Titanic: The Night the World's Greatest Liner Sank
On the night of 14 April 1912, RMS Titanic entered an ice region in the North Atlantic at more than twenty knots. Less than three hours after striking an iceberg, the most celebrated passenger liner of her age was gone.
More than 1,500 people died. Roughly 700 survived. The catastrophe became one of the most famous disasters in modern history, but familiarity has also buried the real story beneath more than a century of myth.
Titanic: The Night the World's Greatest Liner Sank reconstructs the disaster from the Belfast shipyard and maiden voyage through the ice warnings, collision, evacuation, breakup, rescue and investigations that followed.
Drawing on the 1912 American and British inquiries, archival records, maritime authorities and later investigation of the wreck, Gordon J. MacKenzie examines what happened, what remains disputed, and why Titanic changed the rules of the sea.
The story follows the people behind the legend, including Thomas Andrews, Captain Edward Smith, William Murdoch, Charles Lightoller, Jack Phillips, Harold Bride, Arthur Rostron, Margaret Brown and J. Bruce Ismay, while also recovering the experiences of emigrant families, crew members and lesser-known survivors.
Why was speed maintained despite warnings of ice? Why were there not enough lifeboats? Were third-class passengers deliberately trapped below? Could Californian have saved more lives? Did Titanic break apart at the surface? And how much of the story remembered today is evidence rather than myth?
Titanic was not simply the story of one iceberg. It was a failure involving regulation, communications, emergency planning, ship design and human judgement. The reforms that followed helped reshape international maritime safety.
A clear, evidence-led account of the world's most famous shipwreck for readers who want the history behind the legend.
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