Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy

Diana Preston's "Luisitania: An Epic Tragedy" is to the writing of history what Frank Sinatra is to pop singing, what Michael Jordan is to baketball what...well you get the picture. The 1915 sinking of the luxury liner by a German u-boat is given a thorough and yet entertaining treatment by the British author.Preston sets the stage, introducing World War I, passenger liners, submarine warfare and the main players in the drama. Indeed, Preston's greatest gift is fully acquainting the reader with the individuals whose lives were forever altered or ended by the ships' sinking.This is at once a technical explanation for the sinking, an overview of the policial forces then at work yet a compassionate study of people. Preston goes on to study the aftermath of the sinking. Again from varying standpoints, such as the long term effects on the war and and again the people involved.Having read nothing previous on the Luisitania I am admittedly guessing in claiming that this is the defintive book on the subject. But I can safely vouch for the fact that it is meticulously reserached, even-handed and at all times readable.What a pleasure.

I suspect it is very difficult to write about individual people involved in a mass tragedy in such a way as to make them come alive without becoming mired in detail. The author succeeds in doing just that. We have a "cast of characters" -- notables and non-notables -- aboard the Lusitania, as it makes its last voyage. When, as we know it will, the ship sinks, we are anxious to know what happened to the people we "knew". The author also manages to set the stage with historical background of the development of submarines and the context of the war, and the political scene, as well as to follow the political repercussions and the investigation into the sinking. All in all, a page-turner, well researched (with tons of footnotes, just the way i like it). The big surprise to me was how long it took rescuers to get to the ship, which was relativel close to shore.

Move over Stephen Ambrose! This historian has outdone you with her seamless melding of diaries, public records, newspaper accounts, military records, and her prose as the glue. Read this book, including appendix, acknowledgements and, even the references (!) in two long but captivated sittings! Surpases Ambrose's, Undaunted Courage - my previous favorite. On a par with McCullough's John Adams. Bravo, Mrs. Preston.

This was the time honored tradition that governed war at sea. Britain and Germany were at war since August 4, 1914, when WWI commenced. Nevertheless warship captains were in the habit of signalling or firing warning shots, allowing crew and passengers of merchantmen to disembark before consigning ship and cargo to the watery depths. Rewards were for tonnage sunk not the numbers of persons sent to "Davey Jones' Locker". This wouldn't apply to the RMS Lusitania anyway. At 785 feet and displacing nearly 40,000 tons with a capacity of carrying 2,000 passengers and 850 crew, she was no mere merchantman but a luxury passenger liner advertised as the "Queen of the Seas". She sailed with impunity, without escort, and according to a well publicized and regular schedule. This was no doubt the mindset of Captain William Turner as he got the Lusitania underway on the morning of May 1, 1915 for the return voyage from New York to Liverpool; the ship's 202nd Atlantic crossing. Turner would also be comforted in knowing that the ship had thirty-four electrically controlled watertight doors which made her "virtually unsinkable" (the same words used to describe a certain ship involved in an earlier titanic catastrophe at sea). Lusitania was popularly known as the "Greyhound of the Sea" due to a top speed in excess of 25 knots and this seemed to have given Turner great confidence as he declared "a torpedo can't get the Lusitania - she runs too fast." This gripping account by Diana Preston shows the false bravado of that statement and the truth of LUSITANIA being instead known as "An Epic Tragedy". On May 7 in broad daylight the ship was torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-20 within sight of the coast of Ireland. The ship went down in under twenty minutes with the loss of 1,201 lives including 291 women and 94 children. There was utter shock and disbelief and the repercussions were immediate with worldwide condemnation of the sinking. There were 128 Americans among those lost including Alfred Vanderbilt. In the US, official complacency and public isolationist sentiments totally evaporated. What made it worse was that there had been no warning whatsoever. Only a trail of bubbles indicated an incoming torpedo. This book is Preston's attempt to sort out why the usual rules of war were disregarded with the Lusitania "carrying civilian men, women and children". As is true of most tragedies at sea, the sinking of the ship is usually only the highwater mark, there is invariably confusion, controversy, and if it's a big enough event, there's sure to be conspiracy theories about. So it is with the Lusitania. One of the issues Preston looks at is: Did 32 year old Kapitan Leutnant Walther Schweiger - the commander of U-20 - know what he was firing at?, and did he act on his own initiative or under specific orders? This ties in with the larger theme of whether the Lusitania was a legitimate target as the Germans claimed. There are at least three versions offered as rationa