The ship was one of the great luxury ocean liners of its day. In early May 1915, a British ocean liner carrying nearly 2,000 people - primarily a mix of Brits and Canadians with about 200 Americans onboard as well - sailed from New York toward Liverpool. Many will remember the sinking of the ship from long-ago history classes detailing causes of America's entry into World War I. Gathering letters, diaries, ships' logs and government documents, Larson sets readers not only with the passengers on the decks of the Lusitania, but at the periscope of the German U-boat that sunk her, in the mind of the lovesick Woodrow Wilson trying to avoid conflict with Germany and in the offices of the British Admiralty, whose neglect of the poor Lusitania was scandalous. Of the many ways to tell the story of the sinking of the Lusitania, fans of Erik Larson, author of some of the best page-turning histories of the recent past ("The Devil in the White City," "In the Garden of Beasts," "Isaac's Storm"), will not be surprised to learn that he has chosen to place the narrative in the hands of those, like Gwyer, most intimately involved in the disaster.
So blackened with soot that her own husband didn't recognize her when they were reunited, Gwyer nonetheless survived the tragedy. Moments after Gwyer was pulled into the smokestack, a final eruption of steam from one of the engines far below sent her hurling right back out into the ocean.
She was sucked into one of the 24-foot-wide funnels that had once risen in giant splendor along the spine of the Lusitania, now sinking swiftly, like the rest of the ship, into the sea. As the famed ocean liner Lusitania made its swift descent into the ocean off the coast of Ireland after being struck by a single torpedo from a German U-boat, a Canadian newlywed named Margaret Gwyer got caught in the flotsam of debris just flung into the ocean from the ship's decks.
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