Lusitania An Epic Tragedy

by Preston, Diana

• ISBN13: 9780802713759
• ISBN10: 0802713750
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-01
• Publisher: Walker Books

Summary

On May 7, 1915, toward the end of her 101st eastbound crossing, from New York to Liverpool, England, R.M.S.Lusitania-- pride of the Cunard Line and one of the greatest ocean liners afloat-- became the target of a terrifying new weapon and a casualty of a terrible new kind of war. Sunk off the southern coast of Ireland by a torpedo fired from the German submarineU-20, she exploded and sank in eighteen minutes, taking with her some twelve hundred people, more than half of the passengers and crew. Cold-blooded, deliberate, and unprecedented in the annals of war, the sinking of theLusitaniashocked the world. It also jolted the United States out of its neutrality-- 128 Americans were among the dead-- and hastened the nation's entry into World War I. In her riveting account of this enormous and controversial tragedy, Diana Preston recalls both a pivotal moment in history and a remarkable human drama. The story of theLusitaniais a window on the maritime world of the early twentieth century: the heyday of the luxury liner, the first days of the modern submarine, and the climax of the decades-long German-British rivalry for supremacy of the Atlantic. It is a critical chapter in the progress of World War I and in the political biographies of Woodrow Wilson, William Jennings Bryan, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill. Above all, it is the story of the passengers and crew on that fateful voyage-- a story of terror and cowardice, of self-sacrifice and heroism, of death and miraculous survival. With a historian's insight and a novelist's gift for characterization and detail, Preston re-creates the events surrounding theLusitania's last voyage, from the behind-the-scenes politics in each country and the German spy ring in New York, to the extraordinary scene as the ship sank and the survivors awaited rescue, to the controversial inquests in Britain and the United States into how the ship came to be hit and why she sank so quickly. Captain William Turner, steadfast and trustworthy but overconfident, believed that "a torpedo can't get theLusitania-- she runs too fast." The passenger list included the rich and powerful (American millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, theater producer Charles Frohman, Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat) as well as newlyweds and nursemaids, galley cooks and stokers, Quakers and cardsharps, ship's detectives and German stowaways. Preston weaves their voices throughout her compelling narrative, giving it a powerful immediacy. Drawing on a vast array of sources-- including interviews with survivors, letters and memoirs, recently released American and Admiralty archives, and previously untranslated German documents-- Diana Preston has resolved the controversies surrounding theLusitaniaand written the definitive account of this pivotal event in western history.

Author Biography

Diana Preston is the author of The Boxer Rebellion: A First Rate Tragedy; and The Road to Culloden Moor. A "fascinating" storyteller "with an obvious addiction to the details of history" (The Washington Post), she lives in London, England, with her husband, Michael.

Table of Contents

Prologue	1	(8)
PART ONE Troubled Waters
A Scrap of Paper	9	(23)
The Weapon of the Weaker Nation	32	(13)
More Beautiful than Solomon's Temple	45	(20)
Gott Strafe England!	65	(13)
The American Armory	78	(13)
PART TWO Final Crossing
The Warning	91	(16)
Leaving Harbor	107	(11)
The Ostrich Club	118	(19)
Fellow Passengers	137	(11)
Inside the U-20	148	(11)
``The Miraculous Draught of Fishes''	159	(8)
Into the War Zone	167	(8)
``Suppose They Should Sink the Lusitania?''	175	(14)
PART THREE An Ocean Red with Blood
``My God, We Are Lost''	189	(12)
``Come at Once!''	201	(17)
A Bizarre Orchestra of Death	218	(13)
Wave upon Wave	231	(11)
A Long Lingering Moan	242	(16)
Rescues and Recoveries	258	(19)
The Town of the Dead	277	(16)
A Sad and Horrible Task	293	(14)
PART FOUR ``Remember the Lusitania!''
The Hun's Most Ghastly Crime	307	(8)
Fool or Traitor?	315	(17)
No Longer Neutral Spectators	332	(13)
German Agents Are Everywhere	345	(10)
The Kaiser's Business Only	355	(11)
``That Story Is Forever Disposed Of''	366	(5)
Diving into the Wreck	371	(12)
PART FIVE Willful Murder?
A Legitimate Target?	383	(11)
Harm's Way	394	(15)
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes	409	(5)
The U-Boat Diary	414	(7)
A New Barbarism	421	(6)
Epilogue	427	(12)
Appendix A The Lusitania in Facts and Figures	439	(2)
Appendix B A Technical Account of the Sinking	441	(14)
Acknowledgments	455	(2)
Notes and Sources	457	(45)
Bibliography	502	(9)
Art Credits	511	(1)
Index	512

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