In early 1917, just before the United States entered the European war, twenty-nine-year-old Floyd Gibbons, a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune who had already covered the Mexican revolution, was assigned by the paper to the European theater. Instead of booking passage on a neutral ship, he looked for one that was likely to get torpedoed. He sailed from New York on 17 February 1917 on the Cunard liner the Laconia, with a special set of supplies provided by the Tribune. It included a life preserver, flasks of brandy and water, and multiple flashlights.

On 25 February a German submarine torpedoed the Laconia, and it sank. Only thirteen of the three hundred people aboard were lost, and the survivors were rescued after six hours on open water. The next day, just as President Wilson was telling Congress that the Germans had not yet committed...