Dimensions
127 x 148 x 11mm
The RMS Titanic sailed from Southampton en route for New York on her maiden voyage with 2228 passengers and crew on board. On 14th April at twenty minutes before midnight, sailing at almost full speed, she struck an iceberg and sank in just two and a half hours. Over 1500 lives were lost.
This is the story of a great tragedy described by the surviving passengers, officers and crew who were on board that night. Firsthand accounts help to explain why so few of the passengers took to the lifeboats and later describe the miraculous survival of those forced to jump into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. The story of the Titanic is ultimately one of simple human loss and these laconic Edwardian voices bring it vividly to life. The hold that these events have on our imagination is as strong now as it ever has been in the 100 years since the great ship went down.
The specially written narrative follows events chronologically in hours and minutes from the moment of impact, and is underpinned by extracts from BBC broadcasts - eyewitness accounts in the voices of those who built the great liner at the Harland and Woolf shipyard in Belfast, and those of the crew and passengers who survived the tragedy and later relived their experiences. The story has been much re-told, mythologised and fictionalised, but here the familiar story is told simply and dispassionately in a documentary format.
A coda to the main story looks at the 1985 discovery of the wreck which ignited controversy. Were these undersea explorer marine archeologists or disturbers of a mass grave ? The views of the divers and the remaining survivors complete the story.
