On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner,...

A brilliantly sunny day, and then the explosion; on what had been an ordinary weekday, there is suddenly fire, smoke, confusion, bodies, panic... On May 7, 1915, the ocean liner Lusitania was struck by a terrifying new weapon-and became a casualty of a terrible new kind of war. This is a vivid account of the event that shocked the world; of the heyday of the luxury liner and the first days of the modern submarine; a critical chapter in the progress...

Submarines in the 1st world war.

The Kaiser's Pirates is a dramatic and little-known story of World War I, when the actions of a few men shaped the fate of nations. By1914 Germany had ships and sailors scattered across the globe, protecting its overseas colonies and "showing the flag" of its new Imperial Navy. After war broke out on August 4 there was no hope that they could reach home. Instead, they were ordered to attack Britain's vital trade routes for as long as possible. Under...