Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of The Lusitania, is a narrative non-fiction thriller written by Eric Larson, describing the final, and disastrous voyage of the British ocean liner, the Lusitania. Similarly to the Titanic, the Lusitania was thought to be unsinkable, and those who voyaged within it had extreme confidence in the ship that eventually contributed to its downfall. The sheer size of the ship, and its speed and capability to exterminate smaller vessels at ease immediately dispelled any thought of it being a target of war. The story takes place in the early 1900 's, when the war between Britain and Germany during World War 1 had just begun. There was an agreement that non-military ships could not be targeted by either side. The book creates a notion of hero and villain, where the Lusitania and crew are the protagonists, and the German U-boat is the antagonist. The captain of the ship, William Turner, and his passengers including Theodate Pope, a talented architect and avid feminist, Leslie and Cliff Morton, who are brothers that work with the ship, and Charles Lauriat, the well-known author who has countless priceless novels at his possession. The German U-boat has a quite different atmosphere and crew. Larson describes each character in detail at the book 's beginning, never forgetting to …show more content…
The amount of research that must have gone into this book to create the atmosphere of the ship is astonishing. Not only does it cover the destruction of the Lusitania, but it also depicts everything that was happening before, during, and after the bombing. This includes what is was like inside the ship, the roles of the crew members, the backgrounds of many characters, the career of the Captain of the Lusitania and the eccentricity of his personality, what the ship looked like, its décor, and the ship 's