Publisher - Patrick Stephens Ltd
Author - Dave Bryceson
Binding - Hardback
Pages - 312
Illustrated
Age - Adult
Size - 21cm x 28cm

Product weight 600g

When the Titanic sand on 15 April 1912 in the icy North Atlantic, the tragedy gripped newspaper headlines worldwide. This most luxurious passenger liner - on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York was carrying a poignant cross section of society from the rich and famous to poor emigrants searching for a better life. The public was agog.

This text, based on a collection of contemporary newspaper cuttings, provides an insight into the tragedy in which more than 1,500 passengers and crew died, from the moment the news first broke right to the findings of both the American and British Inquiries several months later.. The reports, primarily from the "Daily Sketch" and "The Times", have an immediacy, pathos, and wealth of human interest even more than 80 years after the tragedy.

At first it was thoguht that the Titanic earlier described as virtually unsinkable could limp to port, or that there were other liners standing by to pick up the 2,358 people on board. Then the terrible truth began to emerge. Among the harrowing accounts from survivors were tributes to the British crew, every man of them was a hero and to the calm of the second-class and steerage passengers. There was however, an account, never corroborated of a wild scramble among the first-class passengers some of whom even tried bribery to save themselves.

Newspapers, trawling for links with the tragedy, wrote about psychic warnings, the Marconi company whose wireless apparatus was used to send out the SOS calls and six firemen alive thanks to unpunctuality - they were dismissed for arriving on board a few minutes earlier.

A School mate recalls Teddy Smith the distinguished Titanic captain who went down with his ship as 'a brave soul as a boy , always ready to help'. There is an official denial that the Titanic crew's wages had been stopped from the moment the ship foundered as claimed initially. Many column inches were given over to searching questions about responsibility emotional offers of adoption and fund-raising efforts by peopel from all walks of life desperate to help. And so the coverage continues in moving absorbing detail.