The Truth About the Titanic

Although he survived the sinking by seven months, it was the Titanic that killed Colonel Archibald Gracie. His struggles in the icy waters of the North Atlantic had shattered his constitution, and the awful things he had seen on that fateful night left him a haunted man. One observer said he had the look of someone “who had descended as distinctly into hell as any human being would care to acknowledge, and had risen again from the dead.” Nevertheless he tried to make sense of his experiences, and this book was published soon after his death. The first half is his own account of the sinking, and shows how he had to be both lucky and strong just to live through the night. In the second half he tells the individual stories of each of the Titanic’s lifeboats, summarizing the bare facts and then providing dramatic survivor accounts, from personal interviews and from testimony given to the British and American inquiries into the disaster. In its author’s desperate search for the truth, this book remains one of the most powerful works on the sinking of the Titanic.


This ebook edition features:

 • 16 photographs and illustrations from the first edition

 • Active table of contents and reflowable text

 • Part of the Titanic Landmark Series – republishing eyewitness accounts of the Titanic


Table of Contents:

 • I. The Last Day Aboard Ship

 • II. Struck By an Iceberg

 • III. The Foundering of the “Titanic”

 • IV. Struggling in the Water for Life

 • V. All Night on Bottom of Half-Submerged Upturned Boat

 • VI. The Port Side: Women and Children First

 • VII. Starboard Side: Women First, But Men When There Were No Women

 • Concluding Note