This is NOT a Story. It's a very detailed account of the sinking of the Titanic.If you are looking for an emotional account of the Titanics first and only crossing this is NOT the book for you. Although most of the details of this famous crossing are tragic, this is more of an accounting of what happened from the moment the Titanic struck the Iceburg to the last passengers recall before a panel of judges what happened in ghost fateful hours.If you enjoy getting into and understanding the minutia of court hearings and witness testimony you will find this very interesting. If not, it will bore you to tears. This accounting begins with one man's story aboard the Titanic and what happened to him personally after the Burg was struck...then goes into great detail of the survivors stories. Story is really not the correct word. The White Star Line needed to get witness statements from every person who survived this tragedy. From the moment they were aware there was a problem; what they were told, how they were treated, how organized were the ship's employee's in getting them from their rooms, assisting with life vests up till and including the moment they were put on a rescue boat then rescued by the luxury liner the Carpathia. A lot of the information is repeated as each person tells what they experienced. They go into great. detail about which rescue boat were they on, who else was on it with them, how many woman and children vs men vs employees of the line were on each boat. How organized were they? We're they prepared? We're lives saved or lost because of any one (or more) man's actions? Was anyone discriminated against? The questions go on and on as do the answers.By the end of this book you will know how many men, woman, children, fireman, customers, etc were on each rescue boat. When each boat left the Titanic, what kind of people were the occupants of each boat, who were the heroes and who were the simpering cowards. You'll discover some fascinating new facts about the sinking of the Titanic and about the character of the people which up till now we only have known through movie representations. I definitely know more about what really happened those few hrs and by the end of the book you realize that this isn't just a story, these are not just facts about who was on which boat or who said to go back to find more survivors or who bribed them with money to NOT go back etc. By time you get to the end it hits you that this was a living breathing person. It wasn't just a block buster movie. These were people who needed to know why their loved ones had to die that night just as much as the victims of 9/11 needed to know. That's when it really becomes REAL.
As the title of the book already says: this book is the story of one of the survivors of the sinking of the Titanic. This alone makes this book for anyone who's interested in Titanic a must-read. The first five chapters of the book are Colonel Gracie's story of what happened to him the last day on board of the ship and during the actual sinking and thereafter.What makes this book really special is that Gracie also tracked down as many people as he could find who survived the sinking to collect as much information as possible about the lifeboats.The last two chapters are a list of all the lifeboats and who were on board of them as far as he could figure that out, and some anecdotes about what happened on each lifeboat.That he managed to get so much information is a feat in itself, but when you know he did all his information gathering in the summer of 1912 while feeling ill and that he died in december 1912 (the after-effects of his ordeal) you really have to admire his strong will.It may be clear that I really love this book because of the richness of information and because of the personal aspect: a lot is written about Titanic, but a book about what happened written by someone who actually was there cannot be missing in any Titanic-collection.A critical note:Gracie was absolutely a man of his time. It's amazing how almost every man who was on board of a lifeboat is either a sneaky foreigner or had been given personal permission to be there.
Do You like book Titanic: A Survivor's Story (2009)?
It is fascinating to read a first hand account from a passenger of one of the most famous disasters of recent history. In the first five chapters Gracie really brings the humanity of the tragedy to his writing as he describes his own experiences as the liner goes down. In parts it's poetic, while at other times it is very detailed driven. Chapters 6 and 7 are extracts from the resulting investigations of the sinking, with other passengers statements of their escapes on the life boats. These chapters are interesting reading, but i found myself skimming over a lot of it because of its formality. All in all it was a great book and if you have an interest in the Titanic then you will really enjoy it.
—Ged
This account was given within the first months of the Titanic disaster and written by a survivor. In addition to Colonel Gracie's firsthand account of that terrible night, he includes statements of many other survivors given either directly to him or to the inquiries held in New York and England. An account of each lifeboat to leave the ship is given, including survivors loaded onto the boats and any conflicts that may have arose during loading. Colonel Gracie himself was not loaded onto any lifeboat and would have gone to his death if he had not by chance come to the surface near a lifeboat already in the sea. Gracie died a short 6 months after the disaster and many attributed his death to the exposure suffered during the disaster. A very worthwhile read for any Titanic disaster devotee.
—Debra
Rating and reviewing this book is sort of difficult. It was an incredibly interesting and very detailed first hand account of the most famous maritime disaster in history, but at times it seemed a bit... too detailed. The first part of Colonel Archibald Gracie's portion of this book read almost like a novel. He told his experience, splashing in details he learned later. Then he rewound and accounted for the experience of every single lifeboat, often times from many different accounts. I don't doubt that this information is invaluable to history and I commend Gracie for taking the initiative, in the few short months he had to live after the disaster, to collect all these stories from so many different perspectives. But, to read it flat out is a bit dry. Gracie was a military man. He wrote books about is experiences besides this one, so he was clearly no stranger to words, but his style is informative. I took this slow, reading it over about a month. This is the only real way I can imagine reading this torrent of information. But if you're interested in the Titanic this really is an invaluable resource. The second portion of this edition, I dare not say half as it takes up only about forty pages, is written by John B. Thayer who was seventeen at the time of the sinking. Both he and Gracie survived by clinging to the overturned collapsible lifeboat B. Thayer's account is really far more compelling to me, it's told relatively linearly and only includes his experience of things. He also does not shy from his opinion that the ship broke in two (a fact we now know to be correct) before plunging below the waters despite the insistence from the crew and decision of the inquiries that it did not. Gracie died of illness relating to his night of exposure awaiting rescue from the Carpathia on December 4th, 1912 so his account was written very soon after his rescue. Thayer's account was not published until about 1940. Take from that what you will. Both these tales are extraordinary. I'd recommend them to anyone, but perhaps only in small doses.
—Lindsay Heller
