Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania review

Dead Wake tells the story of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania on May 7, 1915, when a German U-boat torpedoed the British ocean liner off the coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people aboard, including 128 Americans. The event accelerated American public opinion toward entering the war and is one of the central incidents of World War I's escalation. Erik Larson tells it through three interweaving narratives: the passengers and crew aboard the Lusitania, the U-20 submarine and its commander Walter Schwieger, and Room 40, the British naval intelligence unit that had broken the German naval code and knew where the U-20 was operating.

That third thread — Room 40 — is where Larson's account becomes most unsettling. British naval intelligence possessed information that could have protected the Lusitania by routing it away from the submarine or dispatching a destroyer escort. Neither happened. Larson documents the bureaucratic failures, the turf battles between naval intelligence and operational command, and the possibility — which he addresses carefully — that Churchill or others in the Admiralty may have found a sinking useful for bringing America into the war. He does not accuse Churchill of deliberate conspiracy, but he makes the case that the inaction was remarkable and deserves scrutiny.