The Night Lives On: The Untold Stories and Secrets Behind the Sinking of the "Unsinkable" Ship—Titanic

April 15, 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, arguably the 20th century’s most famous peacetime sea disaster. Titanic at 100 commemorates the anniversary by bringing together news stories, opinions, tributes, survivor accounts, and more, giving a glimpse into the aftermath of the loss of the “unsinkable” ship.

Included are original articles from The New York Times, widely regarded as the first newspaper to correctly report the severity of the disaster, spanning the period from Titanic’s launch to the days immediately following the catastrophe; comments and criticism about Titanic from noted literary figures of the day, including George Bernard Shaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and H. G. Wells; poetic tributes released in the weeks following the sinking; and two full accounts of that harrowing night penned by survivors Lawrence Beesley and Col. Archibald Gracie. Also included are three fictional works many feel predicted the Titanic’s untimely end: two stories written by Titanic passenger W. T. Stead, who went down with the ship, and Morgan Robertson’s complete Futility, Or The Wreck of the Titan, published in 1898.

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Although he survived the sinking by seven months, it was the Titanic that killed Colonel Archibald Gracie. His struggles in the icy waters of the North Atlantic had shattered his constitution, and the awful things he had seen on that fateful night left him a haunted man. One observer said he had the look of someone “who had descended as distinctly into hell as any human being would care to acknowledge, and had risen again from the dead.” Nevertheless he tried to make sense of his experiences, and this book was published soon after his death. The first half is his own account of the sinking, and shows how he had to be both lucky and strong just to live through the night. In the second half he tells the individual stories of each of the Titanic’s lifeboats, summarizing the bare facts and then providing dramatic survivor accounts, from personal interviews and from testimony given to the British and American inquiries into the disaster. In its author’s desperate search for the truth, this book remains one of the most powerful works on the sinking of the Titanic.

Titanic: Touchstones of a Tragedy stands alone in the genre of books on the legendary ship thanks to its abundant use of artifacts and memorabilia not previously seen by those beguiled by the doomed White Star Liner. With his use of these striking images and a wealth of facts to tell the Titanic’s near mythic tale in a novel way, author Santini presents readers with a museum’s worth of Titanic treasures—all between the covers of a book.