One book I finally got around to reading is Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember which is about the sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912. Titanic’s history – the ship, the mystique of being the largest ship in the world at that time, the sinking, and the cultural impact it still has on the world – has always fascinated me. As a historian, Lord interviewed survivors of the disaster and reviewed testimony from Congress and the British Court of Enquiry to paint a comprehensive picture of the tragedy (121). Even though the book was written in 1955, it is still the definitive account of the sinking.
This book is a fast and engaging read as Lord writes with vivid prose that makes the night’s events come to life. The book starts with Titanic’s encounter with the iceberg, the attempt to go around it, and the subsequent collision. Lord captures the disbelief felt by the passengers and crew after Titanic collided with an iceberg. Many of the passengers and crew came on the boat deck and saw chunks of ice scattered on the deck and heard the deafening sound of steam escaping from the ship’s funnels (Lord 17), but most thought the collision would be a minor inconvenience worth talking about when Titanic reached New York. Even with the collision, the belief that Titanic was unsinkable was not easily shaken. In one exchange between passengers discussing what had occurred, the other passenger responded with little concern, “I guess it’s nothing serious; I’m going back to my cabin to read” (18).
However, passengers and crew came to the realization that the situation was more serious than initially thought with the ship taking on water and gradually tilting forward. Lord expertly shows the urgency and panic of the passengers and crew as they tried to keep the ship afloat and evacuate passengers to the lifeboats. He captures the human drama as wives and children were separated from their husbands as they filled the lifeboats because the old maritime custom “women and children first” was enforced. With only twenty lifeboats available, there was not enough room to save everyone onboard the doomed ship. Maritime practices at the time often let ships get away with less lifeboat capacity because most assumed other ships would be close enough that lifeboats could make several trips from the ship in distress to the rescue ship.
Another aspect of the book that was well done was the Carpathia’s perspective once they received Titanic’s distress signals. The Carpathia, which was heading south with passengers, immediately turned north toward the Titanic as fast as it could. Unfortunately, the Carpathia was four hours away from Titanic’s last known position. Captain Arthur H. Rostron ordered the crew to get supplies ready to treat survivors and to not rouse the Carpathia’s passengers as they did so. One passenger of the Carpathia slept through the course adjustment and woke up wondering why there were icebergs floating around the ship (Lord 97).
When the Carpathia reached Titanic’s last position, it took some time before they were able to locate the lifeboats in the darkness and even longer to retrieve them. Once the survivors came aboard the Carpathia, the weight of what they witnessed became apparent – nearly 1,500 people went down with the Titanic. Survivors tried to help each other, and many found solace, but Lord referenced an instance where a woman tried to give two women who survived the sinking some coffee. “‘Go away,’ they said, ‘we have just seen our husbands drown’” (Lord 111).
Lord’s A Night to Remember remains a gripping and chilling account of that fateful night. The writing is crisp and full of detail about the most well-known maritime disaster in history. I usually take my time with books, but I could not put down A Night to Remember. It is excellent historical writing and highly recommended.
Note: In-text citations are from the e-book edition.
A Night to Remember by