Dead Wake

To my eyes luxury liners such as the Lusitania and Titanic both of which sank in different circumstances appear pretentious, ugly, graceless. They are obviously large targets for icebergs, mines, torpedoes. They were also testaments to hubris and greed. One of the mysteries of WW#2 is the fact that the Queen Mary and Elizabeth both converted as troop ships managed to make multiple Atlantic crossings unscathed.

Larson brings to the topic his usual penchant for thorough background information while making the text thoroughly readable.

Until the modern nuclear submarine a submarine was a surface vessel capable of temporary submersion. Capable of launching an attack from stealth they were instruments of torture for their crews that often proved to be their coffins. As Canada's white elephant diesel-electric subs have proven there are hundreds of things that can go wrong with them. Nuclear submarines can remain submerged indefinitely and are launched with all the fuel they'll ever need. Russia's concrete subs can rest on the bottom totally undetected.

On the other hand the grey ghosts that are the subject of this book were eminently sinkable. The story here is that of the inevitable meeting of Lusitania and U-20. The outcome is no spoiler, it is history and the loss of life served in no small measure to drag America into WW#1.

To invest the reader emotionally in the eventual outcome of the tale Larson devotes considerable attention to describing various passengers and crew members. To place the reader vicariously on board considerable attention is paid to details of daily ship-board life--the meals, the games, the feuds, the gambling.

The one mystery still unsolved. Did the Admiralty deliberately leave the Lusitania to the wolves in a deliberate attempt to force the US into the war or were they just inept?