The Sinking of the Titanic


Bruce M. Caplan - 1997
    His narrative reads like a novel, yet every word is true. Bruce Caplan took the original work and edited and abridged the book to include new information and today is a much sought-after public speaker and consided a premier Titanic expert. Myth: the ship was safest when it left port. Reality: the ship was on fire from the time it left Southampton. Not a tiny blaze, but a roaring inferno that probably contributed to the disaster. Myth: All the men patiently stood by and let the women and children enter the few lifeboats.Reality: Men were shot on deck as they attempted to board the lifeboats and save their own lives.

The Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic


David W. Shaw - 2002
    David W. Shaw, who brings decades of experience as a seaman to his writing, has based this riveting tale on the firsthand testimony of the few who survived the wreck, including its heroic captain, James C. Luce. It is the story of the brave and dutiful Luce fighting his mutinous crew as they take the lifeboats, leaving hundreds of men, women, and children to suffer a cruel and painful death. It is also the story of those who survived the frigid waters and those who perished -- including Luce's own frail son, who died as the grief-stricken captain helplessly watched. Not only did 400 people die by daybreak, the wreck brought to an end the domination of the seas by the American maritime fleet.Utterly compelling, beautifully written, and a fascinating, heretofore little-known slice of American history, "The Sea Shall Embrace Them" is a stirring narrative that puts the reader on the deck as a shipful of men, women, and children do battle both with a mighty ocean and with their own baser instincts to survive.

The Night Lives On


Walter Lord - 1986
    Why did the crew steam full speed ahead into dangerous waters despite six wireless warnings? How able was the doomed behemoths superb seaman Captain Smith? Why did the nearby ship Californian ignore Titanic's distress signals? How could such a disaster ever have occurred?Author Walter Lord's acclaimed classic A Night to Remember is considered the definitive written work on the Titanic tragedy. And now he returns to the scene of chaos and horror to explore—and answer—the untold mysteries behind the twentieth century's greatest catastrophe at sea.

Castaway: The extraordinary survival story of Narcisse Pelletier, a young French cabin boy shipwrecked on Cape York in 1858


Robert Macklin - 2019
    He lives in Canberra. In 1858, fourteen-year-old French cabin boy Narcisse Pelletier was aboard the trader Saint-Paul when it was wrecked off the eastern tip of New Guinea. Scrambling into a longboat, Narcisse and the other survivors crossed almost 1000 kilometres of the Coral Sea before reaching the shores of Far North Queensland. If not for the local Aboriginal people, Narcisse would have perished. For seventeen years he lived with them, growing to manhood and participating fully in their Uutaalnganu world. Then, in 1875, his life was again turned upside down.Drawing from firsthand interviews with Narcisse after his return to France and other contemporary accounts of exploration and survival, and documenting the spread of European settlement in Queensland and the brutal frontier wars that followed, Robert Macklin weaves an unforgettable tale of a young man caught between two cultures in a time of transformation and upheaval.

Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck That Shook America


Michael McCarthy - 2014
    Horrified morning commuters watched it all unfold. The final death toll would not come for weeks but would be 835 people, including 21 entire families. The trial would make national headlines and cause public outrage; the effort to bring the guilty ship owners to justice was thwarted by future star lawyer Clarence Darrow. Darrow defended the only true hero of the ship, engineer Joseph Erickson, whose wealthy bosses laid all the blame at his feet. A national disaster and tragedy, a courtroom drama, corrupt businessmen and Chicago politics, and a story of the cost of America’s industrial might all in one gripping story. Author Michael McCarthy takes the reader back one hundred years to the one of the most shocking accidents in American history. But the aftermath and cover-up just may have been even worse.

Royal Murder


Marc Alexander - 1978
    . .’ So wrote Shakespeare in Richard II, and in his new book Royal Murder Marc Alexander investigates the sad stories of the victims of royal murders. Ignoring violent death by battle or political execution, this book is devoted to personal acts of jealousy and revenge which has stained the Crown with blue blood down the ages. The subjects range from those murders one may vaguely remember from schooldays without being aware of their backgrounds of intrigue and mystery, to lesser known scandals such as the secret murder of Count von Konigsmarck, the lover of Princess Sophia of Zell, wife of George the First. About the Author… Marc Alexander left Poverty Bay, New Zealand, to become a journalist in London. After four years on Fleet Street, he became the editorial director of a small magazine group, then the organiser of an annual film festival. Four years ago he became a full-time author, his books ranging from fiction to history.

The Loss of the S.S. Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons


Lawrence Beesley - 1912
    Houghton and Mifflin to tell his tale. THE LOSS OF THE S.S. TITANIC represents Beesley's attempt not just to record the events of the sinking but to set the record straight. In so doing, he captures both the majesty and the tragedy of this legendary voyage -- the view from the lifeboat as well as that from the deck. Full of wonderful nautical detail and written with a hair-raising clarity, THE LOSS OF THE S.S. TITANIC is an altogether spellbinding tale of that fateful night -- one you won't soon forget.

Titanic Survivor: The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessop Who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters


Violet Jessop - 1997
    She was a stewardess for first-class passengers on the Titanic and she wrote an absolutely unique eyewitness account on the most written about disaster of our time. Four years later, Violet was a nurse onboard the hospital ship Britannic when it struck a mine and sank to the bottom of the Aegean. But Titanic Survivor is much more. A unique autobiography for those who want to know how it really felt, a story that could be told only by a Titanic Survivor.

American Legends: The Life of Dean Martin


Charles River Editors - 2013
    *Includes some of Martin's most colorful quotes. *Includes a Bibliography for further reading. "If people want to think I get drunk and stay out all night, let 'em. That's how I got here, you know." - Dean Martin A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. Like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin is an American legend for his longevity and success across a garden variety of different platforms. Martin began as a nightclub singer, performed in a comedy act, starred in films, recorded hit albums, and capped his career by serving as a television host. In fact, there may be no star who was better able to transcend the different avenues of entertainment. Martin's success was made all the more amazing by the fact that he never had to change his personality or persona to find success in his different endeavors. From the beginning, Martin's public persona remained largely unchanged. He grew more famous and wealthy, but he always remained the smooth-talking Italian with the easy charm and the cool veneer. As Jerry Lewis noted in his memoirs about Martin, "Dean had this uncanny way of making everything bad look like it wasn't all that bad." If anything, Martin suggested that no matter the circumstances, people can always face their situation with leisurely charm. Martin's versatility is unprecedented even today, an era in which stars routinely alternate between film and musical careers. Martin was able to simultaneously work across different media at the same time; even after rising to fame as a singer, he continued to perform with Jerry Lewis and star in films. But after his film career took off, he continued to perform the crooning style of music that had made him famous and had long since been outdated. While other actors were forced to drastically alter their persona to keep up with the times, Martin's ability to fuse suave glamour with an everyday ordinariness ensured he didn't need to transform anything. Martin's life and career are often compared to his close friend and contemporary Frank Sinatra, and for good reason. Both came from proud Italian families, both were cohorts in the famed Rat Pack in the 1960s, and they each maintained success even late in their careers. However, Sinatra's career was filled with far more ups and downs than Martin, and his public image experienced highs and lows along with it. It's also somewhat ironic that it was Martin who Anglicized his name but remained a bigger Italian icon than Sinatra. They each began their careers as Italian crooners, but Martin maintained his style while Sinatra adopted a brasher, more "All-American" singing method. Martin never strayed far from his humble background, even as he became one of America's biggest stars. American Legends: The Life of Dean Martin profiles the life and career of one of America's most famous performers. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Dean Martin like you never have before, in no time at all.

Titanic: True Stories of her Passengers, Crew and Legacy


Nicola Pierce - 2018
    On board were: writers, artists, honeymooners, sportsmen, priests, reverends, fashion designers, aristocrats, millionaires, children, crew and emigrants looking for a better life.This book tells of their lives, and shines the spotlight on: Some of the great ship’s surprising treasures Her fêted voyage from Belfast’s Harland & Wolff shipyard The fascinating museums devoted to her memory, including Titanic Belfast The iconic music and movies Her winged and four-legged passengers The sister ships of Olympic and Britannic Tales of heroism Theories surrounding Titanic’s fatal collision The lifeboats and just how close the SS Californian was on that tragic night How Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and the inquiries viewed events These stories and much more lie inside.

The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome


Jim Carrier - 2000
    When he agreed to command the Fantome, Windjammer's marquee ship, a beautiful 282-foot schooner that "sailed like a pig" in the Gulf of Honduras, he knew that a storm would leave him little space to run. In the southern reaches of the Caribbean, Tropical Storm Mitch whirled to life like a nebula and became Captain March's worst nightmare--a category five storm with 180-mile-per-hour winds and fifty-foot seas. After discharging his passengers in Belize, Captain March and his crew, most of them West Indians, took the $20 million uninsured tall ship out to sea to dodge the approaching storm. What ensued was a deadly game of cat and mouse that confounded experts' predictions and cornered the Fantome with eerie precision. Based on journalist Jim Carrier's exhaustive research and hundreds of interviews, The Ship and the Storm explores the story of the Fantome and Hurricane Mitch from every angle. From the deck of the ship, to the research planes flying into the eye of the hurricane, to islanders and coastal villagers in a desperate battle for survival, The Ship and the Storm is the heartbreaking and horrifying story of the most destructive hurricane in Western Hemisphere history.

Hey Doc!: The Battle of Okinawa As Remembered by a Marine Corpsman


Ed Wells - 2017
    This is the wartime memories of a Marine Corpsman who served in Company B, of the 6th Battalion of the 4th Regiment. He saw 100 days of continuous combat during the Battle of Okinawa, including the Battle for Sugar Loaf, and was part of the landing force that was headed to Japan when the atomic bomb dropped. These were recorded after 60 years of reflection, and are presented to honor all veterans.

Lost At Sea


Patrick Dillon - 1998
    Eleven days later, on Valentine's Day, the overturned hull of the Americus was found drifting in calm seas, with no record of even a single distress call or trace of its seven-man crew. The Altair vanished altogether. Despite the desperate search that followed, no evidence of the vessel or its crew would ever be found. Fourteen men were lost. And the tragedy would mark the worst disaster in the history of U.S. commercial fishing. With painstaking research and spellbinding prose, acclaimed journalist Patrick Dillon brings to life the men who were lost, the dangers that commercial fishermen face, the haunting memories of the families left behind...and reconstructs the intense investigation that ensued, which for the first time exposed the dangers of an industry that would never again be the same.

Broken Arrow: How the U.S. Navy Lost a Nuclear Bomb


Jim Winchester - 2019
    The cruise from the Yankee Station to Japan was used to practice procedures for Armageddon.Douglas Webster was a young pilot from Ohio, newly married and with seventeen combat missions under his belt. On that day in 1965 he strapped into an A-4 Skyhawk bomber for a routine weapons loading drill and simulated mission. After mishandling the manoeuvre, the plane and its pilot sunk to the bottom of the South China sea, along with a live B43 one-megaton thermonuclear bomb.A cover-up mission began. The crew was ordered to stay quiet, rumours circulate of sabotage, a damaged weapon and a troublesome pilot who needed 'disposing of'. The incident, a 'Broken Arrow' in the parlance of the Pentagon, was kept under wraps until 25 years later. The details that emerged caused a diplomatic incident, revealing that the U.S. had violated agreements not to bring nuclear weapons into Japan. Family members and the public only learnt the truth when researchers discovered archived documents that disclosed the true location of the carrier, hundreds of miles closer to land than admitted.Broken Arrow tells the story of Ticonderoga's sailors and airmen, the dangers of combat missions and shipboard life, and the accident that threatened to wipe her off the map and blow US-Japanese relations apart. For the first time, through previously classified documents, never before published photos of the accident aircraft and the recollections of those who were there, the story of carrier aviation's only 'Broken Arrow' is told in full.

How to Survive the Titanic: or, The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay


Frances Wilson - 2011
    Bruce Ismay. In a unique work of history evocative of Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Lord Jim, Wilson raises provocative moral questions about cowardice and heroism, memory and identity, survival and guilt—questions that revolve around Ismay’s loss of honor and identity as his monolithic venture—a ship called “The Last Word in Luxury” and “The Unsinkable”—was swallowed by the sea and subsumed in infamy forever.