Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

I apologize if it seems like a long time between book reviews or posts of any sort. I suppose I could have written a post about how family sadness, family involvement and travel interfere with reading. I'll address part of that now. In case you are wondering, that's mostly why it took me about a month to finish Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Eric Larson.

We experienced a family tragedy a little over a month ago. I was incredibly sad and spent much time trying to draw comfort from others who were feeling the loss. When I sat down to read, I didn't want to read about further sadness which is why I picked up The Rosie Effect in the midst of reading Dead Wake. I needed something not so closely linked to death. And it was a good call.

Further, I thought that, based on past history, I'd easily be able to finish Dead Wake on two plane rides that were scheduled. Dead Wake seemed the perfect book to read when I had long stretches of time to devote to reading. My first flight was not quite 2 weeks ago, on JetBlue, the airline that has a TV monitor at every seat. I'm not much of a TV person, but I am a TV news junkie and whatever was in the news the day I flew (I'm thinking the mass shooting at Pulse in Orlando - which followed the shooting of the American Idol star a few days earlier - in Orlando - and was followed by the attack of a little boy by an alligator, once again in Orlando) held my attention longer than Dead Wake. 

I was kept busy while away with not that much reading getting done in the evenings before turning out the lights. I now depended upon my flight home on Delta to make a big dent in my reading. I attempted to fly home for the first time last Friday. My flight was delayed over 7 small increments. In anticipation of the flight taking off "soon," I had trouble focusing on anything other than what was going on around me. The net result was that my flight was delayed just under 11 hours. After about 10 hours of being at the airport, I was given the opportunity to cancel my flight with a full refund... which I did. While in the line to cancel, I booked a flight for the next day on JetBlue. I returned to where I'd been staying for one more night. Another night with no reading. Would the TV monitor distract me on the return flight the way it did on the outbound flight? I mean, seriously, the news of Brexit was (and still is) pretty darn compelling.

The reading gods were on my side. My TV monitor didn't work. I didn't even consider complaining. I really wanted to read Dead Wake. And so I did.

I'm always glad to read a book that gives me knowledge of historical situations I previously knew very little about. I really knew very little about the sinking of the Lusitania before reading Dead Wake:The Last Crossing of the Lusitania (which is the June book for Books & Beer Club). I realized that most of my knowledge about World War I was based on novels I'd read about Canadians fighting in the war. I don't think I knew anything about the United State's role in the war. I also assumed, the same way that Eric Larson did before he started doing so much research, was that Germany sunk the Lusitania and for whatever reason that so enraged the United States which then declared war against Germany.

By reading this book, I realize how little I knew. And even the little bit that I knew was pretty much wrong. It took over two years for the United States to enter the war. Two years after so many of its citizens were lost and killed by a German u-boat attack against a British merchant liner. (Another area where my knowledge was pretty weak - I always thought that merchant liners were boats that carried shipping containers. I didn't realize the term applied to what I'd consider a luxury cruise liner, transporting passengers across the Atlantic.) I also never gave a thought to the fact that the Lusitania went down so soon after the Titanic sunk. That has some relevance because of some of the safeguards that had been put into place after the sinking of the Titanic.

Eric Larson uses archived material to create a living, breathing story of the last crossing of the Lusitania. We get to the know the captain of the ship. We get to know many of the passengers on board. We even get to know the captain of the submarine, U-20, that thrilled when the Lusitania went down. The sinking of the Lusitania was no longer a maritime tragedy. It was a tragedy involving people that we felt something about. I know what I think about the German u-boat captain but I'm still not sure how I felt about Turner, the captain of the Lusitania, or about any of the higher ups at Cunard, the line that owned the ship as things were playing out. I have a better sense of how I felt at the end of the narrative but I won't divulge that because it's a spoiler.

I want to say I'm amazed that much was NOT done by the British government that allowed a tragedy such as the Lusitania to happen. With my disillusionment with government at the moment, I just can't allow myself to say I am amazed. Governments do what they want to do. The have their motives which guide their actions. The best interests of the people are not always first and foremost. The fact that Woodrow Wilson waited so long to declare war against Germany (and the added fact that this action was applauded by so many Americans) is in sharp contrast to some of the war mongering I see going on currently.

I know feel like I can have an intelligent conversation about the sinking of the Lusitania and to some extent about why the United States took so long to take action. I can't wait for Wednesday evening's book club meeting.

Would I recommend this book? Yes, I would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys narrative historical non-fiction. 

Something that still has me thinking, though, unrelated to this specific story, is the reliance on the written archives to create a narrative such as this. With so much communication and documentation being created online (think emails, online forms used for logging information), will future non-fiction writers have the same resources available to them to create narratives like Dead Wake? I wonder...