Dead Wake Quotes

“The track lingered on the surface like a long pale scar. In maritime vernacular, this trail of fading disturbance, whether from ship or torpedo, was called a “dead wake.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Man plans, God laughs.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“I think my thought and imagination contain the picture and perceive its significance from every point of view. I have to force myself not to dwell upon it to avoid the sort of numbness that comes from deep apprehension and dwelling upon elements too vast to be yet comprehended or in any way controlled by counsel.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“the most likely explanation is that there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Undersecretary of State Robert Lansing, number two man in the State Department, tried to put this phenomenon into words in a private memorandum. “It is difficult, if not impossible, for us here in the United States to appreciate in all its fullness the great European War,” he wrote. “We have come to read almost with indifference of vast military operations, of battle lines extending for hundreds of miles, of the thousands of dying men, of the millions suffering all manner of privation, of the wide-spread waste and destruction.” The nation had become inured to it all, he wrote. “The slaughter of a thousand men between the trenches in northern France or of another thousand on a foundering cruiser has become commonplace. We read the headlines in the newspapers and let it go at that. The details have lost their interest.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Off the southeast tip of Italy a young Austrian U-boat commander named Georg von Trapp, later to gain eternal renown when played by Christopher Plummer in the film The Sound of Music, fired two torpedoes into a large French cruiser, the Leon Gambetta. The ship sank in nine minutes, killing 684 sailors.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Belief in such things was widespread in America and Britain at the start of the twentieth century, when an Ouija board was a regular fixture in drawing rooms, to be brought out after dinner for impromptu séances.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“NOW FIVE DAYS into its voyage, the Lusitania made its way toward Britain alone, with no escort offered or planned, and no instruction to take the newly opened and safer North Channel route—this despite the fact that the ship carried a valuable cache of rifle cartridges and desperately needed shrapnel shells.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“The most terrifying part of battle was the exit from a trench—standing up and climbing out, knowing that the opposing force would at that moment unleash a fusillade that would continue until the offensive concluded, either with victory, meaning a few yards gained, or defeat, a few yards lost, but invariably with half one’s battalion dead, wounded, or missing. “I shall never forget the moment when we had to leave the shelter of the trenches,” wrote British private Ridley Sheldon, of combat at Helles, at the southwest tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. “It is indeed terrible, the first step you take—right into the face of the most deadly fire, and to realize that any moment you may be shot down; but if you are not hit, then you seem to gather courage. And when you see on either side of you men like yourself, it inspires you with a determination to press forward. Away we went over the parapet with fixed bayonets—one line of us like the wind. But it was absolute murder, for men fell like corn before the sickle.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“The men lived for the moment the boat ascended to the surface and the hatch in the conning tower was opened. “The first breath of fresh air, the open conning-tower hatch and the springing into life of the Diesels, after fifteen hours on the bottom, is an experience to be lived through,” said another commander, Martin Niemöller.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“THE ADMIRALTY’S focus was elsewhere, on a different ship that it deemed far more valuable.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“As Wilson mourned his wife, German forces in Belgium entered quiet towns and villages, took civilian hostages, and executed them to discourage resistances. In the town of Dinant, German soldiers shot 612 men, women, and children. The American press called such atrocities acts of "frightfulness," the word then used to describe what later generations would call terrorism. On August 25, German forces bean an assault on the Belgian city of Louvain, the "Oxford of Belgium," a university town that was home to an important library. Three days of shelling and murder left 209 civilians dead, 1,100 buildings incinerated, and the library destroyed, along with its 230,000 books, priceless manuscripts, and artifacts. The assault was deemed an affront to just to Belgium but to the world. Wilson, a past president of Princeton University, "felt deeply the destruction of Louvain," according to his friend, Colonel House; the president feared "the war would throw the world back three or four centuries.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Mrs. Caillaux bought a gun, practiced with it at the gunsmith’s shop, then went to the editor’s office and fired six times. In her testimony, offering an unintended metaphor for what was soon to befall Europe, she said, “These pistols are terrible things. They go off by themselves.” She”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“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. As”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“We were still looking upon war in the light of Victorian and previous wars,” Morton wrote later, adding that he and his brother had failed to appreciate that the “nature and method of war had changed for all time in August 1914 and that no war in the future would exclude anybody, civilians, men, women or children.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“He knew not only WHAT to wear, but HOW to wear it.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“What I have now at your generous hands is infinitely precious to me. It would kill me to part with it,—I could not and I hope you could not. And I will be patient, patient without end, to see what, if anything, the future may have [in] store for me.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“A Bridgeport, Connecticut, man presented his girlfriend with an engagement ring and handed her one end of a ribbon; the other end disappeared into his pocket. “A surprise,” he said, and urged her to pull it. She obliged. The ribbon was attached to the trigger of a revolver. The man died instantly.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Families learned of the deaths of kin mostly by telegram, but some knew or sensed their loss even when no telegram brought the news. Husbands and wives had promised to write letters or send cables to announce their safe arrival, but these were never sent. Passengers who had arranged to stay with friends in England and Ireland never showed up. The worst were those situations where a passenger was expected to be on a different ship but for one reason or another had ended up on the Lusitania”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“German forces in Belgium entered quiet towns and villages, took civilian hostages, and executed them to discourage resistance. In the town of Dinant, German soldiers shot 612 men, women, and children. The American press called such atrocities acts of “frightfulness,” the word then used to describe what later generations would call terrorism. On”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“It instructed Germany’s ambassador in Mexico to offer Mexican president Venustiano Carranza an alliance, to take effect if the new submarine campaign drew America into the war. “Make war together,” Zimmermann proposed. “Make peace together.” In return, Germany would take measures to help Mexico seize previously held lands—“lost territory”—in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Mrs. Arthur Luck of Worcester, Massachusetts, traveling with her two sons, Kenneth Luck and Elbridge Luck, ages eight and nine, to rejoin her husband, a mining engineer who awaited them in England. Why in the midst of great events there always seems to be a family so misnamed is one of the imponderables of history.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Wilson was outraged but chose not to see the declaration itself as sufficient justification for war. What he did not yet know was that there was a second, very secret message appended to the telegram Bernstorff had received and that both telegrams had been intercepted and relayed to Blinker Hall’s intelligence division in the Old Admiralty Building in London, which by now oversaw a second, and singularly sensitive, component of Room 40’s operations—the interception of diplomatic communications, both German and, incidentally, American.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“But Zimmermann surprised him. On Friday, March 2, during a press conference, Zimmermann himself confirmed that he had sent the telegram. “By admitting the truth,” Lansing wrote, “he blundered in a most astounding manner for a man engaged in international intrigue. Of course the message itself was a stupid piece of business, but admitting it was far worse.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“If you had to jump six or seven feet or certainly drown, it's surprising how far even older people will jump.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Passengers drank and smoked. Both; a lot. This was a significant source of profit for Cunard. The company laid in a supply of 150 cases of Black & White Whiskey, 50 cases of Canadian Club Whiskey, and 50 of Plymouth Gin; also, 15 cases each of an eleven-year-old French red wine, a Chambertin, and an eleven-year-old French white, a Chablis, and twelve barrels of stout and ten of ale. Cunard stockpiled thirty thousand “Three Castles” cigarettes and ten thousand Manila cigars. The ship also sold cigars from Havana and American cigarettes made by Phillip Morris. For the many passengers who brought pipes, Cunard acquired 560 pounds of loose Capstan tobacco—“navy cut”—and 200 pounds of Lord Nelson Flake, both in 4-ounce tins. Passengers also brought their own. Michael Byrne, a retired New York merchant and former deputy sheriff traveling in first class, apparently planned to spend a good deal of the voyage smoking. He packed 11 pounds of Old Rover Tobacco and three hundred cigars. During the voyage, the scent of combusted tobacco was ever present, especially after dinner.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“If you cannot give me all that I want—what my heart finds it hard now to breathe without—it is because I am not worthy. I know instinctively you could give it if I were—and if you understood,—understood the boy’s heart that is in me and the simplicity of my need, which you could fill so that all my days would be radiant.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“...if no deliberate plan existed to put the Lusitania in danger, "one is left with an unforgivable cock-up as an explanation.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“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.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

“Why in the midst of great events there always seems to be a family so misnamed is one of the imponderables of history.”
― Erik Larson, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania