Book description
On 15 April 2012, it will be 100 years since the Titanic sank. Since
that fateful night, stories about the sinking have become legendary -
how the band played to the end, how lifeboats were lowered half-empty -
but amongst the films, novels and academic arguments, only those who
were there can separate truth from fiction. After the sinking, inquiries
into the loss of 1,517 lives (out of 2,223 aboard) were held in both the
UK and US. The proceedings produced 1,000 pages of transcripts. Some of
the testimonies were inevitably less than impartial, but as a whole the
transcripts represent the most thorough and complete account of the
sinking, told in the voices of those who were there. For the first time
these transcripts have been specially edited and arranged
chronologically, so that they tell the story of the Titanic's sinking as
a narrative, rather than a list of questions and answers in a courtroom.
The witnesses are transformed into characters in a much bigger story,
and the events are described from different perspectives of people in
every part of the ship, from a stoker in the boiler room escaping his
section before the watertight doors sealed behind him, to first class
passengers trying to buy their way onto lifeboats. Capturing the
disbelief, the chaos and the terror of the disaster, this unique book
brings to life the tragedy through the voices of those who survived it.
Nic Compton was deputy editor and then editor of Classic Boat from 1996
to 2000. Since then, he has travelled the world as a freelance
writer/photographer. He was editor of the Official Book of the America's
Cup Jubilee (Notre Voie, 2002) and has written three books: Sailing Solo
(Mitchell Beazley, 2003), Sailboats (Salamander 2003) and The Great
Classic Yacht Revival (Mitchell Beazley, 2004).
