Review: Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic

Unsinkable: The Full Story of the RMS Titanic by Daniel Allen Butler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this history that arced from the planning for the building of Titanic and her sister vessels Olympic and Gigantic (later Britannic) on to Titanic: The Exhibition which I travelled to Boston to see in the summer of 1998. This tragedy has taken on a mythic locus, in the tidal zone between the sunsetting of class privilege and the dawning of the now ubiquitous wireless technology. The frantic use (and abuse of wireless) adds tempo and pulse to this work, making it a nice double feature with Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. Since the work is so recent, while it may not have the persona charm of A Night To Remember And The Night Lives On, it does have the advantage of more hindsight, research and more recent scholarship. This allows us to get even onto The Californian idly drifting ten miles away and observing but not reacting to standard, all-white signal flares sent from the doomed vessel. There is a nice glossary of nautical terms and be sure to also read the appendices. One is a closer examination of the indefensible Capt. Lord of the pitiless Californian and more takes a dim view of White Star's unchivalrous Ismay while treating Capt. Smith of The Titanic like a PTSD victim. Personally, I think he unblemished record theretofore meant he had no experience with disaster or disaster averted when his passengers needed such experience the most.

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