Just Finished Reading: Titanic Lives – Migrants and Millionaires, Conmen and Crew by Richard Davenport-Hines (FP: 2012)

In April 1912 the greatest ship ever built sailed on her maiden voyage confident of a great future ahead of her. Days later she lay in pieces on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean taking over 1500 people with her to the bottom – including some of the greatest names of the age. Shocked into disbelief the Edwardian world would not see death on this scale until the killing fields of the Western Front a mere two years away. The sinking of the apparently ‘unsinkable’ Titanic caused a deep psychic wound on both sides of the Atlantic and caused many to question man’s domination of nature and his hubris in challenging nature on its own terms. The death of so many seemed to indicate that humanity had finally gone too far.

This is the story of that great ship (and her two sisters Olympic and Britannic) from concept and design, to construction in Belfast and finally her destruction in mid-Atlantic. But it is far more about those who sailed on her. Refreshingly it did not dwell exclusively (or even extensively) on the super-rich ‘jet-setters’ of their age who crossed and crisscrossed the Atlantic on a regular basis for business or pleasure. It also had much to say for the migrants from all over Europe hopeful and confident of a life in the New World free from prejudice, political and religious oppression. Confident also in making a better life for themselves and for their villages back in the old country to which they sent some of their hard won dollars. The Titanic was, more than anything else a microcosm of early 20th Century society with its mix of sharp class distinctions and of the new rich who broke through previously unbreakable barriers which left them with millions in the bank but a deep insecurity about their social position.

It was also an age all too recently transitioned from sail to steam and one supremely confident in its material and technological capabilities. Each year bigger, faster and more luxurious liners crossed the Atlantic with seeming impunity. Disdaining the fitting of enough lifeboats for all – which not only ruined the elegant lines of the ship itself but seemed superfluous as the ship itself was one huge lifeboat – it did seem for a while that no limits existed (or should be allowed to exist) in the design of the new behemoths. Until, that is, the fateful night when the Titanic met and side-swiped an iceberg she saw far too late to avoid. With six compartments holed and watertight bulkheads that only went up so far (to save money and weight) the ships doom was inevitable. Knowing that a large number of passengers and crew would inevitably die unless rescuers appeared swiftly only made the situation more poignant. Women and children first often seemed to mean women a children only with boats being lowered into the water two thirds or sometimes half full despite their being men (and boys) available to fill them. Oddly it was the 2nd Class men who suffered most losses seemingly living up to the expectations of their betters.

The radically divergent tales of the two nearest ships – the Carpathia who rushed to Titanic’s aid in vain to the Californian who (apparently) ignored Titanic’s distress signals from much closer – are well known though fairly lightly covered here. Tales of the survivors surprised me more than a little. Subdued by their ordeal and, no doubt by the publicity that followed, many slipped into depression and a rather surprising number ended their own lives apparently unable to cope with the aftermath of the greatest maritime disaster to date.

Even for a story so well-known and so often written about this book gripped and captivated from the first page to the last. I learnt so much from this book – not only about the ship and her crew but the society that her voyage was embedded in – that I was, at times quite overwhelmed by it all. On an emotional level it was also quite a journey. In relating the lives of many passengers and crew you began to know them as people rather than statistics and became overjoyed when you learnt of their survival or equally devastated to learn that they, their spouse or children did not survive the incident. One final thing was the knowledge that two passengers who had my rather unusual surname both perished in those freezing Atlantic waters never to reach their hoped for destinations in the New World. Where they actual relatives – I don’t know. I did a tiny bit of research which seemed on the face of things to indicate not, but who knows? That’d be quite a claim to fame.

If you’re interested in the Titanic tragedy or the pre-war period then this is definitely the book for you. This is very well written social history at its best and I can highly recommend it. This is also the first of three books on the subject. Next up is survivor tales followed by the search for, and incredible discovery, of the wreck itself. Watch this space.