A lesson learned from DEAD WAKE: THE LAST CROSSING OF THE LUSITANIA, by Erik Larson

 Ordinary people ignore global events at their own peril.

    One great advantage of having a local paperback bookstore is being able to pretty cheaply catch up on popular older books that I missed out on, and over the past few days I breezed through Erik Larson's 2015 bestseller Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. Larson is a famous example of a "narrative historian," a term historians used to describe a writer who focuses on pleasing the masses. To that end, Larson is willing to write his books in a way that focuses on telling stories and increasing tension, and he's also willing to speculate on people's thoughts and feelings, in ways that make professional historians shudder (as obviously not all that stuff is backed up by solid evidence), but which is fun and generally inoffensive. The sinking of the famous ship Lusitania has become an historical footnote as one of the events that contributed to America joining World War I on the side of the Allies, and its legend has paled to that of the Titanic sinking, which has famously since become a metaphor for just about every type of disaster. Larson's deep dive (pun intended!) into the story of the Lusitania felt strangely relevant in the early days of 2026, as the people who booked passage on the world's fanciest and most luxurious ship did so while ignoring blatant signs that the world was spinning out of control in ways that could directly impact their own lives and safety.

    Larson notes that in contrast to the Titanic sinking, the owners and crew of the Lusitania did prepare for a disaster (trying, as people have for over a century since, to learn lessons from the Titanic), and both had enough lifeboats for everyone on the ship, and tried to give the crew basic training on how to quickly deploy them. Rather, the larger failing of everyone involved in the ship was in thinking that luxury cruise passages across the Atlantic could more-or-less continue on as normal, even as World War I escalated and expanded its chaos across the globe. As the war fell into a bloody stalemate in the trenches of Western Europe, an increasingly desperate Germany began to bank everything on its submarine warfare choking out the economic life of the British Empire, and that meant sinking everything going into Britain on the risk that it might be carrying material valuable for the war effort. Germany had warned other countries of its intention to do so, in violation of international law and much to the annoyance of President Woodrow Wilson and the American leadership (who was to fault in the collapse of international standards in World War I is debated to this day; most historians fault the increasingly aggressive and fanatical expansionary Germans, but they rightfully pointed out that the British had began a blockade intended to starve them out beforehand as well). In early 1915, American leaders were desperate to avoid involvement in the war, and warned American travelers to avoid the war zone whenever possible.

    In spite of the growing international conflagration, American and British travelers continued to book passage on ships such as the Lusitania, based on a number of mistaken beliefs--that the Germans would never dare sink a passenger ship, that the British and Americans would protect its passage, and that the Lusitania (alas) was unsinkable, especially by something as crude and inaccurate as a WWI era torpedo. Larson tells the stories of blissfully ignorant passengers going about their lives and joking about the submarine threats, when all the while a German submarine patrolling the region desperately looked for any ship to threaten (as the German government awarded sinkings based on tonnage).

    The Lusitania disaster was a culmination of incredible good and bad luck. The Lusitania, on its last full day of traveling, happened into perfect weather and calm seas when in prior days fog and rain had masked its approach to any submarines. Upon sighting the ship, the German submarine fired a single torpedo in a direction that the ship had just happened to veer toward (the captain had been attempting to time his approach to the coast), and that torpedo traveled perfectly when they had a high chance of misfiring. Upon hitting the ship, the torpedo caused multiple explosions that are still mysterious, but likely were a result of hitting the various coal dust deposits within the ship. While the passengers and crew had expected the ship to be able to stay afloat for hours, the explosions sent the ship plunging into the ocean at an incredible rate, taking less than 20 minutes to sink. Many of the crew who had been trained in lifeboat deployment were killed in the explosions, which meant that in spite of all the preparation the ship's evacuation was just as chaotic and deadly as the Titanic's had been. To top it all off, due to the dangers of the war it was hours before anyone dared out into the waters to pick up survivors, meaning many survivors stuck out in the water in life jackets also drowned or froze to death.

    Larson's book is a quick read that is accessible to everyone, even if it only gets truly gripping in the final 100 pages or so as the ship is targeted and sunk. However, I was also struck by some eerie similarities to the present moment. As the world of 2026 feels like an increasingly dark and unpredictable place, millions around the world continue to go about their daily lives and assume that none of it will ever affect them personally. You ignore global and political developments at your own peril, as did the hapless passengers of the Lusitania who had assumed that no global war would ever affect anything so untouchable as a giant luxury transportation trip.