It has jaspers picture. I sent the senate demanded that i ask you, jasper asks do you miss me . Jasper is the result of Greta Van Susteren insisting that we get another dog after henry passed. One night in Redfield Greg gutfeld said there was this actress in hollywood and she was mad because the paparazzi to pictures of her dog. He said dana you are known to fly into a rage when someone takes a picture of your dog. I said oh no i want everyone to share my dog. He can be americas dog. And that he is. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Thank you rick and dana perino. The book is and the good news is and all of you who have the book go out to the lobby and we will sign and those of you who dont bear for sale in the museum store. Thank you for coming to the Richard Nixon president ial library. Got less you and god loves america. Eric larson is the author of several bestselling nonfiction books. His latest bestseller is dead wake the Last Crossing of the lusitania. This is an hour and 20 minutes. [applause] [applause] you cant believe how excited people are to see you. Im not kidding. They came for you when i dont think any other author could have done this. Just tell that to my daughters. They are not impressed with you . Is that how that goes . So i want to talk a little bit about this idea of why we are so intrigued by the idea of the doomed ship and heres here is my theory and you tell me whether this fits. Is that something about the venture and the optimism of the voyage colliding with this tragedy that passengers dont know they are sailing into . Is it like the collision of those ideas . No arias. [laughter] you know i often wonder about that myself because i have this maritime thing it seems like we all do. When i was a kid the flying dutchman enrich my imagination. I think what happens is i think there is something about the idea of being way out in the middle of the ocean and having something bad happen to you with no help available. Thats at least what taps into my brain. The isolation of that . The isolation and also the romance and the idea of the glamour of a crossing and interrupted by some catastrophe. For me i think part of it is because of my scandinavian words and i should point out my roots extend to south dakota and minnesota. You have won them over. You have them at scandinavian. There are probably 300 erik margins is what im thinking. Being scandinavian i dont know how our forebears and up landlocked. We are a seafaring people. Before coming to suit walls we were pillaging from the cm that kind of thing. You are that guy. Okay. Im sure you know something about the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald. I think this kind of device your theory because there was nothing all that glamorous. Its in or ship. Its on Lake Superior and yet its something that anniversary of the sinking of something that we observed and we talk about every year. I dont find that particularly romantic. I find that sinking an amazing event. On the great lakes and from what i understand the great lakes meteorologically are terrible places to be an incredible windstorm because the waves to come something you dont even experience on the ocean so to me that the fascinating part of the edmund fitzgerald. My dark fantasies tend toward the deep sea. Speaking of the deep sea im sure that when you were researching this you were studying the underwater photos and video of the lusitania wreck. Not really. Really . Why . Thank you air. Thats how its going to go tonight. [laughter] really, so let me elaborate on this because i did take a look at some of the photography that Robert Ballard had done but heres the thing. I didnt want that to color 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. Thats what it is now. I wanted in my mind this great glamorous ship with all these great glamorous spaces and the people walking aboard and so forth. So thats why i feel that way. That make sense. Its lying in more than 300 feet of water. Its on the starboard side and i dont want to jump too far ahead here but it sank very quickly. Do you know why its lying in the position that it is . I cant tell you for sure whether its lying on the starboard or the port side and im not sure in the end that had much to do with exactly how it sank. What i do know when it sank for much of that time it was only 18 minutes. For much of that time it was on a 25degree list so it may well be that its on the starboard side but just before it went under it righted itself because it was so full of water and there was no imbalance and then plunged underneath. Whether on up on the port of the starboard side i cant tell you because i dont remember. How to set 18 minutes thinking compare . How unusual is that . Its incredibly unusual. Think about the titanic. The thing about the titanic was that it was a rather leisurely sinking that the. [laughter] its a nod way. Im not making light of the sinking of the titanic. I am saying that was relatively speaking it was a leisurely sinking. Anyhow as you know the big issue of at the titanic was there were not enough lifeboats. Now the issue with the lusitania was that there were more than enough lifeboats, more than enough life was. There were 22 class a life votes which are the boats you traditionally think of when you think of life votes but they had a lot of collapsible boat 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 the boats were unusable because of this 25degree list if you can picture this. A close on the port side when she tried to let this go they swung into the super stretch. Those on the starboard side then lowered to the rails as they use the term were suddenly out eight frame 8 feet from the hole from the whole silky matching getting into one of these boats you are 60 feet above the sea and now you have to cross this eightfoot span and we are using deck chairs as letters. A boy takes a running leap and jumps into the lifeboat. So that was the problem with the lusitania and just the fact that it sank so fast because of how was struck. Since you mentioned the titanic just to know that there is a connection with the captain of the lusitania and the titanic. Do i remember that right . No. Wasnt he being called to court . The connection is there is a third interesting connection and that is on the day before literally the day before departure which the departure was on may 11915 captain turner was called to give testimony and the big titanic legal proceeding limitation of liability in new york. The White Star Line was trying to limit its exposure to the various lawsuits after the sinking. And turner was called as an Expert Witness to testify as to the behavior of the titanic and the titanics captain and why he was going so fast through eyes and turner did not approve. Captain turner knew that there were risks to this crossing that he was about to undertake and a lot of the passengers knew that too. Captain turner im not quite sure i agree with that. [laughter] surprise. I think what we are talking about here is that on may 1 and interesting thing happened in new york. In the new york newspapers that morning in the shipping news pages which were widely read the German Embassy had placed an advertisement or a notice lets say warning anybody who is traveling on a passenger liner or any kind of a merchant ship that when they entered the waters are browned the United Kingdom the socalled war zone that germany had declared back in february this notice was essentially reiterating that this works that this works is to be sailed into those waters he sailed at your own risk. This did not name the lusitania but it was widely interpreted to be aimed at the lusitania in part because like the new york world one of these notices appeared right next to the ad for lusitania. It was probably some cunning advertising person saying lets do this. So there was that warning in the paper and many people read it. Obviously. Some found out about the warning after the ship was a few hours out which was a wonderful time to find out that captain turner we know that he knew about the warning but i dont think captain turner was at all fazed by it. I dont think he was at all the captain turner was a sailor of the old school who came up through the great sailing ships. He was a staunch guy. He was the kind of guy, when you get on an airliner. I mechanically panicky flier so i looked for all kinds of cues as to whats going to happen so i listen to the pilots voice. So i listen for the cool and calm like but if i heard woodywoody allen come on and say that. What would you do about it . Id be off the plane in a heartbeat im telling you. But he was the guy if he can picture him he was the kind of guy do if you ran into him on the deck he would say this is my guy. He was not at all based by the potential of submarine attack created i think he firmly believed that his ship was faster and bigger than anything that any german submarine could tackle. Thats something thats interesting. You describe how few people really understood how dangerous the german submarine was at that point. I have a note here but you know that the author of Sherlock Holmes actually got it. This is one of the fascinating elements. I agreed with you. [laughter] its going to be good from here on in. The thing is whenever you write when i write history the way i like to write it, one very important thing is to try to put yourself in the point of view of the era. One thing that was very important to grasp for me was how new the submarine was in that time. We are all very familiar with run silent, run deep. There was by the way no sonar and pull for one and there were no depth chargers until after the lusitania. So the submarine was brandnew and was not understood by anybody as to whether it would ever be a viable weapon and a couple of guys though got it. One was sir arthur doyle who before the war wrote this really prescient short story about an imaginary european country called norland which is clearly meant to be germany. An imaginary country that had a handful of submarines and nonetheless managed to bring the British Empire to its knees and that was his story which ran some he wrote it actually long before the war and it was published the month before the war. The other guy was Jackie Fisher. The admiralty hierarch he and britain there was the first lord of the admiralty winston churchill. He was the top dog in the admiralty and then there was his number two essentially chief operating officer of the admiralty Jackie Fisher who is the first sea lord. And he got it too. He understood that there were certain characteristics of the design of the submarine that virtually required that it be used to certain way. Churchill completely dismissed it. He didnt accept the idea that a submarine would ever be used against a civilian ship. It was to outrageous to contemplate. One of the things you note is the autonomy that the submarines had once they were at sea and you say once at sea a uboat captain was free to conduct his patrol in whatever manner suited him without supervision from above. What did that really translate to . What to . What did that mean . What that translated to frankly was an extremely highrisk for germany that a mistake would be made and the elephant in the room america would climb into the war with guns blazing. What it meant was when you are the captain of the submarine to the league you were young men late 20s, early 30s that crew of about 36. Once you got out of range of german transmitters you were literally on your own. You could make any decision she wanted. If you saw were the target even have to call back to headquarters. He just went for it and so the autonomy was both thrilling for these guys but also a huge responsibility. And i wonder how important is to understand how captain schweigert how it is to understand how he interpreted that autonomy. Should be eager to get and ran with it. He was one of the main, one of the big submarine aces even early in the war. He was a very talented hunter of ships using a submarine. He was however and when into this site was thinking okay i kind of knew that there was going to be this collision course between the submarine and lusitania because the captain of the ship, the captain of the submarine had kept a meticulous war log detailing of thing that happened from the moment he left germany so i knew all of that. It made in obvious narrative thing to have the lusitania and the submarine converging but in the course of researching this i came across all this interesting information about schwager. Going into it i would love a monocle, you know. [laughter] i would love a monocle and like a scar and that kind of thing. What i got was this nice guy a 30yearold guy handsome charismatic loved by his crew wellliked throughout the submarine surfaced in one of his friends and fellow submarine commander said of him went point he couldnt hurt a fly. This was after the war. I have opened the book to this room 40 cadence. This is the reporter on the positioning. One of the remarkable things about the story as i started getting into reading about it and i have got to say i came to the lusitania reluctantly. I had nothing else on my plate that i have this maritime tick and i interested in the lusitania. I started reading about it and ive i was thinking of my first exploratory archival trip and that is what sort of cemented it but one of the things that surprised me was the role of the supersecret operation within the admiralty called room 40. Room 40 was established very early in the war to take advantage of three miraculous events that occurred. Which was on three different occasions again very early in the war the british came into the possession of germanys three main codebooks governing almost all of their wireless transmissions both naval and so churchville and a handful of us got together and formed room which was to take advantage of these captured codebooks and use them to read words and messages intercepted from the german navy and they became very very adept at this. One of the mysteries, one of the most interesting things is the u. 20 submarine sent a wireless message and receive wireless messages so from the beginning this room 40 new exactly what the submarine sorters were. Note that laid where we are supposed to end up on patrol and during its first, this is what you are looking at during its first 24 hours at sea its wireless operator sent 14 position reports which the british in room 40 intercepted and decoded so they knew exactly where the submarine was for the first 24 hours. E in the book is it 2 00 a. M. 2 00 a. M. , the exact location 4 00 a. M. 6 00 a. M. 8 00 a. M. Where was all the information for you to find a . Its all in the intercept, in the archives, the National Archives of the United Kingdom i was delighted to find these caches of information. They have all the decoded intercepts so they are all there in their files just really tremendous stuff. They were said to be garrulous, that is to say they liked using their wireless. They like chatting over the wireless. I have to think part of it might be because they knew ultimately they were going to be dealing with this amazing loneliness so was comforting to be able to what they had no clue that somebody was listening. They had no idea and not only did they have no idea than they had no idea for most of the war. The german navy was arrogant as to believe their codes would never be broken. How hard was that code to break . Wants to have the codebook [laughter] no but there are two elements. Theres there is a codebook that consists of three letter groups including of all things nantucket which the just a certain aspiration as on the part of the german navy. When the germans put their messages in code they use the code work are merely as a first step and then it would further scramble using cipher. There was a lot of code raking in did have to go on not code breaking but deciphering is the difference in cryptographic circles. But it was relatively easy to break that cipher because of how regimented the german navy was in communications with its ships. I dont want to bore anybody with details of this but essentially if you signal the same light ship every night at 6 00 p. M. You will eventually catch on but this is the light ship and at 6 00 p. M. And this message, you know what its saying so through that process they became very adept not only at deciphering but using the codebook to break the codes. I had someone in the audience earlier before we started asked me about how you discover the level of detail even about what the passengers of lusitania were wearing, the flower that somebody war in their pocket or Something Like that. Where is all that information to be found . I hate to say it but all that detailed is in the very detailed cataloging personal effects found on the data afterwards. And who did all that cataloging . It was mostly the british navy people in queenstown ireland, some cunard people. The cunard put out a confidential book after the sinking which contained just every name every body, every list of personal effects and the reason i did this is because they hoped for all these unidentified oddities something might trigger somebodys recollection and say maybe thats an maude, that kind of thing but that is where those came from. You are listening to author erik larson at the fitzgerald theater. His new book is called deadweight and you can follow that the thread npr on twitter. So lets place these two adversaries the lusitania and the uboat on a collision course. The lusitania has been at sea for six days. The lusitania set out on may may 1 and the torpedoing occurred on may 7. The submarine set out on april 30. So what has happened on the voyage of the lusitania leading up to that . A lot of flirting. A lot of shuffleboard. They actually lived by shuffleboard. The voyage until her say may 6, was pretty much uneventful and actually was probably getting fairly tedious. I dont know how many people have been on transatlantic voyages. Actually for research my wife and i did a voyage on the queen mary two and we set out in november after thanksgiving. This was midway through the research and of course no sooner did we leave that we were in a force 10 gale. Actually in fact the queen mary two is a very stable ship even in foul weather. One of the things that really came home to me about this voyage was after you leave the harbor he gets boring really fast and when it comes down to is you live from male to male. The same thing was happening on the ship. Meals were everything. It would sit at tables and these fancy diners and worse class and even the third class was quite lush. They wanted to attract the trade so you had all this cool s