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The Titanic: End of a Dream
Recreates the events surrounding the 1912 sinking of the Titanic and the U.S. Senate investigation of the disaster, an investigation of the ship's American owners and the sinking itself
358 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1979
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July 1, 2025
I could not put this down. A rivetingly close blow-by-blow of the U.S. Senate investigation into the astonishing sinking of the Titanic, led by the plucky Senator Smith from the great state of Michigan, fighting for the little guy. The author uses the friction between the straight-laced and stiff-lipped Brits and the pragmatic and emotional Yanks to energize the drama of the investigation. The sheer unexpectedness of the accident comes through in the testimony of the survivors as does the emotion of the crowd in the hearing room. No one, American or Brit, comes off very well, in this nasty tale, including senior U.S. senators, money hungry companies like the wireless operator Marconi Marine, and the monopolist J. Pierpont Morgan, whose petty machinations to capture the trans-Atlantic passenger trade turns out to be his last hurrah. Newspapers, particularly the UK rags, are shown to be sniveling pustules of jingoism, and only the U.S. legislators, who push through new safety regulations for oceanic travel against the objections of the likes of Henry Cabot Lodge (whose estimable family shows up decades later in South Vietnam to give their imprimatur of legitimacy to that fully baked FUBAR) are the sole heroes of this wretched little Anglo-American fairy tale from a place far, far away and long, long ago.
The most surprising new information for me was the fact that even after this disaster of hundreds killed because of inadequate training and no safety procedures or systems to speak of, when the US Congress tried to introduce some common sense safety rules in order to prevent such a thing from happening again the entire shipping industry seemed to rise up in protest. I guess it should not have been a big surprise to me. Parallels with the 2008 financial collapse and Wall Street objections to attempts at regulation should have caused me to expect no more.
The most surprising new information for me was the fact that even after this disaster of hundreds killed because of inadequate training and no safety procedures or systems to speak of, when the US Congress tried to introduce some common sense safety rules in order to prevent such a thing from happening again the entire shipping industry seemed to rise up in protest. I guess it should not have been a big surprise to me. Parallels with the 2008 financial collapse and Wall Street objections to attempts at regulation should have caused me to expect no more.
April 26, 2016
Titanic endures. Long ago, she stopped being a ship; now she is a synonym for disaster.
Take the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Tuscany. Almost before the last lifeboat had been lowered (or dropped, or not lowered at all), survivors and newscasters were comparing the liner to the ill-fated Titanic (or the eponymous movie of the same), which sank in 1912, killing 1,500 people.
Despite the repetition of this theme, the similarities between the White Star Line’s Titanic and the Costa Concordia are facile at best, limited to the fact that both ships failed to reach their intended ports.
To wit: Titanic hit an iceberg in the middle of the great wide Atlantic; the Concordia struck a rock while showboating near land. Titanic went down by the head, on a relatively even keel; the Concordia developed a severe list (despite all the modern innovations, Titanic sank better) and eventually partially-capsized. Titanic left over half her passengers to freeze in the sea; on the Concordia, despite widespread complaints about crew ineffectiveness, over 4,000 people were saved. Titanic rests in the deep end of the ocean; the Concordia is beached, with half or more of its bulk ignominiously jutting out above the waves. Titanic’s inept commander went down with his ship; the Concordia’s inept commander was one of the first to escape (or he tripped, depending on whose story you believe).
Really, when you think about the manner of sinking, and the loss of life, the Costa Concordia has more in common – including Italian lineage – with the Andria Doria.
The point – other than the fact that I have a lot of Titanic knowledge that I’m dying to use – is that Titanic’s sinking has suffused our culture to an extent that she has become a cultural shorthand.
To that end, there have been enough narratives of the Titanic to sink the…well, to sink the Titanic. (Not that that proved too difficult).
When I picked up Wyn Craig Wade’s The Titanic: End of a Dream, I expected more of the same. I really only started the book because of a nagging compulsion to read everything there is to know about the ship, gone now for almost a century.
It was to my grateful surprise that End of a Dream is not really about the sinking at all. It is about the investigation into that sinking, specifically, the American Senate Inquiry held in New York City and Washington D.C. in the days and weeks after the disaster. It was this Inquiry that gave us – posterity – the first draft of history. End of a Dream is, in a sense, the story of the story of Titanic.
The book starts with a couple chapters on the design, building, and fitting out of the Titanic. And then, surprisingly, once the narrative has set out to sea, the story skips over the sinking completely, and picks up again with the rescue of Titanic’s survivors by the Carpathia.
At this point, End of a Dream takes time to give us the biography of a forgotten U.S. Senator, William Alden Smith from thegreat fine adequate state of Michigan. This brief chapter tells the story of a decent, hardworking man, honored in his time but mostly ignored today. Though he worked on many projects, Smith’s lasting achievement was his convening of the Titanic Inquiry.
Smith’s decision to hold the inquiry, and to subpoena British subjects, was controversial when it was made. Indeed, the British press pilloried Smith mercilessly (a sarcastic, “what a surprise!” is appropriate here). They did such a good job quoting Smith out of context, that Smith’s reputation is still a bit shabby today. (Walter Lord, for instance, has a bit of fun at Smith’s expense). The reality was that Smith was a canny Progressive who saw an opportunity to advance some of his dearest causes, including corporate liability and radio regulation (pertaining, at the time, to wireless sets).
After the Smith biography, Wade jumps into the Inquiry itself. He doesn’t go through it witness by witness, but instead focuses on a few highlights, including the testimony of J. Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, who pulled an Italian-sea-captain by escaping on a lifeboat. Wade also demonstrates how much work and preparation Senator Smith put into the Inquiry, and how his sometimes naïve-sounding questions were actually well thought-out.
For instance, at one point during the Inquiry, Senator Smith asked Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller, simultaneously the most heroic and most disingenuous of the ship’s officers, whether passengers had sought Titanic’s watertight compartments as a safe haven, the implication being that people might somehow still be alive on the Titanic, even as she rested on the ocean floor. The idea was ludicrous, of course, and Lightoller and the British tabloids made sure Smith knew of it. Wade shows that Smith knew it too; the reason he asked was because he was deluged with correspondence from relatives and friends of missing passengers, who were clinging to any shred of hope, no matter how flimsy.
This ties into a larger point about Senator Smith’s purpose: he wasn’t conducting the Inquiry for the benefit of seamen; he was conducting it for the benefit of landlubbers. Thus, all the sniping critiques of Smith’s seafaring intelligence (at one point, Smith did not seem to know that the “bow” and the “head” of the ship were the same thing) failed to grasp that Smith’s intention was to pierce the mystique of the sea, and the men who traveled upon it. After all, it was the seafaring “experts” at the British Board of Trade and on Titanic’s deck who allowed a ship to set sail with lifeboat space for half its passengers, and who then raced through an ice-field in the middle of the night, sideswiping an iceberg in the process. Smith was a rebuke to all those captains and deck officers who tried to hide behind the technical jargon and nomenclature of their jobs. He questioned their assumptions; he forced them to define their terms; and he brought an outsider’s common sense to the proceedings.
This is a short book, far too brief to thoroughly cover the American Inquiry. Thankfully, for those of living in the Digital Age, the entire transcript of both the American and British proceedings are available online. (www.titanicinquiry.org) Beware going to this site, however, if you are a Titanic nerd: you will spend hours with the testimony, and people will make fun of you if you tell them what you’ve been doing.
As I mentioned before, Wade focuses on the mechanics of the Inquiry, as well as underlining a few specific themes. One of these themes, interestingly, is Wade’s indictment of the crew. One of the cherished myths of Titanic is the bravery and sacrifice of her uniformed members. To be sure, the engineers – who kept the lights on and wireless working – deserve all the acclaim and more, since theirs was a suicide watch. But the question remains: why did such a large number of crewmen survive, while so many steerage passengers (including women and children) perish?
The simple answer is that the crew was needed to row the boats. Wade demolishes this answer by focusing on the testimony of Fifth Officer Lowe, as well as a variety of survivors who were in the boats. This testimony establishes that most of the crew members were “crew” in name only. They were not, to use Lowe’s phrase, “boatmen.” That is, they didn't know the difference between an oar and their… Well, you get the point.
Speaking of Fifth Officer Lowe (the sine qua non of Edwardian Era racism, who almost refused to fish a Japanese man out of the water), one of the things I most enjoyed about End of a Dream (though I’m pretty sure I wasn’t meant to enjoy this) was Lowe’s insistence on calling everyone he disliked Italians. As an example, when Lowe was being lowered in his lifeboat, he saw a bunch of men on the railing, threatening to jump in. Lowe fired his pistol to keep them away. Later, at the Inquiry, with no evidence in support, Lowe referred to these men as Italians.
For some reason, I found this absolutely hilarious. In the days and weeks after I read this book, I kept trying out this bit on my wife. Whenever I failed to take out the trash, I blamed it on the Italians. When someone merged in front of us without signaling, I’d curse out the Italian who was driving. Eventually, my wife accused me of racism, which led to a lively debate about whether one’s Italian-ness was a race thing or a state of being. Anyway, Fifth Officer Lowe was eventually forced to write an apology to the Italian Embassy, which is funny in and of itself.
(For the record, and just to be clear, I have no animus towards the Italian people. I just find it endlessly entertaining that Italy, seat of the Renaissance in the 14-17th centuries, somehow became synonymous with "scary foreigners" in the early 20th century).
I did have a few criticisms with Wade’s book. First and foremost is the lack of citations. There are no endnotes or footnotes or notes of any kind. If you want to know where in the transcript a particular bit of testimony can be found, you are s**t out of luck. More frustratingly still, Wade intersperses his telling of the Inquiry with italicized paragraphs that narrate the sinking of Titanic. These paragraphs were little more than the sloppy seconds of Lord’s A Night to Remember. Moreover, due to the lack of notes, they can’t be trusted. At least in the Inquiry sections, the reader can assume the information comes from the Inquiry; in these italicized portions, there is no indication whatsoever concerning the provenance of the purported facts.
There are also a few nagging errors of fact, many of them due to the pre-discovery publication date. For instance, Wade repeats the old chestnut of the “300 foot gash,” when in reality, Titanic was most likely sunk by damage totaling 12 square feet.
Furthermore, Wade contends that Titanic sank intact, when it’s pretty clear she broke up on the surface. And even though there is a hastily-appended afterward for the 1986 edition of the book, which takes into account Bob Ballard’s discovery of the wreck, Wade still contends Titanic sank whole, and that she severed when she hit the ocean floor “stern first.” This despite the eyewitness testimony that she broke in two. Indeed, Second Officer Lightoller, the Great Perjurer himself, said the ship went down in one piece. That is all the convincing I need that the ship, in fact, broke apart before his very eyes.
These are small matters, though, and did not detract from my appreciation of Wade’s unique perspective on the disaster. So many Titanic books stick to the tried-and-true. And why not? The true, fully corroborated events of the night of April 14-15 defy the imagination. Fiction cannot get better than the nonfiction of Titanic. So it’s refreshing that Wade veered away from the obvious path, to explore the greatest shipwreck of all time from a different vantage point.
That vantage point is the creation of History.
By now, most of us know that witness perception is incredibly, breathtakingly inaccurate. The more stressful the event, the more inaccurate the memory. Furthermore, memory is dynamic, not static. A memory changes each time it is recalled.
The result: when you experience a stressful situation, your mind absorbs all these fragments – sights and sounds and the like – and automatically starts to bridge the dissonance, forming connections that might not actually exist. The brain, in a way, is a novelist, looking to create a seamless story. Thus, the longer you hold onto a memory, the more that memory changes. It gets reshaped into something coherent, if not strictly true. It is polluted by the memories and stories of others, so that their memories and stories become entwined with your own.
By holding the American Inquiry at the earliest possible stage after the sinking, Senator William Alden Smith was able to extract from the survivors their purest memories. To be sure, memories had already been altered. Lightoller, for one, most likely hunkered down with Ismay and the other officers to get their stories straight. But for the most part, and in relation to other historical events, Smith’s Inquiry was right on top of things. It was in the exceptional position to get the story while it was fresh.
The Titanic story we know today comes in large part from Senator Smith’s much-maligned American Inquiry. Thus, End of a Dream is not so much the story of Titanic the ship, as it is the story of the man who created Titanic the legend.
Take the Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Tuscany. Almost before the last lifeboat had been lowered (or dropped, or not lowered at all), survivors and newscasters were comparing the liner to the ill-fated Titanic (or the eponymous movie of the same), which sank in 1912, killing 1,500 people.
Despite the repetition of this theme, the similarities between the White Star Line’s Titanic and the Costa Concordia are facile at best, limited to the fact that both ships failed to reach their intended ports.
To wit: Titanic hit an iceberg in the middle of the great wide Atlantic; the Concordia struck a rock while showboating near land. Titanic went down by the head, on a relatively even keel; the Concordia developed a severe list (despite all the modern innovations, Titanic sank better) and eventually partially-capsized. Titanic left over half her passengers to freeze in the sea; on the Concordia, despite widespread complaints about crew ineffectiveness, over 4,000 people were saved. Titanic rests in the deep end of the ocean; the Concordia is beached, with half or more of its bulk ignominiously jutting out above the waves. Titanic’s inept commander went down with his ship; the Concordia’s inept commander was one of the first to escape (or he tripped, depending on whose story you believe).
Really, when you think about the manner of sinking, and the loss of life, the Costa Concordia has more in common – including Italian lineage – with the Andria Doria.
The point – other than the fact that I have a lot of Titanic knowledge that I’m dying to use – is that Titanic’s sinking has suffused our culture to an extent that she has become a cultural shorthand.
To that end, there have been enough narratives of the Titanic to sink the…well, to sink the Titanic. (Not that that proved too difficult).
When I picked up Wyn Craig Wade’s The Titanic: End of a Dream, I expected more of the same. I really only started the book because of a nagging compulsion to read everything there is to know about the ship, gone now for almost a century.
It was to my grateful surprise that End of a Dream is not really about the sinking at all. It is about the investigation into that sinking, specifically, the American Senate Inquiry held in New York City and Washington D.C. in the days and weeks after the disaster. It was this Inquiry that gave us – posterity – the first draft of history. End of a Dream is, in a sense, the story of the story of Titanic.
The book starts with a couple chapters on the design, building, and fitting out of the Titanic. And then, surprisingly, once the narrative has set out to sea, the story skips over the sinking completely, and picks up again with the rescue of Titanic’s survivors by the Carpathia.
At this point, End of a Dream takes time to give us the biography of a forgotten U.S. Senator, William Alden Smith from the
Smith’s decision to hold the inquiry, and to subpoena British subjects, was controversial when it was made. Indeed, the British press pilloried Smith mercilessly (a sarcastic, “what a surprise!” is appropriate here). They did such a good job quoting Smith out of context, that Smith’s reputation is still a bit shabby today. (Walter Lord, for instance, has a bit of fun at Smith’s expense). The reality was that Smith was a canny Progressive who saw an opportunity to advance some of his dearest causes, including corporate liability and radio regulation (pertaining, at the time, to wireless sets).
After the Smith biography, Wade jumps into the Inquiry itself. He doesn’t go through it witness by witness, but instead focuses on a few highlights, including the testimony of J. Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line, who pulled an Italian-sea-captain by escaping on a lifeboat. Wade also demonstrates how much work and preparation Senator Smith put into the Inquiry, and how his sometimes naïve-sounding questions were actually well thought-out.
For instance, at one point during the Inquiry, Senator Smith asked Second Officer Charles Herbert Lightoller, simultaneously the most heroic and most disingenuous of the ship’s officers, whether passengers had sought Titanic’s watertight compartments as a safe haven, the implication being that people might somehow still be alive on the Titanic, even as she rested on the ocean floor. The idea was ludicrous, of course, and Lightoller and the British tabloids made sure Smith knew of it. Wade shows that Smith knew it too; the reason he asked was because he was deluged with correspondence from relatives and friends of missing passengers, who were clinging to any shred of hope, no matter how flimsy.
This ties into a larger point about Senator Smith’s purpose: he wasn’t conducting the Inquiry for the benefit of seamen; he was conducting it for the benefit of landlubbers. Thus, all the sniping critiques of Smith’s seafaring intelligence (at one point, Smith did not seem to know that the “bow” and the “head” of the ship were the same thing) failed to grasp that Smith’s intention was to pierce the mystique of the sea, and the men who traveled upon it. After all, it was the seafaring “experts” at the British Board of Trade and on Titanic’s deck who allowed a ship to set sail with lifeboat space for half its passengers, and who then raced through an ice-field in the middle of the night, sideswiping an iceberg in the process. Smith was a rebuke to all those captains and deck officers who tried to hide behind the technical jargon and nomenclature of their jobs. He questioned their assumptions; he forced them to define their terms; and he brought an outsider’s common sense to the proceedings.
This is a short book, far too brief to thoroughly cover the American Inquiry. Thankfully, for those of living in the Digital Age, the entire transcript of both the American and British proceedings are available online. (www.titanicinquiry.org) Beware going to this site, however, if you are a Titanic nerd: you will spend hours with the testimony, and people will make fun of you if you tell them what you’ve been doing.
As I mentioned before, Wade focuses on the mechanics of the Inquiry, as well as underlining a few specific themes. One of these themes, interestingly, is Wade’s indictment of the crew. One of the cherished myths of Titanic is the bravery and sacrifice of her uniformed members. To be sure, the engineers – who kept the lights on and wireless working – deserve all the acclaim and more, since theirs was a suicide watch. But the question remains: why did such a large number of crewmen survive, while so many steerage passengers (including women and children) perish?
The simple answer is that the crew was needed to row the boats. Wade demolishes this answer by focusing on the testimony of Fifth Officer Lowe, as well as a variety of survivors who were in the boats. This testimony establishes that most of the crew members were “crew” in name only. They were not, to use Lowe’s phrase, “boatmen.” That is, they didn't know the difference between an oar and their… Well, you get the point.
Speaking of Fifth Officer Lowe (the sine qua non of Edwardian Era racism, who almost refused to fish a Japanese man out of the water), one of the things I most enjoyed about End of a Dream (though I’m pretty sure I wasn’t meant to enjoy this) was Lowe’s insistence on calling everyone he disliked Italians. As an example, when Lowe was being lowered in his lifeboat, he saw a bunch of men on the railing, threatening to jump in. Lowe fired his pistol to keep them away. Later, at the Inquiry, with no evidence in support, Lowe referred to these men as Italians.
For some reason, I found this absolutely hilarious. In the days and weeks after I read this book, I kept trying out this bit on my wife. Whenever I failed to take out the trash, I blamed it on the Italians. When someone merged in front of us without signaling, I’d curse out the Italian who was driving. Eventually, my wife accused me of racism, which led to a lively debate about whether one’s Italian-ness was a race thing or a state of being. Anyway, Fifth Officer Lowe was eventually forced to write an apology to the Italian Embassy, which is funny in and of itself.
(For the record, and just to be clear, I have no animus towards the Italian people. I just find it endlessly entertaining that Italy, seat of the Renaissance in the 14-17th centuries, somehow became synonymous with "scary foreigners" in the early 20th century).
I did have a few criticisms with Wade’s book. First and foremost is the lack of citations. There are no endnotes or footnotes or notes of any kind. If you want to know where in the transcript a particular bit of testimony can be found, you are s**t out of luck. More frustratingly still, Wade intersperses his telling of the Inquiry with italicized paragraphs that narrate the sinking of Titanic. These paragraphs were little more than the sloppy seconds of Lord’s A Night to Remember. Moreover, due to the lack of notes, they can’t be trusted. At least in the Inquiry sections, the reader can assume the information comes from the Inquiry; in these italicized portions, there is no indication whatsoever concerning the provenance of the purported facts.
There are also a few nagging errors of fact, many of them due to the pre-discovery publication date. For instance, Wade repeats the old chestnut of the “300 foot gash,” when in reality, Titanic was most likely sunk by damage totaling 12 square feet.
Furthermore, Wade contends that Titanic sank intact, when it’s pretty clear she broke up on the surface. And even though there is a hastily-appended afterward for the 1986 edition of the book, which takes into account Bob Ballard’s discovery of the wreck, Wade still contends Titanic sank whole, and that she severed when she hit the ocean floor “stern first.” This despite the eyewitness testimony that she broke in two. Indeed, Second Officer Lightoller, the Great Perjurer himself, said the ship went down in one piece. That is all the convincing I need that the ship, in fact, broke apart before his very eyes.
These are small matters, though, and did not detract from my appreciation of Wade’s unique perspective on the disaster. So many Titanic books stick to the tried-and-true. And why not? The true, fully corroborated events of the night of April 14-15 defy the imagination. Fiction cannot get better than the nonfiction of Titanic. So it’s refreshing that Wade veered away from the obvious path, to explore the greatest shipwreck of all time from a different vantage point.
That vantage point is the creation of History.
By now, most of us know that witness perception is incredibly, breathtakingly inaccurate. The more stressful the event, the more inaccurate the memory. Furthermore, memory is dynamic, not static. A memory changes each time it is recalled.
The result: when you experience a stressful situation, your mind absorbs all these fragments – sights and sounds and the like – and automatically starts to bridge the dissonance, forming connections that might not actually exist. The brain, in a way, is a novelist, looking to create a seamless story. Thus, the longer you hold onto a memory, the more that memory changes. It gets reshaped into something coherent, if not strictly true. It is polluted by the memories and stories of others, so that their memories and stories become entwined with your own.
By holding the American Inquiry at the earliest possible stage after the sinking, Senator William Alden Smith was able to extract from the survivors their purest memories. To be sure, memories had already been altered. Lightoller, for one, most likely hunkered down with Ismay and the other officers to get their stories straight. But for the most part, and in relation to other historical events, Smith’s Inquiry was right on top of things. It was in the exceptional position to get the story while it was fresh.
The Titanic story we know today comes in large part from Senator Smith’s much-maligned American Inquiry. Thus, End of a Dream is not so much the story of Titanic the ship, as it is the story of the man who created Titanic the legend.
May 20, 2018
There are obviously a lot of books about the Titanic and this is in my opinion one of the better ones. Recounts the disaster and skillfully picks apart a number of Titanic myths through the lens of the testimony offered by surviving officers, crew, and passengers at the U.S. Senate hearings led by William Auden Smith.
June 27, 2008
Loved this book! Maybe it's because I'm a Titanic nut, and love to learn as much as I can about the tragedy; but I learned a lot, not only about the sinking but about what took place afterwards. After reading this book, I got to thinking, the media isn't much different today either.
December 28, 2010
It bugs the heck out of me to think about how many pointless titanic books that are published that have the same old general information about the titanic.And that is why I enjoyed this book so much.It had information on the after effects of the titanic disaster that I had never learned about before.Wade did a tremendous job on writing a book that didn't have the same old information as these other titanic books.It was a nice change of pace.
January 1, 2019
This book starts with a Prologue in which the author articulates the events he is about to unfold and his critique of those events, indeed the entire era.
Page xv “For seventy-five years the R.M.S. Titanic has possessed a nautical mystique second only to that of Noah’s ark.” It is a “two-fold drama …a monumental catastrophe… (and) …society’s response …a watershed between nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The sinking of the Titanic marked the end of an era.”
The remaining chapters cover the ship, the collision, the investigation, and the changes brought about in nautical navigation. In the book’s 335 pages the author goes into great detail of both the event itself and the congressional investigation --- especially background details of U.S. politics of the time period and Senator William Alden Smith.
Altogether an extremely interesting and still relevant read. For Titanic fans there are familiar details as well as new (1979) updates. Highly recommended. Includes Index and Bibliography as well as 8 pages of black and white historical photographs.
Page xv “For seventy-five years the R.M.S. Titanic has possessed a nautical mystique second only to that of Noah’s ark.” It is a “two-fold drama …a monumental catastrophe… (and) …society’s response …a watershed between nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The sinking of the Titanic marked the end of an era.”
The remaining chapters cover the ship, the collision, the investigation, and the changes brought about in nautical navigation. In the book’s 335 pages the author goes into great detail of both the event itself and the congressional investigation --- especially background details of U.S. politics of the time period and Senator William Alden Smith.
Altogether an extremely interesting and still relevant read. For Titanic fans there are familiar details as well as new (1979) updates. Highly recommended. Includes Index and Bibliography as well as 8 pages of black and white historical photographs.
November 1, 2013
I think there is no other Titanic book like this one; it's like a well-written documentary, Ken-Burnsish, emotional, but emotions responding to fact. The book takes you through what it was like to find out what happened to the Titanic IN TIME ... the rumors after she didn't show up and then the Congressional hearings performed to find out the truth of what really happened. Simply fascinating and heartbreaking. I go through a Titanic phase every 5-7 years.
May 21, 2013
An interesting look at the Titanic, not through the events of the night or of the building of the ship, but rather dealing with the aftermath of the ship's sinking. It looks into the lawsuits against the White Star Line and I enjoyed the ending where the author tells you what happened to each of the key players in the law cases.
December 27, 2010
This was the first time I read an account of the aftermath of the Titanic disaster. I've always been morbidly fascinated with the whole affair and feel now that my knowledge of what took place that fateful night in 1912 is more complete! This book was very thorough and well-researched.
November 14, 2024
Well researched and well presented. Obviously we've learned more about the how since the author published in 1979, but the section that really shines is all about the 1912 Senate hearings and the impact they had on maritime law. Definitely recommend for those interested in the Titanic.
April 12, 2024
Definitive book on the sinking and aftermath. I read it once a year, always around the anniversary of the sinking.
October 29, 2014
At the time it was first published in the mid-1980s, and, through today, I believe this remains one of the better books about RMS Titanic.
And yet I struggle to give it even that much praise.
Author Wyn Craig Wade chose to anchor his work on the United States Senate inquiry into loss of the ship, dominated by the perspective of its chair, William Alden Smith (Republican, Michigan). Senator Smith, and thus Mr Wade, seem most interested in ascribing blame. Identifying bad guys in black-and-white terms. Establishing a case for legal liability.
Such things are certainly part of the story. And unquestionable good flow as a direct outcome of this examination, including specific improvements in laws governing maritime safety. Mr Wade extols these. Noted.
I also admire the prescience and speed that went into seating a governmental accountability review conviened all-but coincident with the arrival of survivors on RMS Carpathia. If such a thing as "unvarnished truth" exists, this got as close as was possible to finding it via Titanic-centered legal procedings.
Unfortunately, that's as far as it went. Worse still, the drama of these proceedings, impressive as they were, meant that their narrative became the narrative on Titanic.
Not enough lifeboats. J Bruce Ismay as reprobate characticature shown to us by James Cameron in 1997, with Charles Lightoller featured in supporting role.
Beyond Titanic, Wyn Craig Wade indulges excessive digressions into the biography of William Alden Smith, presidential politics, and the period: All fail to pay-off with ties to the core narrative in proportion to the time spent plowing through them. This, ad nauseum, as the engineering logic of staying on a ship designed to be its own lifeboat is scarcely examined in this book.
Again, important parts, all. But where's the obvious potential for a value-added perspective from three-quarters-of-a-century post-event? Or even twenty-five?
Failure to inquire and incorporate so much of that is the Achilles heal of Wyn Craig Wade.
In generously slotting this book between three stars and five, then, I've given it strong marks for being solid in what it seemingly sought to be. Indeed, it is all-the-more important, too, in revealing just how much of what is near-religious gospel about Titanic is based on just how little. And why those limited insights perpetuate without flinching to this day.
(See definition, "primacy effect.")
Why not five stars, calling it an exposé?
Because I see no evidence that the author himself sought or saw himself as delivering through The Titanic: End of a Dream any sort of critical examination of mythos. Rather, he seems to have simply happened upon it.
And yet I struggle to give it even that much praise.
Author Wyn Craig Wade chose to anchor his work on the United States Senate inquiry into loss of the ship, dominated by the perspective of its chair, William Alden Smith (Republican, Michigan). Senator Smith, and thus Mr Wade, seem most interested in ascribing blame. Identifying bad guys in black-and-white terms. Establishing a case for legal liability.
Such things are certainly part of the story. And unquestionable good flow as a direct outcome of this examination, including specific improvements in laws governing maritime safety. Mr Wade extols these. Noted.
I also admire the prescience and speed that went into seating a governmental accountability review conviened all-but coincident with the arrival of survivors on RMS Carpathia. If such a thing as "unvarnished truth" exists, this got as close as was possible to finding it via Titanic-centered legal procedings.
Unfortunately, that's as far as it went. Worse still, the drama of these proceedings, impressive as they were, meant that their narrative became the narrative on Titanic.
Not enough lifeboats. J Bruce Ismay as reprobate characticature shown to us by James Cameron in 1997, with Charles Lightoller featured in supporting role.
Beyond Titanic, Wyn Craig Wade indulges excessive digressions into the biography of William Alden Smith, presidential politics, and the period: All fail to pay-off with ties to the core narrative in proportion to the time spent plowing through them. This, ad nauseum, as the engineering logic of staying on a ship designed to be its own lifeboat is scarcely examined in this book.
Again, important parts, all. But where's the obvious potential for a value-added perspective from three-quarters-of-a-century post-event? Or even twenty-five?
Failure to inquire and incorporate so much of that is the Achilles heal of Wyn Craig Wade.
In generously slotting this book between three stars and five, then, I've given it strong marks for being solid in what it seemingly sought to be. Indeed, it is all-the-more important, too, in revealing just how much of what is near-religious gospel about Titanic is based on just how little. And why those limited insights perpetuate without flinching to this day.
(See definition, "primacy effect.")
Why not five stars, calling it an exposé?
Because I see no evidence that the author himself sought or saw himself as delivering through The Titanic: End of a Dream any sort of critical examination of mythos. Rather, he seems to have simply happened upon it.
December 4, 2016
“Death Throes of the Gilded Age”
Marvelous presentation, meticulously researched, chronological with unbiased reportage of the first (and last) voyage of the doomed luxury liner. Part One, “Midnight Crossing” describes the conception and construction of this maritime legend, whose sister ship, the “Olympic” was modified in the wake of the international disaster. Part Two, “The Investigation,” proves the longer section, prefaced by a short biography of lead Senator, William Alden Smith of Michigan.
Tenacious to ferret out the often shameful facts in all their minor details, this bold landsman would not be swayed by intimidation or insults from either side of the Atlantic. Together with his Michigan Minutemen, as they were dubbed, he quickly launched into action to hold probing inquiries immediately in New York City and subsequently in Washington, DC; he calmly fought for justice for the 1,500 drowned, while the officers, crew, and White Star Line owners endured the agony of public humiliation and private mortification. Smith himself was ridiculed and maligned in print, but he doggedly continued until he was satisfied that he had exacted the last testimony—however unwilling—re the tragedy.
This riveting autopsy of a maritime disaster of epic proportions captivates the reader immediately and maintains our horrified interest. This edition includes detailed diagrams of the ship’s decks, as well as historical B/W photographs of the doomed crew and passengers. When the unthinkable managed to capsize “the Unsinkable,” international attention focused on the events which culminated in midnight mayhem Smith set goals for himself and his Congress in the form of new legislation which would reduce maritime disasters. The sinking of the Titanic marked the end of the Gilded Age of luxury and conspicuous consumption.
Interspersed with the Presidential politics and backroom shenanigans of Teddy Roosevelt and Taft the story of the Titanic Investigation proves spellbinding reading; the Victorian era, with its ideals of man’s boastful harnessing of Science to his will, came to a shattering close. Lying deep below the seasonally berg-strewn Atlantic the fated ship remains the rarely disturbed grave of many innocent souls of all classes—a site to be respected by captains and honored by living descendants. The book concludes with a glossary of the significant persons and companies referenced, giving brief, historical obituaries. A brilliant must-read for students and survivors) of the Twentieth Century!
December 4, 2016
Marvelous presentation, meticulously researched, chronological with unbiased reportage of the first (and last) voyage of the doomed luxury liner. Part One, “Midnight Crossing” describes the conception and construction of this maritime legend, whose sister ship, the “Olympic” was modified in the wake of the international disaster. Part Two, “The Investigation,” proves the longer section, prefaced by a short biography of lead Senator, William Alden Smith of Michigan.
Tenacious to ferret out the often shameful facts in all their minor details, this bold landsman would not be swayed by intimidation or insults from either side of the Atlantic. Together with his Michigan Minutemen, as they were dubbed, he quickly launched into action to hold probing inquiries immediately in New York City and subsequently in Washington, DC; he calmly fought for justice for the 1,500 drowned, while the officers, crew, and White Star Line owners endured the agony of public humiliation and private mortification. Smith himself was ridiculed and maligned in print, but he doggedly continued until he was satisfied that he had exacted the last testimony—however unwilling—re the tragedy.
This riveting autopsy of a maritime disaster of epic proportions captivates the reader immediately and maintains our horrified interest. This edition includes detailed diagrams of the ship’s decks, as well as historical B/W photographs of the doomed crew and passengers. When the unthinkable managed to capsize “the Unsinkable,” international attention focused on the events which culminated in midnight mayhem Smith set goals for himself and his Congress in the form of new legislation which would reduce maritime disasters. The sinking of the Titanic marked the end of the Gilded Age of luxury and conspicuous consumption.
Interspersed with the Presidential politics and backroom shenanigans of Teddy Roosevelt and Taft the story of the Titanic Investigation proves spellbinding reading; the Victorian era, with its ideals of man’s boastful harnessing of Science to his will, came to a shattering close. Lying deep below the seasonally berg-strewn Atlantic the fated ship remains the rarely disturbed grave of many innocent souls of all classes—a site to be respected by captains and honored by living descendants. The book concludes with a glossary of the significant persons and companies referenced, giving brief, historical obituaries. A brilliant must-read for students and survivors) of the Twentieth Century!
December 4, 2016
November 28, 2011
I believe that the authors purpose in this book was to tell how and why the Titanic sunk in the icy water. The book The Titanic: End Of A Dream was wrote by Wyn Craig Wade. In my opinion he created the book to inform people what happened on that cold April night. The authors purpose told how the Titanic sunk, and when it sunk the book said it crashed into the iceburg. Then how the people died was because there were not enough lifeboats , and the Carpathia was didn’t show up in time, so many people lost their lives.
The theme of the book is to show that unsinkable ship sink, and the reasons why it sinked was because they were sailing through icy water when they were not suppose to be. That was the reason why they ran into an ice burg and that is what cuased it to crash. So the theme of the book is to show why it sank and how.
The style of the book for the Titanic was that it was descriptive book. The book The Titanic: End Of A Dream was very descriptive in many ways. One way it is descriptive is that it tells when the ship takes off and that was on April 10th 1912, it tells when it crashes and that is April 14th, 1912, and it tells how many people were on the boat which was 2,235 passangers and crew. This book was the most desrciptive book I have ever read. The book was a story to begin with at the beginning of the book, and at the end it finished with facts.
My opinoion of the book was that it was good in the beginning because it was actually a story. The part I did not like was that it finished with facts and why a certain thing was what it was. That is what made the book a desriptive book. I think that if I wanted a story about the Titanic, was to read A Night to Remember. I liked reading this book, I only wish that the whole entire book was as good as the beginning, and I didn’t like how the end was just facts.
The theme of the book is to show that unsinkable ship sink, and the reasons why it sinked was because they were sailing through icy water when they were not suppose to be. That was the reason why they ran into an ice burg and that is what cuased it to crash. So the theme of the book is to show why it sank and how.
The style of the book for the Titanic was that it was descriptive book. The book The Titanic: End Of A Dream was very descriptive in many ways. One way it is descriptive is that it tells when the ship takes off and that was on April 10th 1912, it tells when it crashes and that is April 14th, 1912, and it tells how many people were on the boat which was 2,235 passangers and crew. This book was the most desrciptive book I have ever read. The book was a story to begin with at the beginning of the book, and at the end it finished with facts.
My opinoion of the book was that it was good in the beginning because it was actually a story. The part I did not like was that it finished with facts and why a certain thing was what it was. That is what made the book a desriptive book. I think that if I wanted a story about the Titanic, was to read A Night to Remember. I liked reading this book, I only wish that the whole entire book was as good as the beginning, and I didn’t like how the end was just facts.
February 1, 2016
This book took an interesting tack in examining the most famous shipwreck of all time. Rather than give us a "blow by blow" account of the events from building of the ship up until that fateful night, Mr Wade begins the "teeth" of his story after the accident.
We then get glimpse back from the testimony given at the NY and Washington hearings. It may not be for all readers, but I would recommend it for serious Titanic enthusiasts!
We then get glimpse back from the testimony given at the NY and Washington hearings. It may not be for all readers, but I would recommend it for serious Titanic enthusiasts!
December 7, 2019
The Titanic is much more than just a cute premise for a love story. This book does a wonderful job of looking into the complicated politics surrounding the building of the ship, the classist policies that played a big role in who survived, and all the small things that went wrong because of breakages in the chain of command/caution.
Also William Alden Smith is the original OG. LOVED the person that was described in this novel.
Also William Alden Smith is the original OG. LOVED the person that was described in this novel.
March 15, 2020
Amazing book! It's a must read if you are a Titanic enthusiast! This book picks up where everyone tends to stop: after the sinking. It's a different way to understand the tragedy and what it meant to the world. I wasn't able to stop reading it until I finish it.
You might say this books has a few chapters that could be removed, but I honestly think that it helps you understand what was happening in this world when the Titanic first sailed.
You might say this books has a few chapters that could be removed, but I honestly think that it helps you understand what was happening in this world when the Titanic first sailed.
January 19, 2016
I've read a lot of books on the Titanic and this one was the most comprehensive, most well organized, and clearly written. A reader can tell it was researched thuroughly because of the amount of detail and different viewpoints provided. All in all, a good read.
November 3, 2016
After seeing the movie, it is really interesting to read this book and find out what really happened. It will make you understand why maritime laws changed and how the whole attitude towards industrialization was altered by this tragic event.
August 30, 2017
Much more focused on the twists and turns of the Congressional hearings than the events of the sinking, which is a refreshing perspective. The average layperson is not going to pour over the original transcripts, and second to those this is one of the best books I've read about the inquiry.
Want to read
January 14, 2012
Heavy-handed metaphor, anyone?
May 30, 2020
Fantastic read!!
May 15, 2020
(Audiobook) I have read a number of works about the Titanic, but this might be the first one I have read that focuses not so much on what happened on the night of the sinking, but more the immediate aftermath and the American Senate Inquiry into the disaster. In particular, it focuses on the actions of the Senator from Michigan, William Alden Smith, a man noted for knowing how to get and use the spotlight for his political aims. Starting with the building of the ship and then skipping to the voyage of the Carpathia to bring the survivors back to New York, the world is looking to know what happened and why. From there, this becomes an account of how the American inquiry came to fruition. It discusses the witnesses, the interaction between the Senator and the witnesses, and the impacts/reactions from the populace in America and England.
I hadn’t read as much about the American inquiry, but I came to learn a lot about the Titanic that I hadn’t realized and/or didn’t think was thought until recently. The verdict of the report doesn’t paint Captain Smith in the best of light, but in the mythology of the Titanic, that he went down with the ship was proof enough that he did his duty. The report doesn’t condemn the owner Ismay, but he is still a villain in the saga. The crew of the Titanic, especially in how they seemed less and able to manage the lifeboats and how they handled the immediate aftermath (not going back, lucky that the seas remained relatively calm, etc), and Captain Lord of the Californian are also villains of the tale. The inquiry did lead to significant changes in maritime laws and ship safety, even if it didn’t completely fulfill Smith’s grand ambition (to take down the massive ship-owning trusts like the one run by J.P. Morgan which owned White Star Line).
There is the obligatory placing the Titanic in context of key socio-economic issues of the day (women’s rights and segregation), but given the impact that the disaster had on American and British societies, it is hard not to see Titanic as an easy metaphor for whatever cause is out there.
Overall, a good account of one of the less well-known parts of the Titanic saga (hard to imagine that James Cameron would do a blockbuster movie about a congressional inquiry). For the Titanic scholar, one that is worth the time to read. The rating is the same for the audiobook as would be the hard/e-copy.
I hadn’t read as much about the American inquiry, but I came to learn a lot about the Titanic that I hadn’t realized and/or didn’t think was thought until recently. The verdict of the report doesn’t paint Captain Smith in the best of light, but in the mythology of the Titanic, that he went down with the ship was proof enough that he did his duty. The report doesn’t condemn the owner Ismay, but he is still a villain in the saga. The crew of the Titanic, especially in how they seemed less and able to manage the lifeboats and how they handled the immediate aftermath (not going back, lucky that the seas remained relatively calm, etc), and Captain Lord of the Californian are also villains of the tale. The inquiry did lead to significant changes in maritime laws and ship safety, even if it didn’t completely fulfill Smith’s grand ambition (to take down the massive ship-owning trusts like the one run by J.P. Morgan which owned White Star Line).
There is the obligatory placing the Titanic in context of key socio-economic issues of the day (women’s rights and segregation), but given the impact that the disaster had on American and British societies, it is hard not to see Titanic as an easy metaphor for whatever cause is out there.
Overall, a good account of one of the less well-known parts of the Titanic saga (hard to imagine that James Cameron would do a blockbuster movie about a congressional inquiry). For the Titanic scholar, one that is worth the time to read. The rating is the same for the audiobook as would be the hard/e-copy.
August 26, 2018
Not great if you are looking for a complete account of what happened, like I was. It covers the immediate Senate inquiry into the disaster. It does have to a nice introduction and epilogue which I kind of wish had gone on longer in analysis of the Titanic in popular culture. The book on it's own is a well-written history but it is not precise enough to explain what happened. I think it would be better to read another, updated book on recent findings for a synopsis before digging into this. I was impressed with William Alden Smith's history and dramatic thrust into the story but after the inquiry his story is not given nearly enough time. There is also a story about Taft and Roosevelt that was interesting at the beginning but left me wondering why it kept getting a mention when it was seemingly dropped as well. Not a waste of time but has me asking more questions about the facts than I would like after spending so much time on it.
June 5, 2020
This book discusses the tragedy of the Titanic. It starts by talking about the building process of the ship and how it became the largest steamboat during the time. The Titanic was intended to be unsinkable and luxurious for people to stay on. Then during one of its journeys, a disaster broke out. The Titanic collided with an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean. This caused water to get into the ship and slowly take it under the ocean. There were around 1500 lives lost and around 700 lives saved. After the Titanic had sunk it was discovered that many lives were lost because there were not enough lifeboats. All in all, this book explains that we have learned from this tragedy and it changed the course of history.
I liked this book because it was my first time learning about the Titanic in depth. There was a perfect timeline of events which made everything easier to follow and understand. Furthermore, it was interesting to learn who was exactly on the ship when it sank. On the other hand, It was sad to read about the many people being left hopeless in the freezing water. All in all, this book was good and it helped me learn about an important part of history.
I liked this book because it was my first time learning about the Titanic in depth. There was a perfect timeline of events which made everything easier to follow and understand. Furthermore, it was interesting to learn who was exactly on the ship when it sank. On the other hand, It was sad to read about the many people being left hopeless in the freezing water. All in all, this book was good and it helped me learn about an important part of history.
January 25, 2018
I heard that this got a significant sales boost after James Cameron's 1997 "Titanic" movie turns boatloads of readers onto Wade's first-rate historical account. What i got from it was the author placing the sinking in the perspective of the time period - a young century, full of hope when everything seemed possible and within the grasp of hard work, capitalist-know-how, optimistic determination etc. etc. The unsinkable ship going down as a symbol of human hubris was a message not lost on the philosophers of the day. Much more period detail; an overall pleasure to read, and I understand that while Wade had no trouble getting publishers to put the book out in 1979, seeing it discovered by a new generation 20 years later must have been tremendously satisfying for him. I hope so.
Did not finish
May 9, 2023The title of this book is extremely misleading. This book deals almost entirely with the aftermath of the Titanic disaster. While some may find that interesting, I was not looking for so much information on that and ultimately gave up reading. I just found it very repetitive and boring. And the author takes long tangents to explain the details of the lives of several of the people involved in his narrative. I found this wholly unnecessary, it just ground the narrative to a halt.
There are better books about the Titanic out there. Books that actually cover the ship, the tragedy and the people aboard. Seek those out if you are interested in the subject. This one is skippable.
There are better books about the Titanic out there. Books that actually cover the ship, the tragedy and the people aboard. Seek those out if you are interested in the subject. This one is skippable.
January 1, 2025
It was fairly interesting, but definitely had slow parts. A bibliography was included, but I would appreciate more labels and footnotes throughout the book as I sometimes wasn’t sure what was actually historically accurate. I think the author could have given more facts, and at times I felt I was reading opinions. The focus of the book was more on the inquest that happened after the sinking of the Titanic. I had not read a lot of that information before, and I did find it interesting. One piece of information that will stick with me is that the US coast Guard was formed indirectly from this disaster.
February 21, 2020
This is a fabulous book about the Titanic tragedy. It does an in-depth job of identifying the causes and highlighting the classist behaviour of the elite travellers. All without being melodramatic.
However what really stood out for me was: The titanic crew spotted the iceberg late because they had forgotten to carry binoculars. Had they carried binoculars, the iceberg would have been spotted much earlier and the ship would have been saved. Shows that in the grand projects it’s the small details that can literally sink or save the project.
However what really stood out for me was: The titanic crew spotted the iceberg late because they had forgotten to carry binoculars. Had they carried binoculars, the iceberg would have been spotted much earlier and the ship would have been saved. Shows that in the grand projects it’s the small details that can literally sink or save the project.
August 14, 2019
Excellent book with extremely thorough coverage of the Titanic disaster and the investigation which followed. Interesting conclusions about the society changing impacts. It was a slow read but worth it if you love details!
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