Sinking of the Titanic: Eyewitness Accounts

Published only months after the disaster and sold as a “Memorial Edition,” this is one of the most sensationalistic early books about the sinking of the Titanic. It contains a multitude of survivor accounts, taken from newspaper stories, personal interviews, and reports of the Senate investigation. Much of the early reporting – for example, that the Titanic exploded and broke in two before she sank – is now known to be untrue, but the raw horror of the disaster remains in the rush and jumble of the survivors’ own words. There are also unique accounts not reported elsewhere, including a comparison to the cowardly behavior of passengers and crew during the Bourgogne disaster, a chapter on the gruesome task of the “funeral ship” Mackay-Bennett, and the initial story of Lady Duff-Gordon, who was later pilloried by the “yellow press.”