Some of the voyage colliding with this tragedy that passengers dont know their sailing into . It is like the collision of those ideas . Note. I was drawn to the lusitania because i have this maritime thing, everyone does, the titanic, the flying dutchman, i think what happens is there is something about the idea of being any amount of what happened to you, that is what taps into my brain. The isolation of it . The isolation and romance, and suddenly that is my scandinavian roots. And from minnesota and south dakota. You won them over. Being scandinavian, and we are a seafaring people. Before su falls, we were pillaging from the sea. You were that night. We were that died. You know something about the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald. I think this kind of defies your theory because there was nothing all that glamorous. It is and worship on Lake Superior and yet it is something the the anniversary of the sinking that we observed, and talk about every year. I dont find that particularly romantic. I find that sinking and amazing event. On the great lakes and from what i understand meteorologist we the great lakes are terrible places to become incredible windstorms and the waves become something you dont even experience on the ocean. That is the fascinating part of the edmund fitzgerald. My dark fantasies tend toward the deep sea. Speaking of the deep sea i am sure we were researching this you were studying the underwater photos and video of the lusitania wreck. Not really. Really . Why . Every question so far. Thank you, erik larson, that is how it is going to go tonight. Really, let me elaborate a little bit. I did late in the process look at the under see photography Robert Ballard had done. I didnt want that to, my impression during the course of my research of what this voyage was like. I didnt want it to be this rusting hulk on the floor of the ocean which is what it is now. I wanted in my mind this great glamorous ship with all these great glamorous spaces and people walking the board and so forth. That is why i did in that way. That makes sense. Is lying in more than free hundred feet of water on its stoppards side. And i dont want to jump too far ahead but it saying very quickly. Do you know why it is lying in the position that it is . I cant tell you for sure if it is lying on the starter or port side. I am not sure in this end that that had much to do with exactly how it saying. What i do know is when it sank for much of that time, it was only 18 minutes. For much of that time it was 25 degrees list. It may well be that it is on the stock broadside but just before it went under it was so full of water and there was no imbalance and plunged underneath. Whether it wound up on its port or stoppards i cant remember but it is on its side. How does that 18 minutes thinking compare . How unusual is that . Incredibly unusual. Think about the titanic. The thing about the titanic is it was the rather leisurely sinking but there and not enough an odd way i am not making light of the sinking of the titanic. I am saying relatively speaking it was a leisurely rate of sinking. And as you know the big issue with the titanic is there were not enough lifeboats. The issue with the lusitania is there were more than enough lifeboats, more than enough lifeboats. There were 22 class a and lifeboats which you traditionally think of when you think of lifeboats but they also have a lot of collapsible boats which were stored underneath and that is how they made up the difference. The problem with the lusitania was the net result was almost the same as the titanic because half of the boats were unusable because of this 25 degree list. You can picture this. The boats on the portside once you try to let those go they swung into the superstructure. Those on the start assignment law were to the rails suddenly out eight feet from the hole. If you can imagine getting into one of these boats you are already 60 feet above the sea and now you got to cross this eight foot span, using deck chairs as ladders. One of my favorite vignettes is of little boy, of course it is a boy, takes a running leap and jumps into the lifeboat. That was the problem with the lusitania and the fact that it is saying so fast because of how it was struck. You mentioned the titanic, there is a connection with the captain of the lusitania and the titanic. To remember that right . No. No . Wasnt he being called to court . The connection i thought you with thinking of him being a cat that some point of it but theres an interesting connection with the titanic and that is on the day before departure which would have been the departure on may 1st, 1915 capt. Turner was called it to give testimony at a big titanic legal proceeding, limitation of liability proceeding in new york, the White Star Line was trying to limit its exposure to various lawsuits as a result of the sinking since the term limitation of liability hearing turner was called as an Expert Witness to testify as to the behavior of the titanics capt. And why he was going so fast through ice and turner did not approve. Capt. Turner knew that there were risks to this crossing, that he was about to undertake. A lot of the passengers knew that too. Capt. Turner i am not quite sure i agree with that. Five. What we are talking about here is on may 1st and interesting thing happened in new york. The new york newspapers that morning in the shipping newspapers which were widely read the German Embassy placed an advertisement warning anybody who is traveling on a passenger liner or any kind of merchant ship, when they enter the waters around the United Kingdom, socalled war zone that germany declared that february reiterating this worse than existed and if you settles you fail that your own risk. That did not name the lusitania but it was widely interpreted to be aimed at the lusitania because in the new york worlds, and one of these notices appeared next to the ad for cunards lusitania. Attending advertising person probably said this. Many people, somehow did not come up after the ship was a few hours out was a wonderful time to find out, captain turner knew about the warning but i dont think he was at all faced by it. I dont think he was a sailor of the old school, came up, great sailors ships, and when you get on an airliner i hate to fly i look for all kinds of cues. Can somebody else do that . Very cool and calm. I heard woody allen in a heartbeat. Turner was the kind of guy if you cant picture him, he would say yes, he is my guy. He was not fazed by the potential of submarine attack. He firmly believed that his ship was faster and bigger than anything any german submarine can tackle. That is interesting too. You describe how few people really understood how dangerous the german submarine was at that point. You have a note here that the author of Sherlock Holmes actually got it. This is one of the fascinating elements. I agree with you. [laughter] it is going to be good from here on in. The thing is whenever when i write history, the way i like to write it, one important thing is to put yourself in the point of view of the ear of. One thing that was important to grasp for me was how new the submarine was in that time. We are very familiar with it, run silent run deep, all that stuff. There was no sonar in world war i and no depth charges until after the lusitania so the submarine was brandnew and was not understood by anybody as to whether it would never be a viable weapon and a couple guys got it. One was there Arthur Conan Doyle who before the war wrote this really prescient shortstory about an imaginary european country called onorland which is obviously germany that had a handful of submarines and nonetheless managed to bring the and British Empire to its knees and that was his story which ran, he wrote it long before the war but it was published the month before the war. The other guy was jackie fisher. The admiralty hierarchy in britain, the first lord of the admiralty was winston churchill, he was the top dog in the admiralty and his number 2, essentials leave the chief operating officer jack fischer who was the first sea lord. He got it too, he understood too. He understood there were characteristics of the time that required that it be used a certain way and churchill completely dismissed that. He didnt accept the idea that a submarine would ever be used against civilian shipping. It was too of ridges to contemplate. The autonomy submarines had once they were at sea en you say once at sea, a you boat captain was free to conduct his patrol in whatever manner suited him without supervision from above. What did that translate to . What did that mean . What that translated to was extremely high risk for germany that a mistake would be made and the elephant in the room, america wouldnt climb into the war with guns blazing. It meant when you are the captain as a marine typically a young men, the 20s or Hart Senate Office building 0s, a crew of about 36, once you got out of range of german transmitters you were literally on your own. You can make any decisions you want, if he sought a target you didnt have to call back to headquarters, you just went for it. So the autonomy was both furrowing for these guys but also a huge, cute responsibility. I wonder how important it is to understand how capt. Schweiger how he interpreted that. He was one of the big submarine aces early in the war. He was a talented and tour of ships using his submarine. When i went into this i was thinking i knew there was going to be this collision course thing between the submarine and the lusitania because the captain of the ship, the captain of the submarine as did all submarine captain kept meticulous work law and the killing everything that happened from the moment he left germany to the time he returned. I knew all of that. It made an obvious narrative thing to have the lusitania and the submarine converging. In the course of researching this i came across interesting information about schweiger. I wanted him to be this classic film and. I would love a monocle like a scar and what i. I would love a monocle like a scar and what ivillain. I would love a monocle like a scar and what i. I would love a monocle like a scar and what i got was this nice guy, well liked by his friend and one of his companion said he wouldnt hurt a fly. This was after the war. I opened the book to this room 40 cadence and is this the positioning . This is the report on the positioning the one of the remarkable things about the story as i started getting into reading about it, i came to the lusitania reluctantly. I had nothing else on my plate. I was interested in the lusitania, i start reading about it, and my first archival trip really sort of cemented it. What surprised me was the role of the supersecret operation in the admiralty called room 40. Room 40 was established very early in the war. To take advantage of three nearly run that right in this events that occurred which is three different occasions early in the war the british came into possession of germanys three main code books governing almost all their wireless transmissions both naval and diplomatic. A handful got together and formed room 40 which was to take advantage of these captured code books. And use them to read wireless messages intercepted from the german navy. And they became very adept at this. One of the mysteries, one of the most interesting things about the saga is the u20 submarine send wireless message and receive wireless messages so from the beginning this room 40 new exactly what the submarines orders were, knew exactly where it was supposed to end up on patrol and during its first, this is what you are looking at its first 24 hours at sea its wireless operator send 14 position reports which the british in room 40 duly intercepted and decoded so they knew exactly where the submarine was for the first 24 hours. That is the chapter you are looking at. In the book it is 2 00, the exact location, 6 00, at 8 00 and the report ceased. Where was all this information for you to find it . It is all in the intercept, the National Archives of the United Kingdom i was delighted to find vast cashs of information all the decoded intersects they are all there. Really tremendous stuff. The thing about the german submarine commanders is faber said to be, quote garrulous they liked using their wireless they liked chatting over the wireless and i have to think part of it might be because they knew they would be dealing with this amazing loneliness comforting, but they had no clue somebody was listening they had no idea. The german navy was so arrogant to leave their codes would never be broken. How hard was that code to break . Once you have the code book. There are two elements to this as a code book. There are three litter groups. And aspiration, part of the german navy. And use the code book primarily as the first step. And scramble using a cipher. There was a lot of codebreaking and cryptographic circles. It was easy to break that seifert, and how regimented the german navy was in communication with its ships. I dont want to bore anybody with details of this betty essentially if you signal the same white ship every night at 6 00 p. M. You will eventually catch on that this is the light shed and at 6 00 p. M. This message, you know what it is saying so through that process they were unable to become very adept not only at deciphering but using the code book to break the code. I had someone in the audience earlier before we started ask me about how you discovered the level of detail even about what the passengers of the lusitania were wearing, the flower that somebody war in their pocket or something. Where is all that information to be found . I hate to say it but all that detail is in the very detailed cataloguing of personal effects found on the dead after words. Who did all the cataloging . Mostly the british navy, people in queenstown ireland, some cunard people. Cunard put out a Controversial Book after the sinking which contained every name, every body personal effects. They hoped for all these unidentified bodies might trigger recollection and say maybe that kind of thing. That is where these things came from. You are listening to other erik larson at the fitzgerald theater. His new book is called dead awake the Last Crossing of the lusitania. You can follow the thread at thethreadindy are on twitter. Lets place these adversaries, the lusitania and the you boat on collision course. The lusitania has been at sea for six days. The lusitania set sail on may 1st. The torpedoing occurred on may 7th. The submarine set out on april 30th. What has happened on the voyage of the lusitania leading up to that . Flirting a lot of shuffleboard they did play shuffleboard. They voyage until thursday may 6th was the need vengeful and probably getting teased. I dont know how many people were on transatlantic voyages. We did a voyage on the queen mary ii and we set out in november, it was midway through the research. No sooner did we leave new york harbors and we were in the force can dale. That spoke to me and my scandinavian hard. And the queen mary ii is a very stable ship even in foul weather but one of the things that came home to me on this voyage is after you leave the harbor it gets boring really fast and what it comes down to is you live from meal to meal. The same thing was happening on the ship. Meals were everything. You sit at your tables in fancy dining rooms in first class and even third class was supposed to be quite good and quite large and very good because they wanted to attract the immigrant trade. You have all this kind of cool shipboard stuff and people were writing about that. Survivors left stories about what was happening so it was very good. You have that sense of what it was like to be without sight of land in that isolation. It so did. The captain was very particular. This was not a cruise. This was in the voyage. He was very what is the difference . The queen mary ii is a point to point vessel. It does not stop in the caribbean, place to place, but it is really this amazing ship, transatlantic thing was built for everything the atlantic has to offer. The thing is when you are in the middle of the ocean there is that feeling even today, when you are out there and you can see where you are, on the course if something catastrophic where to happen and it could happen, you could strike another ship in the fog or who knows what. You are alone and nobody can get to you. Not for hours and hours. That is sobering. The most sobering thing is that now, this was not the case with the lusitania but today when you are on a ship like that, before the ship leaves the wharf, you are required to put on your life jacket, strap it on, and then take it off. I am here to tell you it gets your attention. When you put the life jacket on you realize this is real. Unfortunately that was not the case on the lusitania, they did not have to try it on. Did you have the moment when you thought would i have the presence of mind to know what to do if something happened to the ship . Yes. What would i do . Of course in the context of all the research i had done on the lusitania, july jump in . No. Do i try to get into a lifeboat . Yes. Do i hope they launch some better than the lusitania . Yes. I really thought about it. I find myself periodically, this is after the gail but walking along the deck and trying to imagine a torpedo coming toward the ship, what was it like . Because it comes i cant remember if it was 35, 45 miles an hour which is not superfast. I think you said 42. Thank you. Anytime. Here it is right here. My point being when you are standing there, you can see this thing coming because of the compressed air exhaust forms a very clear track on the surface of the seat and you would see this thing coming toward you. What, you are helpless, you know . Like that steve martin routine where he is marketing the product like an airline collision detection gives you a 20second warning . You know twentysecond is before everybody else, so what . So the lusitania has been at sea six days. What is happening under water on the you boat . As it is getting ever closer . First of all one important point to make, capt. Schweiger was not stalking the lusitania. He was not hunting for the lusitania. His orders were to look for large troop transports that were leaving from an unusual part of britain, troopships left from one side of the channel crossing to the other. German intelligence had picked up word of truth transports leaving from unaccustomed sports including liverpool or the western coasts of britain england and ireland and they were going to be doing that because that german intelligence had come to believe that britain might be planning an Amphibious Landing amphibious invasion of germany from the north sea coast so his orders were to look for these large troop transports. His patrol was just a misery of foul weather zero targets, one stretch being hunted by a patrol line of three destroyers that very nearly, would have had serious consequences if the patrol, if the destroyers had kept up their pursuits a little longterm. And he was having a horrible time. I heard some readers who found themselves rooting for schweiger. I dont know if that is appropriately what are the conditions . 36 men in a metal tube, one lavatory and the smell of day old onions and Everything Else and 36 guys who wear their Leather Seats tuesday and day out, what is the point of changing . Schweiger also carried aboard his submarine six boxes. Does that humanize him . As a former dog owner i am thinking how do you deal with it . Living with 36 guys in leather. Probably not relevant. Away it came about with a dachshunds is he had one docks and the board and the crew spotted this other docks and floating in the water, they rescued the docks and. A little hankypanky and suddenly, suddenly four put these on the submarine. At one point he had six docks ands. We have to talk about the cargo. I want to make sure i ask you about this. You say that the lusitanias problematic but entirely legal under u. S. Neutrality laws, the lusitania was carrying 50 barrels, 94 cases of aluminum powder, 50 cases of bronze power, what for . Who knows what that was for . They dont really qualify as munitions but more as ingredients but many other things but those are not even the juiciest. The shrapnel, they did not sounds scary, there was not much danger of explosion. The cartridges that helped and what else . They carried tons of small arms ammunition which is also not any sort of threat to the ship because it was not known, ammunition was not known to explode, it would call off as they say. Nonetheless these things, this is one of the things there was no mystery. They were in fact munitions aboard the lusitania they were listed quite openly on the manifest, this cargo manifest. Has there been controversy about the fact the ship was carrying what could potentially be seen as arms and yes that is one of the lingering issues about the lusitania but it is typically in the context, was it the ammunitions the saying the lusitania . The answer to that is no. It was not. That is pretty clear to any serious student of the lusitania but one lingering Conspiracy Theory is that there was there were catches of explosives smuggled aboard as oysters or something and there may have been. I cant say for sure that there werent but what i can say with 95 certainty, that is not what sank the ship. We have the you boat and they are not hunting specifically but the lusitania comes into view. How does that happen . One of the many strange things that had to come together for this incident happened. There are so many bizarre bizarre moments. The range of forces that all had to come together at exactly the right time and place to cause the sinking, one of which is as the lusitania is in the irish sea it is completely surrounded by fog which is good for the lusitania because it is a protection against submarines. Not so good for schweiger who is sick to death of fog at this point. He has had fog the entire voyage. Comes up to periscope depth, takes a look, it is nothing. Goes back down. Goes back down deep because he doesnt want to get run over by at ship in what is referred to as fog western approaches the main sea routes into the irish sea toward liverpool and so forth so you have this fog, the lusitania doesnt see schweiger schweiger doesnt see the lusitania. He has had such a miserable foliage miserable patrol that he at this point has made a decision to turn around and go home. So he turns around, decides to go home. He goes up to check the weather miraculously the fog is gone. Not only is the fog gone but the day it has left behind is one of the most Beautiful Days anyone can remember. The sea is like glass, it is warm, sunny, theres no wind, one of the most gorgeous days you can imagine. Through the periscope he sees when he describes, he thinks at first it is several ships and as he watchedes this should put to out of his reach. He unleashes a torrent of profanity, just in case. Theres a dark miracle, capt. Turner on the lusitania borders another turn, putting it right in the perfect sweet spot for the submarine. Isnt the lusitania alerted that there is a submarine active off the south coast of ireland . The message, this is a point of really interesting controversy. The message capt. Turner received by way of warning were very generic messages, submarines active office of south coast, that is a pretty big swath of water and plural by the way. Submarines. In fact there was so much more Information Available for warnings that could have been sent to turner. This is an important point and schweiger starts getting lucky and things three ships, reallynobody knows, never told about those and never told that u20 is for certain in the vicinity and u20 has been assigned a patrols dont write off liverpool in the path of all the cunard vessels. None of the documentation reveals why there was a specific decision or none at all . What it is is a startling absence of information in the archives about what specifically happened in terms of messages that should or should not have been sent and the chairman of cunard alan booth, the morning that the newspapers had the news of the sinking of these ships and he was in liverpool having breakfast and reading the paper he sees these in the paper and suddenly he stopped eating breakfast gets up and goes to the chief naval officer in liverpool and says we need to send a direct message to turner because look at this. Sort of a vague message was sent to turner so at this point for turner is hearing there are submarines very gentle morning this, behind him, plural, this is a situation he was never trained for. He was never in a situation to anticipate or plan or plot a course for this kind of circumstance. Have you thought about what he could have done even if alerted to the presence of these submarines . What should have happened we are not talking i dont see this in the book that this should have happened but what could have been done is he could have been given more specific information which might have gotten his attention certainly would have gone mind. He could have been diverted into queenstown, now renamed kob, where the lusitania has in the past had stopped on mail runs until they realize there were too many incidents of scraping the bottom of the harbor. He could have been diverted there. A new safer route had been opened the northern route which could have been diverted and could have been several were in fact available and in fact the lusitania and other canard ships, not the lusitania but other cunard ships had been escorted in the past, the lingering question is why was it left so alone . You have not been able to draw any specific conclusions . There is no smoking memo from churchill or anybody in the admiralty saying leave this ship in harms way. There is nothing like that but there is a body of evidence, bits and pieces of things, that if you look at it in a court of law and try to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the admiralty wanted the lusitania in harms way to get america into the war you couldnt prove it. At the same time if you take the same body of evidence and turn it around, scientists refer to as the new will hypophysis approach and try to disprove theres a conspiracy you cant do that either. Too much stuff. What i do, what i do taking the cowardly approach, i have a particular naval historian, a former intelligence guy, initially when he wrote a book about room 40 and was talking about the lusitania, he said in his view it was a monumental cocotte as he put it. It was a mistake. But later in life as more evidence came to the 4 this is something he says in an interview at the Imperial War Museum in london which is a great place, really terrific, in this interview he expresses a change of heart and he says i am a lover of the royal navy and theres so much evidence he has changed his mind and has come to believe that this point there was a plot of some kind but he doesnt know where the plot originated with detail, just felt there was the loss ended anyone can explain it a different way please step forward and do so because it is very hard to successfully do that. The motivation of the plot if there was one would have been . If there was one to get the United States in. The motivation would have been possibly america might have entered the war. One thing is very clear, that churchill wanted america to enter the war ending an earlier letter it says as much he is talking ahead of the to the head of the board of trade, talking to him in a letter and says we need the traffic from america, as much of it as we can and we has a very interesting line where he says and if some of it gets in trouble all the better. With no real conclusion. You mentioned earlier you stood at the rails, on the deck of the queen mary ii and imagine what it might have been like to see that torpedo come would you. That is what happened, worked their passengers who saw the 4 people approach . That is one of the most spectacular things i came across, many statements by survivors exist in terms of depositions testimony and personal accounts. What comes through most clearly about that particular moment, this Beautiful Day, Beautiful Day and everybody is thinking we are home safe 14 hours from liverpool, everybody is thinking, one woman expressed where is this danger we were all born about . Everybody in first class just finished lunch, second class lunch seeding has just begun, kids are jumping rope upstairs the crew is getting luggage up on deck everything is cool, people hanging out on rails looking at the beautiful see. Suddenly this bubble of air which is the first as the torpedo is leaving the submarines torpedo tube and then you see the compressed air track moving across a glassy sea and people standing at the rails office and one guy standing there and the woman came up to him and said is that a torpedo . He cant answer because he is just sick at heart. One guy, this is what i love, from 1885 to 1920s this irrepressible thing about people. One guy runs to the rail to watch, to watch this torpedo hit further down the hall obviously and he says later in his account he says it was beautiful the most beautiful sight, this torpedo moving and he could actually see the torpedo ten feet below the surface the sea was so still and clear, and because of the compressed air the track is up here so this fish surging through the sea. You say as the torpedo a advance the water rushing past its nose turned a small propeller which unscrewed a safety device that prevented that nation during storage, then what happens . Once the tour beetle was approaching . That tornado is on my mind. Sharknado. It is armed. When it makes contact with the hole essentially a charge is fired. Larger charge, 350 pounds of tnt explode against the hole. A very characteristic signature a tall geyser of debris because of the physics of how these things explode against the whole, that was how the explosion occurred. You have i think this is what is incredible, what schweiger writes about the torpedos striking home. Do you want . Do you want to read it . You point to me. Right there on that page. Okay. So i will read this whole thing. I will read this to you. Schweigers law entry began with the word dressed for impact. He wrote, quote, torpedo hits started side close behind the bridge, and usually grant that nation follows with a strong explosive cloud that reaches be on the forward funnel. The explosion of the torpedo mustve been accompanied by a second one, boiler or coal or power. That is very terse. Very descriptive and thank god he wrote it. This stuff is goals. Honestly if you have this war log, i can work with this. Tell me about opening that log and reading through and flipping through to find that moment. I read the entire log from day 1 to the end. It was all all fascinating in some way, in some ways the launch and impact were almost anticlimactic. You get that sense. All these other things that were happening on the way. What was so useful about that was it allowed me to the whole reason i did this book was i wanted it i saw an opportunity that had not existed in past books, to put on my Alfred Hitchcock hatch and make this exercise in nonfiction suspense. The log was relieved of little for that crucial for that because that is the essence of suspense knowing where this guy is exactly and what he is thinking and what is happening to him and knowing where the lusitania is what is happening with them, on a convergence course although they dont know it. It is very powerful. Surprise to you going about the suspense because i thought there was a lot of suspense the beginning devil in the white city. Thank you. A different kind of suspense. Different intensity of suspense. The s o s telegram from the lusitania reads we think we are often sailed. Late position 10 miles, come at once. Please come with all haste. What are they saying . Big lists later. She has what is referred to as advanced readers. Heavily corrected. What else is on the telegram. This is one and a short time. Everybody is stunned that this is happening. One torpedo and this is minutes after the impact. And centel that once. What happens as they are trying to send help. The way the ships sank, so much the torpedo hit the sweet spot in the hole and frankly it was not even the spotsschweiger was aiming for. He miscalculated the lusitanias speed soviet up plays he did not intend to hit. The place it it happened to be the perfect spot for various reasons. They are all in the luggage hold and there was a shift change. The torpedo destroys that part of the ship. Also hit a point y the flooding of these longitudinal coal bunkers which are mostly empty because the ship was mostly dumped, flooded those coal bunkers, flooded the forward bunker, water was surging into boiler rooms. The second explosion knocked out the Steam Distribution system. Lost all control of the engine. And an incredible rate. It is suddenly listing. They do this situation that happened really fast. 18 minutes before it disappeared from view. There is a wonderful detail here. You say in this paragraph is 2 20 p. M. 10 minutes since the torpedo struck and you are talking about deck hands and passengers waiting for the ship to slow to allow the launching of the boat. Which is an important point. The ship is still moving after the torpedo 18 knots is gradually slowing. The reason the the reason is is important to know the engines are no longer working is you cant stop the ship. Efficient this and stopped you cant launch lifeboats. It is lethal to launch lifeboats when it is going at a lower rate they are trained for a certain launching procedure but 18 knots to launch of the is suicide. Then you have these junior third officer who says a strange silence prevailed and small insignificant sounds such as the winner of a child, the cry of the sea gull or the baying of the board assumed alarming proportion. You read his diary . This is a statement that he left. That is extraordinarily descriptive. As recently as 2012 a british y ma3 s exe, c e0acrullye it really has. In conclusion i say let sleeping dogs lie. It is still to this day something that is haunting and really it is because people get an idea law to their head about conspiracy and so forth, the second explosion and all this stuff and really what tends to be overlooked is in the last decade or so two really excellent Forensic Engineering studies were done on the lusitania, both came to the same conclusion independently that it was a disruption of the Steam Distribution system, probably the main Steam Distribution line that failed because of contract most likely with water which interestingly is exactly what capt. Turner concluded moments after the second explosion. One more question before we take audience questions. You write about finding those photographs of the recovered bodies, where are they . Antibodies are coming ashore, floating ashore. They were stored, housed in a three makeshift morgues in queenstown, in order to assure there was the record of the bodies, they were all photographed before being buried in the mass grave. I knew these photographs existed, when i was in liverpool that holds the historical Computer Archives i asked about them. We are not going to let you see some because we dont let anybody see them anymore. That is fine, did some more work could you ask somebody higher up to see if i could . The next day, we will let you look at those photographs. What caused the change of heart . The senior archivist loved the city. That these were very they would not let me bring my digital camera in which is how you do research these days, you photographed documents, you dont photograph them or photocopies them. Looking at these photographs was very powerful and moving, this is what the story is about. It is not about conspiracy theories or all that stuff with the geopolitics involved with the fact that this was first and foremost a tragedy, a human tragedy of great dimension and here with these people men, women and children these photographs dressed perfectly, wearing exactly what they were wearing at lunch that day and looking like they can walk out of those photographs, the old salt content blackandwhite photographs. He says once again, i have not accompanied a book with photographs. All my other books have photographs, just not a lot. Its a thing with me and ill explain it. My feeling about when i do a book is that a book like this, my goal is to create as rich a historical experience for the reader as i can. Want the reader to think into the past and then emerge at the end of having read maybe even in one sitting, one or two sittings emerged with a sense of having lived in that past time. Photographs in a Nonfiction Book i totally embrace a philosophy put forward by johner in john gardner, in a book, on becoming a novelist elm he says the novelists job is to create the fictional dream. My job is create the nonfiction dream. And anything that takes you away is to be voided. Whether its fancy language, bad punctuation, lousy grammar italics, everything that takes you away from the dream is bad. Some you dont like italics, either . My feeling about photographs is that first of all, the reproduction is terrible in a trade Nonfiction Book. Second the photographs ten to be inserted in the form of what is revved to as a signature, glossy signature. That gets stuck into the book, sometimes maybe even two of these signatures and its like a lighthouse beacon. Youve sit there reading this book and the temptation to go to this glossy thing and look for and a halfs is too grateful every time you leave the story its an opportunity for you to leave the book, and i want to avoid that. This time i actual low got my way because my new editor is brilliant. She felt the same way. The bible had no photographs. Anyway right over on that side. Hi. I notice that your book, your stories, tend to have a lot of death in them. Are you drawn to that aspect or is it just kind of a byproduct of the amazing thing that happens. Death . People dying. Guest its what makes things compelling. Tragedy, and disaster, and so forth. I mean, if i was to write about churchills walk through hyde park on a sunday morning, thats lovely but nobody is going read it. It is just the way the stories are. Im not drawn to it. Im not looking to tell dark stories. Its not like im hunting, this is too cheery, im going to do this thing. Its just what happens. Besides, worlds fair wasnt that dark. Question right over here. I know you talked about doing the lusitania because you didnt have anything else to do. Both the devil in the white city and thunderstruck, and this one do you have a particular affinity to the late 1800s, that kind of draws you . Guest that is for sure. I love the period from 1890 to 1920. In the garden of the beast was outside that but i love that for other reasons. Martha heart throb. I love the period because there was something first of all i do ten to write about american subjects. I feel my audience is american and thats where my territory. The thing about the 1890 to 1920 period is that that is when america was just a different place. Suffused with this hubris and optimism and overconfidence. And whenever you have hubris and overconfidence you have great stories. And dark stories as well. So yeah. I do love that period. Another small thing about that period this is not a small thing, actually very important is that it was also the heyday of the type writer. Very important. But a you can go nuts reading corporations, and when its all in reading correspondence and when its type the abysmal hand writhing handwriting. I was in my office and my wife said whats wrong . I said olmstead. Question over there. Just wondering if you can talk about the details you included with president wilson in this book and why you decided to include that dimension. Guest sure. So, president wilson i really came to have a whole new appreciation for president wilson from this book because i considered him kind of a prim and proper stiff. I had no interest in him. But as i was researching doing my research in the library of congress and going through wilsons papers particularly for the period around the lusitania, i came across his love letters to his girlfriend. Now, wilson in august of 1914 lost his wife of many years, about the same time the war blew up in europe. He was crushed by grief and loneliness and really was affected by it. And then in 1915, he meets and falls head over heels in love with this woman. Edith, the 40something widow in washington dc, who most often seemed tooling around town in her electric car. And so he falls totefully love with her. She is holing back a little bit. He is writing this passionate love letters which i came across in the library of congress. And dozens of the most passion newscast. Outpourings, and afterwardded wanted to light a cigarette. My god [laughter] and so at that point i just said, i dont care. These are going in. This is going to be part of the story. And context is crucial. Wilson is a very important player in the whole saga, and trying to get into his where he was in his mind during that period when the ship was making the crossing the Last Crossing and coincidentally, a lot of these really important letters were written during that week, before the leading up to the sinking. So thats really perfect for in terms of chronological cohesion. Love that stuff. Question right over here. Early on you spoke to the warning sent to the public about the there could be an issue with the uboats. Were the willingness of the passengers to go based on their ignorance of the danger ahead or just so much dish guess my question is, how many voyages were there happening daily, weekly, they just thought, this cant happen to me . Guest again, you have to put yourself back in the point of view of the era. Very important. And look at the whole thing through the eyes of those who are going to get on the ship that day. I dont know exactly how many people actually saw the warning. I think its pretty obvious that quite a few did. But they saw it in the context of okay, here is this great ship said to be so fast known to be so fast, said to be faster than any submarine, and in fact if it were to do its top speed it would be far faster than any submarine, especially any submarine that was submerged. So there was that disbelief it was too fast to big to be taught by a submarine and it was said as much after the departure responding to the germ yarn german notice. It was also the case from what i was able to tell, clear that kunnard believed and the passengers believed the royal navy would be looking out for them once they got to the irish sea. There was another component, which is the rules of maritime warfare. The rules of Naval Warfare against civilian vessels. For the prior century, essentially, had forbidden attacks against passenger liners and had forbidden belligerent ships from sinking merchant ships without warning. And if they did sink a merchant ship, hey had to make sure the crew was safe. They had to bring them aboard or even bring the merchant ship into a port and then release all the crew and so forth. And there a prize court would determine the fate of the ship. These were the rules. Warfare against civilians was very closely orchestrated. Things were changing and nobody realize it quite how much at this point. There were only glimmers that germany changed the rules and the lusitania approved that. A couple more questions. Guest sure. Host and then you have to sign books. You might have a torpedo there with you. This is terrence who had many men questions ahead of the show. Maybe the craft beer i drank. What i love about your work is number one you use source documents, and number two is that you bring the past to life. Today seems leak be just miss the past and you bring history alive, you make it alive for all of us, and i love that about you. The question i have is about how you choose your topics. You seem to be on this thread right now the thread and you seem to converge disparate topics whether its marconi and devil in the white shirt. And i wonder about the process you and pinpointing a topic the research, and how you bring that into a narrative form. Anybody who works the thread into their next question gets a drink out of this. Way to go. Guest well so essentially, like how do i come up with these ideas and first of all, the whole dual narrative thing. Ive been people have interpreted my work to suggest that ive got this thing about making sure i have a dual narrative in all my books, and i assure you thats not an intention of mine to do so. I dont have a shtick. Although it may see that way. The garden of the beast it was organic, the nazis and the americans and they have to be there. Same with the lose takenna, a submarine and thats what it is. But the idea for me is a horrible phase. It is very difficult. I feel very unproductive. Its what a friend of mine has coined a term for thats when im in the dark country of no ideas, and its so true. And the thing is to write the things i like to write, which is called narrative, the underlying idea has to have certain qualities or you cant do it. You cant fake it. You cant whatever. So an idea has to be interesting to me. Of course. It has to have a very rich archival base. So that i have i can find all the little bits and pieces that will light the readers imagination. It has to have a builtin organic narrative arc or engine something that powers it along. In the case of the lusitania, you begin on may 1 under threat and the climax is on may 7th. You can retell the story as a nonfiction work but tell it with the beginning, a middle and an end. And i also look for an idea, ideally not in the case of lusitania, but typically i look for barriers to entry and is the dual narrative. I dont look for dual narratives but i like it if i find something, like the marconi story, because im pretty confident nobody else will do that book. I hate competition. And the devil in the white that was an organic process. So to me, actually it is very much like looking for a spouse. No. You women know this really a lot better maybe than the men. You have to kiss a lot of frogs, right . Have to kiss a lot of frogs before one kisses back in a not creepy way. You know what i mean. I have three daughters. You know what i mean. So thats essentially the process. Are you right now in the dark country of no ideas . Guest thank you. Yes. [laughter] how is that working for you . Question over there and then one last one right here. A lot of becomes to sign. Thank you for sharing tonight. I cant help but connect it to even as recently the last week, the Germanwings Flight that win down a very similar situation. So sad and yet as media consumers who have to look at this with a critical eye how better to learn than from someone who practiced historical in a lively way. Just from your perspective, how did writing dead wake impact the way you view events like that that happened in the newspaper this week . Guest such an interesting question. It has kind of in veining ways has shaped my how i came to that whole shocking story about the Germanwings Flight. Id be hard to quantify hard to quantify exactly. I can tell you that i am a deeply paranoid flyer. I hate to fly. I hate to fly on the little regional jets. And that story of that flight has haunted me this week, and having to fly from place to place the whole week, its like i dont even want to talk about it. [laughter] its such a horrible horrible story. And it got worse today with the news about this guy that his i guess his shrink or somebody had sent him a letter, some medical intent sent him a letter saying he was unfit to work. And he slashed the letter and then gets on the plane and thats what happened. A horror. Do you think your paranoia about flying is about control or what do you think it is . Guest this is a shrink session . Yep. Guest is this like dr. Phil . It is. Its just like that. Guest im waiting for somebody to come out and denounce me. Thats right. Guest i dont know. Its im 62 and i tend toward claustrophobia and you put me in a seat meant for my dog, its hard. That makes total sense. It does. Last question. Right here. You eave very very disstinktive writing style. Theyre very fast to read because i cant end a paragraph without starting the next one because of the foreshadowing you use, so pulling on the thread of how you [laughter] can you comment how you learn to write . Where did you get the style from . Guest dont know. First of all, thank you for saying that about they read quickly and the forshadowing and so fort. Theft something i work hard at structuring my books spend a lot of time trying to make sure why i dont fictionalize anything i use the techniques that novelists use foreshadowing, with holding, that kind of thing to keep the reader interested to keep the story moving along. But if i had to attribute learning to write obviously its an evolutionary thing but one of the most powerful things influences reading and the people ive read ten to be pend to be people i consider influences on my writing are those who tend to emphasize clean, spare prose and that would be hemingway. Hemingway he has a lot of cachet because maybe he is a jerk, i dont know. Although the depiction in midnight in paris was lovely. Hemingway, because i think that in particular hemingways short stories, the collection in our time. Nick adams stories particularly good examples of clean, spare prose, and the art of not saying one of the best short stories, i think, in my view, the best short story, called hills like white elephants. That hemingway wrote. You read that story and by the time youre done you know exactly whats going on but he never tells you, as hard as that is to grasp. He never says it directly. You come to it. And thats absolutely generous. So hemingway, hammet. Chant her steinbeck. Fitzgerald to an extent. These are my influences in a practical level it was my experience i worked quite a bit at the wall street journal and got extremely lucky after my first newspaper job, went to the wall street journal at a time when feature writing was emphasized, and writing as well they didnt want people who knew business. They wanted people who could write, figuring you could learn business. So i lad to do these not had to i loved writing niece stories. An exercise all the time in trying to get as much into the thing in a compelling way and paring it down to the absolute minimum of what you need to get the story across. That was really tremendously valuable. Otherwise i just have to say its evolutionary. Thank you for commenting on that. Thank you very much for coming. Guest thank you all. [applause] i owe two people drinks for the thread. Way to go. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] youre watching 48 hours of nonfiction authors and books on cspan2s booktv. Television for serious readers. On the one hand theres no gossip in this book. These are firsthand accounts id say half of the quotes are on the record. Its simply investigative reporting, and because it so happens that the book begins with energizer, who was built and still is bill clintons busty blonde mistress goes into Hillary Clintons abuse of agents, the fact she is so nasty that agents consider being assigned to her detail a form of punishment, on and on to mary cheny, dick cheneys daughter