Titanic
The Last Night of a Small Town
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
In his famous book A Night to Remember, historian Walter Lord described the sinking of the Titanic as 'the last night of a small town'. Now, a hundred years after her sinking, John Welshman reconstructs the fascinating individual histories of twelve of the inhabitants of this tragically short-lived floating town.
They include members of the crew; passengers in First, Second, and Third Class; women and men; adults and children; rich and poor. Among them are a ship's Captain, a Second Officer, an Assistant Wireless Operator; a Stewardess, an amateur military historian, a governess, a teacher, a domestic servant, a mother, and three children. What were their earlier histories? Who survived, and why, and who perished? And what happened to these people in the years after 1912?
Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town answers all these questions and more, while offering a minute-by-minute depiction of events aboard the doomed liner through the eyes of a broad and representative cross-section of those who sailed in her - both those who survived and those who didn't.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his newest work, Welshman (Churchill's Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain) "seeks to re-balance the narrative, away from First Class passengers towards the experiences of those in Second and Third." He does so by focusing on 11 passengers and crew members plus the captain of the Carpathia, the ship that rescued the Titanic's survivors. Using these people's own recollections as well as their published and unpublished accounts, Welshman paints a detailed picture of the ill-fated ship's auspicious launching, comfortable voyage, middle-of-the-night sinking, and the subsequent lives of its survivors. While his penchant for explaining each event from various perspectives often leads to repetition, Welshman writes with sensitivity that forgoes melodrama in favor of honest emotions. His prose is especially poignant when describing the quiet dignity displayed by most survivors and victims. By peppering the personal tales with historical asides about the boat's construction and trials, the wireless telegraph, lifeboats, immigration, and the true cause of the sinking, Welshman has created an important account that humanizes one of the most oft-dramatized disasters of the 20th century. 25 b&w photos not seen by PW.
