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To Eleanor, who believed.
ABOUT THE 2012 EDITION
CONSCIENTIOUS AUTHORS MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO ENSURE THE ACCURACY AND AUTHENTICITY of the works they produce, and as the author of Unsinkablethe Full Story of RMS Titanic, I did exactly that in preparation for the books release in March 1998. Alas, no one is perfect, and inevitably, a few errors crept into the text. Mostly these were incorrect spelling of names, though there were a few minor errors of fact. This new edition of Unsinkable has been produced by Da Capo Press with a determination to correct those mistakes, and to also bring the text into agreement with new information and research about the Titanic discovered and released since 1998. The original edition of Unsinkable has the distinction of being continuously in print for over thirteen years, putting it in some rather rarified company in the Titanic library. It is my sincere hope that this new edition will prove to be as long-lived and well received as was the original.
FOREWORD TO THE 2012 EDITION
IT HAS BEEN SAID THAT TITANIC IS THE THIRD MOST WIDELY RECOGNIZED WORD in the world, following God and Coca-Cola. Almost fifteen years have passed since these words opened the Introduction to Unsinkable: The Full Story of RMS Titanic, and while the Almighty still retains His pride of place, it is entirely possible that the order of the other two names has changed. The compelling power of the story of the Titanic has not simply continued undiminished, it has grown to unprecedented levels around the world, spawning boundless curiosity, fascination, or even, for some, obsession.
Many superficial observers might swiftly, if erroneously, attribute this burgeoning interest in the Titanic to the success of the eponymous 1997 motion picture. With its astonishing special effects which brought the ship and her fate to life in spectacular fashion, and despite being burdened with its rather mawkish love story, the film Titanic unquestionably played a significant role in propelling that interest. Yet the truth is that ever-increasing numbers of people from every corner of the globe have fallen under the spell of the unsinkable ship ever since the wreck of the Titanic was discovered in September 1985.
But it would be equally erroneous to say that before 1985 the tale of the Titanic and her fate was the province solely of maritime historians and ocean-liner enthusiasts. In 1955, a young Princeton-educated attorney named Walter Lord authored a book recounting the Titanics last hours, A Night to Remember. It became an overnight bestseller and an instant classic. Combining an easily accessible style with authoritative research, Lords book brought the Titanic to life for the first time to millions of readers around the world. A British-made motion picture based on the book and bearing the same name was released in 1957 to both critical acclaim and commercial success, offering a visual retelling of the disaster with an historical veracity and emotional intensity not yet equaled by any subsequent production. The world, then, was very much aware of the Titanic, and fascinated by herif only in a somewhat ephemeral waymoreso than by any other ship in human history, even before the wreck was discovered in 1985. This in turn meant that, in the words of maritime historian Parks Stephenson, They didnt find a shipwreck, they found the shipwreck.
The discovery of the wreck and the subsequent salvage and display of an amazing array of objects and artifacts from the wreck site have made the ship and the disaster far more tangibleand so more realto people everywhere than she had ever been before. It is that reality, rather than any re-creation, which holds people in a grip it never relinquishes. Today, over a decade after the cinematic Titanic had its run, more people than ever find themselves drawn, like iron by a magnet, to the story of the ship, her passengers, her crew, her brief life, and incredible death.
There is a compelling reason why this is so. Despite the ways in which some who would attempt to burden the tale of the Titanic and her fate with their own brand of social, political, or moral baggage, almost everyone who exercises anything beyond a superficial interest in her eventually perceives the disaster for precisely what it was: a truly terrible thing that happened, through no deserving fault of their own, to a group of basically good people. It is, in short, a tale in which everyone can find some point of experience, great or small, to which they can relate on a personal level.
Describing the Titanic disaster as yet one more example of the fundamentally painful truth that God allows bad things to happen to good people is neither a simple nor a simplistic attempt to find an accessible perspective for the tragedy. Declaring the disaster to be a truly terrible thing is to present it in the simplest, starkest manner possible. This is no small point, as the same sort of ax-grinding which I so soundly decried and denounced in the Introduction to the original edition of Unsinkable has not only continued, it has grown in volume and stridencyand irresponsibility. Conspiracy theories unimagined in 1998 have gained unexpected traction, no matter how absurd or improbable. Not only are the same tired canards endlessly repeatedthe ships officers blithely ignored ice warnings in an effort to set a record crossing of the North Atlantic; the men in First Class were given priority in the lifeboats as the ship was sinking, at the expense of the women and children down in Third Class; the callous crew, enforcing the White Star Lines deliberate, malicious policy of discrimination against the passengers in steerage, locked them below decks in order to keep them out of the lifeboats and save seats for their betters; but new, even more insidious (and unsupportable) claims have also been put forwardand given credence by observers and commentators for whom ignorance is bliss and knowledge is reduced to sound bites.
These new allegations and revelations come from individuals who have compromised their professions and professionalism in order to gain notice and notoriety, or for the sake of sensationalism and ratings, at the expense of the truth.
The historian who spun the yarn that the Titanic was deliberately sunk as part of an enormous, complex insurance fraudand the awful loss of life was an unexpected, unintended consequence; the scientist who took a single piece of metal and turned it into the scathing accusation that the Harland and Wolff shipyard, with monumental indifference, knowingly used inferior materials in constructing the Titanic; the television producer who went one better and authored a book which combined hearsay, innuendo, and outright fabrication in a sensational brew which claimed that the men who built the Titanic knowingly constructed a ship whose design was critically flawed, then engaged in a decades-long cover-up in a effort to prevent the truth from ever coming to light. If taken together and at face value, the cumulative effect of such rantings is to encourage the idea, whether blatantly or subtly, that the Titanic disaster was not only a tragedy without precedent, but was also an act of monumental evil.
And yet...
When any man or woman cares sufficiently to approach the story of the
