The Loss of the S.S. Titanic: Its Story and Its Lessons By One Of The Survivors

“No novelist would dare to picture such an array of beautiful climatic conditions,—the rosy dawn, the morning star, the moon on the horizon, the sea stretching in level beauty to the sky-line,—and on this sea to place an ice-field like the Arctic regions and icebergs in numbers everywhere,—white and turning pink and deadly cold,—and near them, rowing round the icebergs to avoid them, little boats coming suddenly out of mid-ocean, with passengers rescued from the most wonderful ship the world has known. No artist would have conceived such a picture: it would have seemed so highly dramatic as to border on the impossible, and would not have been attempted. Such a combination of events would pass the limit permitted the imagination of both author and artist.” First published in 1912, just two short months after the sinking of the “Titanic, this hauntingly immediate account opens with Lawrence Beesley's story of arriving onshore “and soon after walking through the doors of Messrs. 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. Among his experiences, Beesley witnessed two second-class women being told to return to their deck, as lifeboats were awaiting them there. 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. A classic account of the story of "Titanic".