He tells of London’s mysterious Room 40, where workers deciphered German messages. Larson saves his justifiable ire for the era’s government officials. Simply cold-blooded to drown a mass of men in an ambush!" He was shaken by the horrors his torpedoes wrought, writing in his memoirs: "We are like highwaymen, sneaking up on an unsuspecting ship in such a cowardly fashion. Georg von Trapp, who would gain renown as the patriarch of the singing family in The Sound of Music, served as an Austrian U-boat commander. The rich and famous make interesting cameos throughout. “So every night,” Larson quotes a crew member, “I slept with a torpedo and a puppy.” Schwieger’s and other U-boats often rescued sailors and passengers after torpedoings, as well - it was the ships they were after, not the people. (U-20 proved unable to save a cow that was also spotted swimming nearby.) The dog had puppies. He recounts the story of a black dachshund that was rescued by Schwieger and his crew after the U-20 sank a Portuguese ship. The author shows both captains in a flattering light, as honorable men who did their jobs well. Walther Schwieger, along with passengers, crew and world leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. William Thomas Turner and his German counterpart, Unterseeboot-20 Capt. We hear the story via both Lusitania Capt. As with his previous works - notably the pre-World War II tale In the Garden of Beasts and his first book, Isaac's Storm, about the 1900 Galveston hurricane - Larson deftly pulls off the near-magical feat of taking a foregone conclusion and conjuring a tale that's suspenseful, moving and altogether riveting. Larson's nimble, exquisitely researched tale puts you dead center, as it were, on that ship.
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