Spanish)

    Book preview

    Dead Wake - Erik Larson

    MORE PRAISE FOR ERIK LARSON’S

    DEAD WAKE

    Larson is one of the modern masters of popular narrative nonfiction … a resourceful reporter and a subtle stylist who understands the tricky art of Edward Scissorhands-ing narrative strands into a pleasing story.… An entertaining book about a great subject, and it will do much to make this seismic event resonate for new generations of readers.

    —NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

    Larson is an old hand at treating nonfiction like high drama.… He knows how to pick details that have maximum soapy potential and then churn them down until they foam [, and he] has an eye for haunting, unexploited detail.

    —NEW YORK TIMES

    In his gripping new examination of the last days of what was then the fastest cruise ship in the world, Larson brings the past stingingly alive.… He draws upon telegrams, war logs, love letters and survivor depositions to provide the intriguing details, things I didn’t know I wanted to know.… Thrilling, dramatic and powerful.

    —NPR

    "Larson is a journalist who writes nonfiction books that read like novels, real page-turners. This one is no exception. I had known a lot about the Titanic but little about the Lusitania. This filled in those gaps … this one is pretty damned good. Thoroughly engrossing."

    —GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

    "This enthralling and richly detailed account demonstrates that there was far more going on beneath the surface than is generally known.… Larson’s account [of the Lusitania’s sinking] is the most lucid and suspenseful yet written, and he finds genuine emotional power in the unlucky confluences of forces, ‘large and achingly small,’ that set the stage for the ship’s agonizing final moments."

    —WASHINGTON POST

    Utterly engrossing … expertly ratcheting up the tension … Larson puts us on board with these people; it’s page-turning history, breathing with life.

    —SEATTLE TIMES

    "Larson has a gift for transforming historical re-creations into popular recreations, and Dead Wake is no exception.… [He] provides first-rate suspense, a remarkable achievement given that we already know how this is going to turn out.… The tension, in the reader’s easy chair, is unbearable."

    —BOSTON GLOBE

    "Both terrifying and enthralling. As the two vessels stumble upon each other, the story almost takes on the narrative pulse of Jaws—the sinking was impossible and inevitable at the same time. At no point do you root for the shark, but Larson’s incredible detail pulls you under and never lets you go."

    —ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

    Erik Larson [has] made a career out of turning history into best sellers that read as urgently as thrillers.… A meticulous master of non-fiction suspense.

    —USA TODAY

    [Larson] vividly captures the disaster and the ship’s microcosm, in which the second class seems more appealing than the first.

    —THE NEW YORKER

    [Larson is] a superb storyteller and a relentless research hound.

    —LEV GROSSMAN, TIME

    [Larson] proves his mettle again as a weaver of tales of naïveté, calumny and intrigue. He engagingly sketches life aboard the liner and amply describes the powers’ political situations.… The panorama Mr. Larson surveys is impressive, as is the breadth of his research and the length of his bibliography. He can’t miss engaging readers with the curious cast of characters, this ship of fools, and his accounting of the sinking itself and the survivors’ ordeals are the stuff of nightmares.

    —WASHINGTON TIMES

    "Readers looking for a swift, emotionally engaging account of one of history’s great sea disasters will find Dead Wake grimly exhilarating. Larson is an exceptionally skilled storyteller, and his tick-tock narrative, which cuts between the Lusitania, U-20 and the political powers behind them, is pitch-perfect."

    —RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH

    "Larson so brilliantly elucidates [the Lusitania’s fate] in Dead Wake, his detailed forensic and utterly engrossing account of the Lusitania’s last voyage.… Yes, we know how the story of the Lusitania ends, but there’s still plenty of white-knuckle tension. In Dead Wake, he delivers such a marvelously thorough investigation of the ship’s last week that it practically begs Hollywood blockbuster treatment."

    —TORONTO GLOBE AND MAIL

    Larson’s nimble, exquisitely researched tale puts you dead center … Larson deftly pulls off the near-magical feat of taking a foregone conclusion and conjuring a tale that’s suspenseful, moving and altogether riveting.

    —DALLAS MORNING NEWS

    "With each revelation from Britain and America, with each tense, claustrophobic scene aboard U-20, the German sub that torpedoed the ship, with each vignette from the Lusitania, Larson’s well-paced narrative ratchets the suspense. His eye for the ironic detail keen, his sense of this time period perceptive, Larson spins a sweeping tale that gives the Lusitania its due attention. His book may well send Leonardo DiCaprio chasing its film rights."

    —SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

    "An expertly crafted tale of individual and corporate hubris, governmental intrigue and cover-up, highlighting a stunning series of coincidences and miscalculations that ultimately placed the Lusitania in the direct path of the catastrophic strike.… [Larson’s] pacing is impeccable."

    —MIAMI HERALD

    [Larson] has a gift for finding the small, personal details that bring history to life.… His depiction of the sinking of the ship, and the horrific 18 minutes between the time it was hit and the time it disappeared, is masterly, moving between strange, touching details.

    —COLUMBUS DISPATCH

    "In the hands of a lesser craftsman, the fascinating story of the last crossing of the Lusitania might risk being bogged down by dull character portraits, painstaking technical analyses of submarine tactics or the minutiae of WWI-era global politics. Not so with Erik Larson.… Larson wrestles these disparate narratives into a unified, coherent story and so creates a riveting account of the Lusitania’s ending and the beginnings of the U.S.’s involvement in the war."

    —PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE

    "In your mind, the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania may be filed in a cubbyhole.… After reading Erik Larson’s impressive reconstruction of the Lusitania’s demise, you’re going to need a much bigger cubbyhole.… Larson’s book is a work of carefully sourced nonfiction, not a novelization, but it has a narrative sweep and miniseries pacing that make it highly entertaining as well as informative."

    —MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL

    Larson breathes life into narrative history like few writers working today.

    —MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

    "Now the tragic footnote to a global conflagration, the history of the [Lusitania’s] final voyage … is worthy of the pathos and narrative artistry Erik Larson brings to Dead Wake.… Readers of Larson’s previous nonfiction page turners … will not be disappointed. He’s an excellent scene setter and diligent researcher who tells the story with finesse and suspense."

    —NEWSDAY

    "The story of the Lusitania’s sinking by a German U-boat has been told before, but Larson’s version features new details and the gripping immediacy he’s famous for."

    —PEOPLE

    "We can’t wait for the James Cameron version of Erik Larson’s Dead Wake."

    —NEW YORK

    Larson … long ago mastered the art of finding overlooked and faded curiosities and converting them into page-turning popular histories. Here, again, he manages the same trick.

    —THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

    "Fans of Erik Larson’s narrative nonfiction have trusted that whatever tale he chooses to tell, they’ll find it compelling. Dead Wake proves them right.… History at its harrowing best."

    —NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

    A quickly paced, imminently readable exploration of an old story you may only half-know.

    —ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

    "We all know how the story ends, but Larson still makes you want to turn the pages, and turn them quickly. What makes the story is that Larson takes a few main characters—the Lusitania’s Captain William Thomas Turner, President Woodrow Wilson, U-boat Captain Walther Schwieger, Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat, architect Theodate Pope, and a few minor ones—and weaves them together towards the inevitable and tragic conclusion. Larson has done his research. The number of details and anecdotes that he has managed to cobble together are fascinating in themselves."

    —FOREIGN POLICY

    Larson turns this familiar tale into a finely written elegy on the contingency of war.

    —MACLEAN’S

    Larson is a master storyteller and quickens the pace as target and attackers hurtle toward their inevitable, deadly rendezvous. The suspense builds because readers care about his fully formed characters, and it’s not always clear who will live and who will die.

    —SALON

    Because Larson has such a sense of story, when he gets to the tragedy itself, the book hums along in vivid form. You feel, viscerally, what it’s like to be on a sinking ship, and the weight of life lost that day. The fact that this is coming through a page-turner history book, where all the figures and details reveal an impeccable eye and thorough research, is just one of the odd pleasures of Larson’s writing.

    —FLAVORWIRE

    "[Larson] thrillingly chronicles the liner’s last voyage.… He draws upon a wealth of sources for his subject—telegrams, wireless messages, survivor depositions, secret intelligence ledgers, a submarine captain’s war log, love letters, admiralty and university archives, even morgue photos of Lusitania victims.… Filled with revealing political, military and social information, Larson’s engrossing Dead Wake is, at its heart, a benediction for the 1,198 souls lost at sea."

    —TAMPA BAY TIMES

    "Larson, an authority on nonfiction accounts, expounds on our primary education, putting faces to the disaster and crafting an intimate portrait in Dead Wake. A lover of history will get so close to the story … that it is hard not to feel as if you are on board with new friends."

    —FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

    "In a well-paced narrative, Larson reveals the forces large and small, natural and man-made, coincidental and intentional, that propelled the Lusitania to its fatal rendezvous.… Larson’s description of the moments and hours that followed the torpedo’s explosive impact is riveting.… Dead Wake stands on its own as a gripping recounting of an episode that still has the power to haunt a reader 100 years later."

    —BUFFALO NEWS

    Larson, who was once described as ‘an historian with a novelist’s soul,’ has written a book which combines the absorbing tenor of fiction with the realities of history.

    —TORONTO SUN

    "[Larson] shows that narrative history can let us have it both ways: great drama wedded to rigorous knowledge. The German torpedoing of the great ship 100 years ago was almost as deadly as the Titanic sinking, and far more world-changing. Larson makes it feel as immediate and contingent as the present day."

    —VULTURE

    "The bestselling author of The Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck puts his mastery of penning parallel narratives on display as he tells the tale of the sinking of the Lusitania by a German submarine, building an ever-growing sense of dread as the two vessels draw closer to their lethal meeting.… He goes well beyond what’s taught in history classes to offer insights into British intelligence and the dealings that kept the ship from having the military escort so many passengers expected to protect it.… By piecing together how politics, economics, technology, and even the weather combined to produce an event that seemed both unlikely and inevitable, he offers a fresh look at a world-shaking disaster."

    —THE A.V. CLUB

    An intriguing, entirely engrossing investigation into a legendary disaster.

    —KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW

    Factual and personal to a high degree, the narrative reads like a grade-A thriller.

    —BOOKLIST, STARRED REVIEW

    "[Larson] has always shown a brilliant ability to unearth the telling details of a story and has the narrative chops to bring a historical moment vividly alive. But in his new book, Larson simply outdoes himself.… What is most compelling about Dead Wake is that, through astonishing research, Larson gives us a strong sense of the individuals—passengers and crew—aboard the Lusitania, heightening our sense of anxiety as we realize that some of the people we have come to know will go down with the ship. A story full of ironies and ‘what-ifs,’ Dead Wake is a tour de force of narrative history."

    —BOOKPAGE, TOP PICK

    With a narrative as smooth as the titular passenger liner, Larson delivers a riveting account of one of the most tragic events of WWI.… A blunt reminder that war is, at its most basic, a matter of life and death.

    —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

    Once again, Larson transforms a complex event into a thrilling human interest story. This suspenseful account will entice readers of military and maritime history along with lovers of popular history.

    —LIBRARY JOURNAL

    Copyright © 2015, 2016 by Erik Larson

    Reader’s Guide copyright © 2015, 2016 by Penguin Random House LLC

    Excerpt from The Demon of Unrest copyright © 2024 by Erik Larson

    All rights reserved.

    Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC,

    New York.

    www.crownpublishing.com

    Broadway Books and its logo, B \ D \ W \ Y, are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

    Extra Libris and the accompanying colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

    Originally published in hardcover in slightly different form in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2015.

    The Reader’s Guide first appeared on penguinrandomhouse.com in 2015.

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Larson, Erik, 1954–

    Dead wake : the last crossing of the Lusitania / by Erik Larson.—First edition.

    p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    Lusitania (Steamship) 2. World War, 1914–1918—Naval operations, German. 3. Shipping—Government policy—Great Britain—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Title: Last crossing of the Lusitania.

    D592.L8L28 2015

    940.4′514—dc23 2014034182

    ISBN 9780307408877

    Ebook ISBN 9780553446753

    Maps: Jeffrey L. Ward

    Frontispiece: Mary Evans/Epic/Tallandier

    Cover design: Darren Haggar

    Cover photography: Stefano Oppo/Getty Images

    rh_3.1_148355210_c0_r12

    CONTENTS

    Cover

    Title Page

    Copyright

    Dedication

    Maps

    Great Britain and Environs, 1914

    Southwest Great Britain, 1914

    MINING SUSPENSE

    Epigraph

    A WORD FROM THE CAPTAIN

    PART I   BLOODY MONKEYS

    Lusitania: The Old Sailorman

    Washington: The Lonely Place

    Lusitania: Sucking Tubes and Thackeray

    U-20: The Happiest U-Boat

    Lusitania: Menagerie

    Room 40: The Mystery

    Lusitania: A Cavalcade of Passengers

    Room 40: Blinker’s Ruse

    Washington: Lost

    Lusitania: Under Way

    U-20: Toward Fair Isle

    Lusitania: Rendezvous

    Room 40: Cadence

    PART II   JUMP ROPE AND CAVIAR

    U-20: The Blind Moment

    Lusitania: A Sunday at Sea

    Room 40; Queenstown; London: Protecting Orion

    U-20: A Perilous Line

    Lusitania: Halibut

    U-20: The Trouble With Torpedoes

    Lusitania: Sunshine and Happiness

    Room 40: The Orion Sails

    U-20: Frustration

    London; Berlin; Washington: Comfort Denied

    Lusitania: The Manifest

    U-20: At Last

    Sighting

    Room 40: Schwieger Revealed

    Lusitania: Helpful Young Ladies

    U-20: Spectacle

    Lusitania: Life After Death

    U-20: Change of Plan

    Lusitania: Messages

    London; Washington; Berlin: Tension

    U-20: Fog

    PART III   DEAD WAKE

    The Irish Sea: Engines Above

    London; Washington: The King’s Question

    The Irish Sea: Funnels on The Horizon

    Lusitania: Beauty

    U-20: Treff!

    PART IV   THE BLACK SOUL

    Lusitania: Impact

    First Word

    Lusitania: Decisions

    U-20: Schwieger’s View

    Lusitania: The Little Army

    Telegram

    Lusitania: A Queen’s End

    All Points: Rumor

    Lusitania: Adrift

    U-20: Parting Shot

    Lusitania: Seagulls

    Queenstown: The Lost

    PART V   THE SEA OF SECRETS

    London: Blame

    Washington; Berlin; London: The Last Blunder

    EPILOGUE:  PERSONAL EFFECTS

    SOURCES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

    NOTES

    BIBLIOGRAPHY

    Other Books by This Author

    About the Author

    Extra Libris

    Excerpt from The Demon of Unrest

    _148355210_

    For Chris, Kristen, Lauren, and Erin

    (and Molly and Ralphie, absent, but not forgotten)

    Detail left

    Detail right

    MINING SUSPENSE

    (A Note to Readers)

    I FIRST STARTED READING about the Lusitania on a whim, following my between-books strategy of reading voraciously and promiscuously. What I learned both charmed and horrified me. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the incident, but, as so often happens when I do deep research on a subject, I quickly realized how wrong I was. Above all, I discovered that buried in the muddled details of the affair—deliberately muddled, in certain aspects—was something simple and satisfying: a very good story.

    I hasten to add, as always, that this is a work of nonfiction. Anything between quotation marks comes from a memoir, letter, telegram, or other historical document. My goal was to try to marshal the many nodes of real-life suspense and, yes, romance that marked the Lusitania episode, in a manner that would allow readers to experience it as did people who lived through it at the time (although squeamish readers may wish to skip the details of a certain autopsy that appears late in the narrative).

    In any event, I give you now the saga of the Lusitania, and the myriad forces, large and achingly small, that converged one lovely day in May 1915 to produce a tragedy of monumental scale, whose true character and import have long been obscured in the mists of history.

    ERIK LARSON

    SEATTLE

    A WORD ABOUT TIME: To avoid confusing myself and readers, I’ve converted German submarine time to Greenwich Mean Time. Thus an entry in Kptlt. Walther Schwieger’s War Log for 3:00 P.M. becomes 2:00 P.M. instead.

    AS FOR BRITAIN’S ADMIRALTY: It is important always to keep in mind that the Admiralty’s top official was the First Lord, who served as a kind of chief executive officer; his second-in-command was First Sea Lord, essentially the chief operating officer, in charge of day-to-day naval operations.

    The Captains are to remember that, whilst they are expected to use every diligence to secure a speedy voyage, they must run no risk which by any possibility might result in accident to their ships. They will ever bear in mind that the safety of the lives and property entrusted to their care is the ruling principle which should govern them in the navigation of their ships, and no supposed gain in expedition, or saving of time on the voyage, is to be purchased at the risk of accident.

    RULES TO BE OBSERVED IN THE COMPANY’S SERVICE, THE CUNARD STEAM-SHIP COMPANY LIMITED, MARCH 1913

    The first consideration is the safety of the U-boat.

    ADM. REINHARD SCHEER,

    Germany’s High Sea Fleet in the World War, 1919

    A WORD FROM THE CAPTAIN

    ON THE NIGHT OF MAY 6, 1915, AS HIS SHIP APPROACHED the coast of Ireland, Capt. William Thomas Turner left the bridge and made his way to the first-class lounge, where passengers were taking part in a concert and talent show, a customary feature of Cunard crossings. The room was large and warm, paneled in mahogany and carpeted in green and yellow, with two fourteen-foot-tall fireplaces in the front and rear walls. Ordinarily Turner avoided events of this kind aboard ship, because he disliked the social obligations of captaincy, but tonight was no ordinary night, and he had news to convey.

    There was already a good deal of tension in the room, despite the singing and piano playing and clumsy magic tricks, and this became more pronounced when Turner stepped forward at intermission. His presence had the perverse effect of affirming everything the passengers had been fearing since their departure from New York, in the way that a priest’s arrival tends to undermine the cheery smile of a nurse.

    It was Turner’s intention, however, to provide reassurance. His looks helped. With the physique of a bank safe, he was the embodiment of quiet strength. He had blue eyes and a kind and gentle smile, and his graying hair—he was fifty-eight years old—conveyed wisdom and experience, as did the mere fact of his being a Cunard captain. In accord with Cunard’s practice of rotating captains from ship to ship, this was his third stint as the Lusitania’s master, his first in wartime.

    Turner now told his audience that the next day, Friday, May 7, the ship would enter waters off the southern coast of Ireland that were part of a zone of war designated by Germany. This in itself was anything but news. On the morning of the ship’s departure from New York, a notice had appeared on the shipping pages of New York’s newspapers. Placed by the German Embassy in Washington, it reminded readers of the existence of the war zone and cautioned that vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or of any of her allies, are liable to destruction and that travelers sailing on such ships do so at their own risk. Though the warning did not name a particular vessel, it was widely interpreted as being aimed at Turner’s ship, the Lusitania, and indeed in at least one prominent newspaper, the New York World, it was positioned adjacent to Cunard’s own advertisement for the ship. Ever since, about all the passengers had been doing was thinking, dreaming, sleeping, and eating submarines, according to Oliver Bernard, a theater-set designer traveling in first class.

    Turner now revealed to the audience that earlier in the evening the ship had received a warning by wireless of fresh submarine activity off the Irish coast. He assured the audience there was no need for alarm.

    Coming from another man, this might have sounded like a baseless palliative, but Turner believed it. He was skeptical of the threat posed by German submarines, especially when it came to his ship, one of the great transatlantic greyhounds, so named for the speeds they could achieve. His superiors at Cunard shared his skepticism. The company’s New York manager issued an official response to the German warning. "The truth is that the Lusitania is the safest boat on the sea. She is too fast for any submarine. No German war vessel can get her or near her." Turner’s personal experience affirmed this: on two previous occasions, while captain of a different ship, he had encountered what he believed were submarines and had successfully eluded them by ordering full speed ahead.

    He said nothing about these incidents to his audience. Now he offered a different sort of reassurance: upon entering the war zone the next day, the ship would be securely in the care of the Royal Navy.

    He bade the audience good night and returned to the bridge. The talent show continued. A few passengers slept fully clothed in the dining room, for fear of being trapped below decks in their cabins if an attack were to occur. One especially anxious traveler, a Greek carpet merchant, put on a life jacket and climbed into a lifeboat to spend the night. Another passenger, a New York businessman named Isaac Lehmann, took a certain comfort from the revolver that he carried with him always and that would, all too soon, bring him a measure of fame, and infamy.

    With all but a few lights extinguished and all shades pulled and curtains drawn, the great liner slid forward through the sea, at times in fog, at times under a lacework of stars. But even in darkness, in moonlight and mist, the ship stood out. At one o’clock in the morning, Friday, May 7, the officers of a New York–bound vessel spotted the Lusitania and recognized it immediately as it passed some two miles off. You could see the shape of the four funnels, said the captain, Thomas M. Taylor; she was the only ship with four funnels.

    Unmistakable and invulnerable, a floating village in steel, the Lusitania glided by in the night as a giant black shadow cast upon the sea.

    PART I

    BLOODY MONKEYS

    LUSITANIA

    THE OLD SAILORMAN

    THE SMOKE FROM SHIPS AND THE EXHALATIONS OF THE river left a haze that blurred the world and made the big liner seem even bigger, less the product of human endeavor than an escarpment rising from a plain. The hull was black; seagulls flew past in slashes of white, pretty now, not yet the objects of horror they would become, later, for the man standing on the ship’s bridge, seven stories above the wharf. The liner was edged bow-first into a slip at Pier 54, on the Hudson, off the western end of Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, one of a row of four piers operated by the Cunard Steam-Ship Company of Liverpool, England. From the two catwalks that jutted outward from the ship’s bridge, its wings, the captain could get a good look along the full length of the hull, and it was here that he would stand on Saturday, May 1, 1915, a few days hence, when the ship was to set off on yet another voyage across the Atlantic.

    Despite the war in Europe, by now in its tenth month—longer than anyone had expected it to last—the ship was booked to capacity, set to carry nearly 2,000 people, or souls, of whom 1,265 were passengers, including an unexpectedly large number of children and babies. This was, according to the New York Times, the greatest number of Europe-bound travelers on a single vessel since the year began. When fully loaded with crew, passengers, luggage, stores, and cargo, the ship weighed, or displaced, over 44,000 tons and could sustain a top speed of more than 25 knots, about 30 miles an hour. With many passenger ships withdrawn from service or converted to military use, this made the Lusitania the fastest civilian vessel afloat. Only destroyers, and Britain’s latest oil-fueled Queen Elizabeth–class battleships, could move faster. That a ship of such size could achieve so great a speed was considered one of the miracles of the modern age. During an early trial voyage—a circumnavigation of Ireland in July 1907—a passenger from Rhode Island sought to capture the larger meaning of the ship and its place in the new century. "The Lusitania," he told the Cunard Daily Bulletin, published aboard ship, is in itself a perfect epitome of all that man knows or has discovered or invented up to this moment of time.

    The paper reported that the passengers had taken a vote of censure against Cunard for two flagrant omissions from the ship. She has neither a grouse moor nor a deer forest aboard. One passenger noted that if the need for a new Noah’s ark ever arose, he would skip the bit about building the boat and just charter the Lusitania, for I calculate that there is room on her for two of every animal extant and more.

    The Bulletin devoted the last paragraph to waggling Cunard’s fingers at Germany, claiming that the ship had just received news, by wireless, that Kaiser Wilhelm himself had sent a telegram to the ship’s builders: "Please deliver me without delay a dozen—baker’s measure—Lusitanias."

    From the first, the ship became an object of national pride and affection. In keeping with Cunard’s custom of naming its ships for ancient lands, the company had selected Lusitania, after a Roman province on the Iberian Peninsula that occupied roughly the same ground as modern-day Portugal. The inhabitants were warlike, and the Romans conquered them with great difficulty, said a memorandum in Cunard’s files on the naming of the ship. They lived generally upon plunder and were rude and unpolished in their manners. In popular usage, the name was foreshortened to Lucy.

    There was nothing rude or unpolished about the ship itself. As the Lusitania departed Liverpool on its first transatlantic run in 1907, some one hundred thousand spectators gathered at various points along the Mersey (pronounced Merzey) River to watch, many singing Rule, Britannia! and waving handkerchiefs. Passenger C. R. Minnitt, in a letter he wrote aboard ship, told his wife how he had climbed to the highest deck and stood near one of the ship’s four towering funnels to best capture the moment. You do not get any idea of her size till you get right on top and then it is like being on Lincoln Cathedral, Minnitt wrote. I went over parts of the 1st class and it is really impossible to describe, it is so beautiful.

    The ship’s beauty belied its complexity. From the start, it needed a lot of attention. In its first winter, woodwork in the first-class writing room and dining saloon and in various passageways began to shrink and had to be rebuilt. Excess vibration forced Cunard to pull the ship from service so that extra bracing could be installed. Something was always breaking or malfunctioning. A baking oven exploded, injuring a crew member. Boilers needed to be scaled and cleaned. During crossings in winter, pipes froze and ruptured. The ship’s lightbulbs failed at an alarming rate. This was no small problem: the Lusitania had six thousand lamps.

    The ship endured. It was fast, comfortable, and beloved and, as of the end of April 1915, had completed 201 crossings of the Atlantic.

    TO READY the ship for its Saturday, May 1, departure, much had to be done, with speed and efficiency, and at this Capt. William Thomas Turner excelled. Within the Cunard empire, there were none better than he at handling large ships. While serving a rotation as captain of Cunard’s Aquitania, Turner had achieved a measure of fame during an arrival in New York by fitting the ship into its slip and snugging it to its wharf in just nineteen minutes. He held the record for a round voyage, meaning round-trip, which he achieved in December 1910, when, as captain of the Lusitania’s twin, the Mauretania, he piloted the ship to New York and back in just fourteen days. Cunard rewarded him with a Silver Salver. He found it very gratifying but also surprising. I did not expect to receive any such recognition of my part in the matter, he wrote, in a thank-you letter. We all on board simply tried to do our duty as under any ordinary circumstances.

    Complex, detailed, and messy, this process of readying the Lusitania involved a degree of physical labor that was masked by the ship’s outward grace. Anyone looking up from the dock saw only beauty, on a monumental scale, while on the far side of the ship men turned black with dust as they shoveled coal—5,690 tons in all—into the ship through openings in the hull called side pockets. The ship burned coal at all times. Even when docked it consumed 140 tons a day to keep furnaces hot and boilers primed and to provide electricity from the ship’s dynamo to power lights, elevators, and, very important, the Marconi transmitter, whose antenna stretched between its two masts. When the Lusitania was under way, its appetite for coal was enormous. Its 300 stokers, trimmers, and firemen, working 100 per shift, would shovel 1,000 tons of coal a day into its 192 furnaces to heat its 25 boilers and generate enough superheated steam to spin the immense turbines of its engines. The men were called the black gang, a reference not to their race but to the coal dust that coated their bodies. The boilers occupied the bottom deck of the ship and were gigantic, like wheelless locomotives, each 22 feet long and 18 feet in diameter. They needed close attention at all times, for when fully pressurized each stored enough explosive energy to tear a small ship in half. Fifty years earlier, exploding boilers had caused America’s worst-ever maritime disaster—the destruction of the Mississippi River steamboat Sultana at a cost of 1,800 lives.

    No matter what measures the crew took, coal dust migrated everywhere, under stateroom doors, through keyholes, and up companionways, compelling stewards to go through the ship with dust cloths to clean rails, door handles, table tops, deck chairs, plates, pans, and any other surface likely to collect falling soot. The dust posed its own hazard. In certain concentrations it was highly explosive and raised the possibility of a cataclysm within the ship’s hull. Cunard barred crew members from bringing their own matches on board and provided them instead with safety matches, which ignited only when scraped against a chemically treated surface on the outside of the box. Anyone caught bringing his own matches aboard was to be reported to Captain Turner.

    The ship was built to be fast. It was conceived out of hubris and anxiety, at a time—1903—when Britain feared it was losing the race for dominance of the passenger-ship industry. In America, J. P. Morgan was buying up shipping lines in hopes of creating a monopoly; in Europe, Germany had succeeded in building the world’s fastest ocean liners and thereby winning the Blue Riband, awarded to the liner that crossed the Atlantic in the shortest time. By 1903 German ships had held the Riband for six years, to the sustained mortification of Britain. With the empire’s honor and Cunard’s future both at stake, the British government and the company agreed to a unique deal. The Admiralty would lend Cunard up to £2.4 million, or nearly $2 billion in today’s dollars, at an interest rate of only 2.75 percent, to build two gigantic liners—the Lusitania and Mauretania. In return, however, Cunard had to make certain concessions.

    First and foremost, the Admiralty required that the Lusitania be able to maintain an average speed across the Atlantic of at least 24.5 knots. In early trials, it topped 26 knots. There were other, more problematic conditions. The Admiralty also required that the two ships be built so that in the event of war they could be readily equipped with naval artillery and brought into service as armed auxiliary cruisers. The Admiralty went so far as to direct the Lusitania’s builders to install mounts, or holding-down rings, in its decks, capable of accepting a dozen large guns. Moreover, the Lusitania’s hull was to be designed to battleship specifications, which required the use of longitudinal coal bunkers—essentially tunnels along both sides of the hull to store the ship’s coal and speed its distribution among the boiler rooms. At the time, when naval warfare took place at or above the waterline, this was considered smart warship design. To naval shipbuilders, coal was a form of armor, and longitudinal bunkers were thought to provide an additional level of protection. A naval engineering journal, in 1907, stated that the coal in these bunkers would limit how far enemy shells could penetrate the hull and thus would counteract, as far as possible, the effect of the enemy’s fire at the water line.

    When the war began, the Admiralty, exercising rights granted by its deal with Cunard, took possession of the Lusitania but soon determined the ship would not be effective as an armed cruiser because the rate at which it consumed coal made it too expensive to operate under battle conditions. The Admiralty retained control of the Mauretania for conversion to a troopship, a role for which its size and speed were well suited, but restored the Lusitania to Cunard for commercial service. The guns were never installed, and only the most astute passenger would have noticed the mounting rings embedded in the decking.

    The Lusitania remained a passenger liner, but with the hull of a battleship.

    A STICKLER for detail and discipline, Captain Turner called himself an old-fashioned sailorman. He had been born in 1856, in the age of sail and empire. His father had been a sea captain but had hoped his son would choose a different path and enter the church. Turner refused to become a devil-dodger, his term, and at the age of eight somehow managed to win his parents’ permission to go to sea. He wanted adventure and found it in abundance. He first served as a cabin boy on a sailing ship, the Grasmere, which ran aground off northern Ireland on a clear, moonlit night. Turner swam for shore. All the other crew and all passengers aboard were rescued, though one infant died of bronchitis. Had it been stormy, one passenger wrote, I believe not a soul could have been saved.

    Turner moved from ship to ship and at one point sailed under his father’s command, aboard a square-rigger. I was the quickest man aloft in a sailing ship, Turner said. His adventures continued. While he was second mate of a clipper ship, the Thunderbolt, a wave knocked him into the sea. He had been fishing at the time. A fellow crewman saw him fall and threw him a life buoy, but he floated for over an hour among circling sharks before the ship could fight its way back to his position. He joined Cunard on October 4, 1877, at a salary of £5 per month, and two weeks later sailed as third officer of the Cherbourg, his first steamship. He again proved himself a sailor of more than usual bravery and agility. One day in heavy fog, as the Cherbourg was leaving Liverpool, the ship struck a small bark, which began to sink. Four crew and a harbor pilot drowned. The Cherbourg dispatched a rescue party, which included Turner, who himself pulled a crewman and a boy from the rigging.

    Turner served as third officer on two other Cunard ships but resigned on June 28, 1880, after learning that the company never promoted a man to captain unless he’d been master of a ship before joining the company. Turner built his credentials, earned his master’s certificate, and became captain of a clipper ship, and along the way found yet another opportunity to demonstrate his courage. In February 1883, a boy of fourteen fell from a dock into Liverpool Harbor, into water so cold it could kill a man in minutes. Turner was a strong swimmer, at a time when most sailors still held the belief that there was no point in knowing how to swim, since it would only prolong your suffering. Turner leapt in and rescued the boy. The Liverpool Shipwreck and Humane Society gave him a silver medal for heroism. That same year he rejoined Cunard and married a cousin, Alice Hitching. They had two sons, the first, Percy, in 1885, and Norman eight years later.

    Even now, as a certified ship’s master, Turner’s advance within Cunard took time. The delay, according to his best and longtime friend, George Ball, caused him great frustration, but, Ball added, never, at any time, did he relax in devotion to duty nor waver in the loyalty he always bore to his ship and his Captain. Over the next two decades, Turner worked his way upward from third officer to chief officer, through eighteen different postings, until on March 19, 1903, Cunard at last awarded him his own command. He became master of a small steamship, the Aleppo, which served Mediterranean ports.

    His home life did not fare as well. His wife left him, took the boys, and moved to Australia. Turner’s sisters hired a young woman, Mabel Every, to care for him. Miss Every and Turner lived near each other, in a suburb of Liverpool called Great Crosby. At first she served as a housekeeper, but over time she became more of a companion. She saw a side of Turner that his officers and crew did not. He liked smoking his pipe and telling stories. He loved dogs and cats and had a fascination with bees. He liked to laugh. On the ships he was a very strict disciplinarian, Miss Every wrote, but at Home he was a very kind jolly man and fond of children and animals.

    DESPITE THE SORROW that shaded his personal life, his career gained momentum. After two years as master of the Aleppo, he moved on to command the Carpathia, the ship that later, in April 1912, under a different captain, would become famous for rescuing survivors of the Titanic. Next came the Ivernia, the Caronia, and the Umbria. His advance was all the more remarkable given that he lacked the charm and polish that Cunard expected its commanders to display. A Cunard captain was supposed to be much more than a mere navigator. Resplendent in his uniform and cap, he was expected to exude assurance, competence, and gravitas. But a captain also served a role less easy to define. He was three parts mariner, one part club director. He was to be a willing guide for first-class passengers wishing to learn more about the mysteries of the ship; he was to preside over dinners with prominent passengers; he was to walk the ship and engage passengers in conversation about the weather, their reasons for crossing the Atlantic, the books they were reading.

    Turner would sooner bathe in bilge. According to Mabel Every, he described passengers as a load of bloody monkeys who are constantly chattering. He preferred dining in his quarters to holding court at the captain’s table in the first-class dining room. He spoke little and did so with a parsimony that could be maddening; he also tended to be blunt. On one voyage, while in command of the Carpathia, he ran afoul of two priests, who felt moved to write to Cunard complaining of certain remarks that Turner had made when they asked permission to hold a Roman Catholic service for third-class passengers. Exactly what Turner said cannot be known, but his remarks were sufficient to cause Cunard to demand a formal report and to make the incident a subject of deliberation at a meeting

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