If Schwieger had attacked a military boat or convoy, he would have been well within his rights. jwbriggs13ĭo you think Captain Schwieger and his U-20 crew were committing acts of terrorism? Does it matter that Germany ran advertisements declaring the waters around Great Britain to be a war zone?

While there were many things he still could not, and never will be, able to share, he had fabulous stories. I had the pleasure of working for many years with a retired US Naval officer who spent his career on submarines, mostly during the Cold War. Too many pieces were stacked against him and his ship, from lack of current. He did the best with what he had information-wise to go on. Here are some of the comments posted about Dead Wake.Īfter reading Dead Wake, what was your impression of Captain Turner? Was he cautious enough? How did you react to the Admiralty's attempts to place the blame on him?Ĭaptain Turner, being an experienced captain, knew the danger of traversing those waters during wartime. Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers! Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era.

As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more-all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic 'Greyhounds' and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants.

DEAD WAKE by Erik Larson