IEWS Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy, by Diana Presto n (Walker & Co., New York NY, 2002, 544pp, illus, notes, appen, biblio, index, ISBN 0-8027-1375-0; $28hc) The Lusitania has haunted people's imaginations since the day the crack ocean liner was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20 off the coast oflreland. Some 1200 lives were lost as the 30,000-ton ship sank in eighteen minutes on that balmy morning of 7 May 1915, including 100 neutral Americans. The liner historian John MaxtoneGraham has opined that the sinkin g did more than the loss of the Titanic three years earlier to mark the end of the 19th-century era of certain ty about continual progress in human affairs. T he author takes a truly oceanic view of the incident, both in space and time, and thereby fully engaged the interest of this reader. She paints in the background of the leaders involved in what W inston C hurch ill was to call the World Crisis, with deft portraits of Kaiser Wilhelm , President Woodrow Wilson and others. We also fo llow the development of the submarine from the American Turtfeofl 776 onward and explore the ocean liner, largest moving object on earth, a world in itself, from immigrants in steerage to the downsrairs society of servants and the upstairs society of wealthy passengers. At the time, the sinking of the Lusitania moved American sentiment toward war with Germany, which came less than a year later. Since then the event has attracted its share of debunkers of German brutality (the ship was a legitimate targetof war) and conspiracy theorists (Churchill exposed the ship to get the US into the war). So Preston has her wo rk cut out to disinter the truth of the sinking, so far as it can be determined, from incrusted myth and distorting accretions of widely believed misinformation-a tas k ve ry like getting down to the true metal in treating a statue recovered from the ocean depths. She is aided by Bob Ballard 's underwater exp loration of the wreck and other technical studies. H er verdict on the first myth, that the ship was a legitimate target of war, is firm: by the standards of the day the Lusitania was not fair game. The author has done everything to verify the cargo carried, know42
ing that cargo manifests can be faked. There we re no guns or war materials aboard, unless one co unts a number of military passengers traveling with the civilians in peacetime luxury. But she adds the significant proviso that by today's standards, the ship was indeed a war target, both for her actual economic value as a money earner and her potential val ue as a merchant cruiser or troop transport. And the German embassy had published a wa rning that the vessel was subject to attack. Reading Preston 's engaging and detailed account of the passengers and the ways of life they pursued, one is struck by the fantasy-island atmosphere on a ship steaming through a declared war zone. That goes for Cap tain Turn er as well , who reduced speed and closed with a headland to ch eck his pos ition- measures virtually invi ting attack if a sub were present. On the question of C hurchill's co mplicity, Preston finds no evidence to indicate his involve ment with the ship and everything to indicate his noninvolvement, including the fac t that he was in the greatest political cris is of his life in the Dardanelles fiasco. But the Adm iralty, under C hurchill as First Lord, was lax in not taking precaurions to ass ure the safety of a luxury liner steaming through a war zone. Presto n concludes that a verdict of murder or manslaughter isn't justified, but "a claim of contributory negligence certainly is." Preston 's fine bur firm touch with fac ts in dispute make her histo ty -writing a fascinating quest for truth. T he heart of her book, however, lies in her acco unt of the people aboard the Lusitania on that spring day, both survivors and deceased. The author was so taken up in this quest that she was kept awake at ni ght by haunting photographs and went to Queenstown in May to feel the water that snuffed our so many lives. The wo rk is strong in its humanity, with never a false note struck. PETER STANFORD,
offered a useful reality check. In A Frigate ofKing George, he ably describes life aboard the British frigate HMS Doris from 1807 to 1829, the year she was sold and broken up . The bulk of the book is devo ted to Doris's cruise on the So uth America n station from 182 1 to 1825, a period when the revolt of Spain 's American colonies faced the Royal Navy with significant diplomatic as well as military challenges. Doris was built not in England but at Bombay, India, of teak, a wood suited to service in tro pi cal waters. Othe1w ise, she was a standard 36-gun frigate. Though she hunted USS Essex during the War of 18 12, she never caught her, and ended her career without any of the dramatic single-ship anions that supply the stuff of good fiction. But the bookis not about Doris so much as the men wh o sailed her. H ere, Doris offers us much, precisely because her undramatic career was typical of Royal Navy frigates. Life at sea followed its unending routine; hands were flo gged, though in reali ty not very often; and like most ships, Doris spent m o re time in port than challenging wind and weather. An interestin g subtext of the book is the evolution of the Royal Navy officer corps from patro nage to profess ionalism. Whi le "interest" remained vital to an officer's career, connections could no t substitute for competen ce. And, as Doris's complement of Admiral ty midshipmen attested, the navy's senior leadership was dri ving the transformation. Vale's val uabl e and very readable book offers support for the enormously important revisionism of N . A. M. Rodger, who has put a dent in if not an end to the popular and false image of Royal Navy warships as floating H ells. By the standards of her time, life on Doris was usually pretty good, co mpared either to the merchant service or the dark Satanic mills. Applying any other standard is not histo ry, but cant. WILLIAM S. LIN D Washingto n D C
Editor at Large
A Frigate of King George: Life and Duty on a British Man-of-War, by Brian Vale (I. B. Tauris, New York NY, 200 1, 204pp, illus, appen, biblio, index, !SB 1-86064654-9; $35 hc) With interest in Napoleonic naval novels ever o n the in crease, Brian Vale has
Nelson in the Caribbean: The Hero Emerges, 1784-1787, by Joseph F. Callo (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD , 2002, 256pp, illus, maps, notes, biblio, index, ISBN 1-55 75 0-206-4; $34.95hc) T his engrossing study sets the seemingly uneventful years of N elson's first squadron comma nd, in the Caribbean in SEA HISTORY 102, AUTUMN 2002