Just Finished Reading: A Night to Remember by Walter Lord (FP: 1956)

I have long been fascinated by the tragedy of the Titanic. Part of it is, of course, that it’s such a great ‘story’ which is why so much has been written about it and why the mystique still resonates more than 100 years after the event. Part of it is, at least for me, the feeling that its sinking was arguably the beginning of the end of the Western world’s belief that progress was eternal and that, if we put our minds to it, we could conquer anything – especially the natural world. Maybe we could have recovered our Victorian optimism after the event if only the failure highlighted by its demise had not been underlined by the horrors of trench warfare just two short years later and the loss of a whole generation of young men on the killing fields of Europe. What makes the story a little more personal for me was that I discovered that two of the steerage passengers who embarked in Ireland at the start of a new life in America both had my surname and that they both died like so many others of their class. Whether or not they were any blood relation to me I have no idea. My surname is not exactly unusual in Southern Ireland so there’s a fair possibility that there was in fact no family relationship at all but I have neither confirmed nor denied it – yet.

The book itself is hailed (rightly in my opinion) as probably the classic on the subject. Numerous books had been written on and around these events in the years after the event but few it seemed caught the public’s imagination in quite the same way. For one thing the narrative is breathlessly told in just 169 pages starting with the sighting of the fateful iceberg and ending with the last lifeboat being picked up by the Carpathia around 6 hours later. As you can imagine the feel of the book is intense - indeed the whole narrative gripped me from beginning to end like a taught thriller. Despite knowing the overall story fairly well I found myself agonising over the lives of those involved and the decisions they made which either resulting in them living or dying on that fateful night. The very real sense of being there with the passengers and crew was conveyed by a mixture of meticulous detail (which was sometimes just a little too much) and the knowledge that the conversations attributed to the people described actually happened – though the author was confident enough in his skill to let the reader know when different people ‘remembered’ incidents and conversation differently as might be expected with the passage of decades before they were interviewed about the traumatic events of that night. I suppose what added an extra something was that I had recently watched the movie of the same name which (at the time unbeknownst to me) was based on this book. I watched it subsequently and managed to pick out snippets of conversation and some of the action that actually happened as the ship slowly sank into the freezing Atlantic.

What thrilled me in the film and thrilled me even more in this book was the tale of the Carpathia whose captain threw all caution to the wind and raced towards the last know position of the Titanic at full speed, at night, with icebergs known to be in the area. Unfortunately the Carpathia was over 50 miles away and had no way of getting to the Titanic before she sank with such a huge loss of life. Much closer, or so it seemed, was the Californian which might have been less than 12 miles away but apparently did nothing. Its captain was vilified and long denied that he was as close as some people believed him to be. He was definitely the villain of the piece and some people have criticised Lord for pointing the finger so solidly at him.

This is a great work of historical writing which will honestly thrill anyone who knows the story of the Titanic. Its style and delivery are practically faultless and for the few days it took me to read this short book I almost felt that I was standing shoulder to shoulder with the men and women on the boat deck awaiting the next lifeboat to be lowered into the icy water. A brilliant work and highly recommended. Just don’t ruin it by watching the James Cameron version afterwards!