Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

by Erik Larson

“The essence of war is violence,” he wrote, “and moderation in war is imbecility.”

The disaster had an important secondary effect: because two of the cruisers had stopped to help survivors of the initial attack and thus made themselves easy targets, the Admiralty issued orders forbidding large British warships from going to the aid of U-boat victims.

What Germany never acknowledged was that Britain merely confiscated cargoes, whereas U-boats sank ships and killed men.

The most important effect of all this was to leave the determination as to which ships were to be spared, which to be sunk, to the discretion of individual U-boat commanders. Thus a lone submarine captain, typically a young man in his twenties or thirties, ambitious, driven to accumulate as much sunk tonnage as possible, far from his base and unable to make wireless contact with superiors, his vision limited to the small and distant view afforded by a periscope, now held the power to make a mistake that could change the outcome of the entire war.

it depends upon the attitude of a single submarine commander whether America will or will not declare war.”

U-boats in fact traveled underwater as little as possible, typically only in extreme weather or when attacking ships or dodging destroyers.

In this day before sonar, a submarine traveled utterly blind, trusting entirely in the accuracy of sea charts. One great fear of all U-boat men was that a half-sunk derelict or an uncharted rock might lie in their path.

In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a “dead wake.”

“When Death is as close as he was then, the sharp agony of fear is not there; the thing is too overwhelming and stunning for that.”

OF THE LUSITANIA’S 1,959 PASSENGERS AND CREW, only 764 survived; the total of deaths was 1,195. The 3 German stowaways brought the total to 1,198. Of 33 infants aboard, only 6 survived. Over 600 passengers were never found. Among the dead were 123 Americans.

“There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight,” he told his audience. “There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”

“probably the most unfortunate phrase that [Wilson] had ever coined.”

That June, 1916, the Kaiser issued an order forbidding attacks against all large passenger ships, even those that were obviously British. He went on to order so many restrictions on how and when U-boat commanders could attack ships that the German navy, in protest, suspended all operations against merchant vessels in British waters.