Lusitania remembered in two new books

The legends of lost ships call to us like siren songs. We never tire of the Titanic's re-telling, and as we near the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania -- on May 7 -- there are two new books to remind us of an era of ocean-going glamour and war-wasted lives.

Erik Larson's Dead Wake (*** out of four stars) is the more … titanic of the two, given Larson's best-selling stature as a non-fiction spellbinder. As for their Lusitania (**1/2 stars), Greg King and Penny Wilson tell the sad tale with less in the way of Larson's cinematic cross-cutting and descriptive flair. But when it comes to the Lusitania, the story counts more than the style.

In the popular imagination, of course, the British passenger ship Lusitania pulls up short of the iceberg-doomed Titanic. But in fact the Lusitania's sinking was a more complicated and arguably a more important affair.

Torpedoed by a German U-boat in the 10th month of World War I, the Lusitania, fast and four-funneled, was nearing Liverpool, having left from New York, when it met its end. With nearly 1,200 lives lost -- including more than 120 Americans -- the tragedy helped propel the U.S. toward war and the defeat of Germany.

But unanswered questions shroud the event. The Irish channel was lousy with German U-boats and everyone knew the danger. Did the British Admiralty fail to provide a naval escort for the Lusitania because its likely sinking would draw the U.S. into the war? What caused the second massive explosion that sank the ship, since only one torpedo had hit it? Was Admiralty Lord Winston Churchill behind a plot to sacrifice the Lusitania for the greater good?

Typically, Larson (The Devil in the White City) turns it all into a ripping yarn of Edwardian gentility yielding to merciless modernity. Crafting characters from history that will resonate with casting directors, he conveys the "coolness and good humor" of U-boat captain Walther Schweiger; the "blond hair... blunt chin, and vivid blue eyes" of Lusitania survivor and Connecticut luminary Theodate Pope (one of America's few female architects of note); and the venerable Lusitania Capt. William Thomas Turner, "none better than he at handling large ships." But Larson doesn't manage to imbue these figures with rich inner life, so they seem rather stock.

Instead, the most evocative aspects of Larson's well-researched plotting may be his descriptions of the German submarine's shockingly close quarters, the unshowered stench of dozens of men stuffed like sardines in a tin can, with but one toilet among them. And Larson foreshadows steadily to build suspense, noting that despite British intelligence reports of a surge in U-boat activity in the Irish sea, no efforts were made to warn Capt. Turner or divert the Lusitania.

Ultimately, Larson can't answer the tough questions or deliver much more than previous historians of the Lusitania have done, and neither can authors King and and Wilson in their Lusitania. They focus atmospherically but often dully on the details of first-class shipboarding ("After a selection of cheeses, passengers could choose from an array of cakes, puddings, tortes, petit fours, and ice cream").

And so the passengers and their fates are chronicled dutifully and with much quotation from historical sources by King and Wilson. Several glossy pages of photographs are a welcome addition, though, allowing us to see the lively faces and forms of victims lost to time and tide. True to every cliche of shipwreck and tragedy, those faded black-and-white pictures seem worth more than the millions of words spent on the Lusitania.

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania

By Erik Larson

Crown, 430 pp.

3 stars out of four

Lusitania: Triumph, Tragedy and the End of the Edwardian Age

By Greg King and Penny Wilson

St. Martin's Press, 299 pp.

2.5 stars