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

by Greg King, Penny Wilson

Overview

On the 100th Anniversary of its sinking, King and Wilson tell the story of the Lusitania's glamorous passengers and the torpedo that ended an era and prompted the US entry into World War I.

Lusitania: She was a ship of dreams, carrying millionaires and aristocrats, actresses and impresarios, writers and suffragettes – a microcosm of the last years of the waning Edwardian Era and the coming influences of the Twentieth Century. When she left New York on her final voyage, she sailed from the New World to the Old; yet an encounter with the machinery of the New World, in the form of a primitive German U-Boat, sent her – and her gilded passengers – to their tragic deaths and opened up a new era of indiscriminate warfare.

A hundred years after her sinking, Lusitania remains an evocative ship of mystery. Was she carrying munitions that exploded? Did Winston Churchill engineer a conspiracy that doomed the liner? Lost amid these tangled skeins is the romantic, vibrant, and finally heartrending tale of the passengers who sailed aboard her. Lives, relationships, and marriages ended in the icy waters off the Irish Sea; those who survived were left haunted and plagued with guilt.

Authors Greg King and Penny Wilson resurrect this lost, glittering world to show the golden age of travel and illuminate the most prominent of Lusitania's passengers. Rarely was an era so glamorous; rarely was a ship so magnificent; and rarely was the human element of tragedy so quickly lost to diplomatic maneuvers and militaristic threats.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250080356
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/26/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Greg King is the author of many internationally published works of history, including The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Majesty Magazine, Royalty Magazine and Royalty Digest. He lives in the Seattle area.

Penny Wilson is the author of Lusitania and The Last Voyage of the Andrea Doria with Greg King and several internationally published works of history on late Imperial Russia. Her historical work has appeared in Majesty Magazine, Atlantis Magazine, and Royalty Digest. She lives in Southern California with her husband and three Huskies.

Editorial Reviews

Highly informed, compellingly written . . . there was a great deal more to the story than its heart-wrenching tragedy.” —The Wall Street Journal

“A fascinating account of a ship, its passengers, and its terrible fate.” —Publishers Weekly

“The deliberate sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat in 1915 has been shrouded in mystery and intrigue that continue even as the 100th anniversary of the tragedy approaches. . . . More than a chronicle of the tragedy, this offers a penetrating look at the end of the Edwardian era.” —Booklist

“The Assassination of the Archduke creates a compelling and readable account of the private life of the imperial family headed for doom.” —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

“An entertaining challenge to a century of misconceptions.” —Kirkus Reviews on The Assassination of the Archduke

“King marshals an amazing amount of information in a very fluid, compelling fashion. . . . It's eye-opening, and even fun, to visit this extraordinary group in its time and place.” —Booklist on The Court of the Last Tsar

“King has a vast knowledge of the subject, and those who are fascinated by the life of the royals and aristocratic intrigue will find much to delight in. . . . For those who are intrigued by the Russian high court, there is no better escort.” —Publishers Weekly on The Court of the Last Tsar

“Any book by Greg King is a book to be kept and savored. . . . This book is a great work of scholarship and a wonderful read” —Peter Kurth, author of Tsar on The Court of the Last Tsar

“King marshals an amazing amount of information, and just as amazingly he presents it all in a very fluid, compelling fashion.” —Booklist on The Court of the Last Tsar

“A comprehensive reexamination of the 78 days of the Ekaterinburg captivity, the murders themselves, and the 1991 exhumation of the bodies. . . . The authors engage in a complex game of historical detection that ultimately results in a controversial new perspective on an old but ever-captivating topic.” —Booklist on The Fate of the Romanovs

“Biographies of Victoria are plentiful, but King's special approach, his limited focus, certainly makes this new one far from redundant.” —Booklist on Twilight of Splendor

From the Publisher

2014-11-20
On the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania, King and Wilson (The Resurrection of the Romanovs: Anastasia, Anna Anderson, and the World's Greatest Royal Mystery, 2010) dig for clues to unanswered questions.The details surrounding how the elusive information disappeared uncover guilt on all sides. The British Admiralty had to protect the fact that they were transporting contraband in a ship sailing without a flag. The local coroner's inquest, the British Board of Trade's hearing and a U.S. District Court all dismissed charges of negligence. The admiralty never sent escort to protect the Lusitania as she entered British waters, and the captain acted contrary to orders. Even the journal of the U-boat captain has been altered. Did he fire one or two torpedoes? The German government published a warning as the Lusitania was about to sail from New York, proclaiming that ships misusing neutral flags found in British waters would be subject to destruction. Prior to this statement, the "Cruiser Rules" codified by The Hague in 1899 required enemy ships to give warning, demand a search for contraband and allow the ship to be abandoned before sinking it. In January 1915, England ordered her merchant vessels to sail under false flags and carry munitions, knowing Germany would respond in kind. First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill referred to the Lusitania as "live bait," hoping to draw the Americans into the war. The ship was the last of the great Edwardian ships, as her upper-class passengers showed, some of whom had actually been warned by Germans not to sail. The authors devote inordinate portions of the text to biographies of passengers and still more to the lives of the survivors, but their exploration of the facts surrounding the mystery is the primary pleasure of the book. Those who relish tales of the rich and famous will appreciate this book, but the real joy is in the authors' detective work and attention to detail.

Kirkus Reviews