Titanic Lives: Migrants and Millionaires, Conmen and Crew [Hardcover]

This is a wonderful addition to the many books about Titanic and its fateful maiden voyage. The emphasis is on the passangers and crew which sailed on it and what their experiences would have been and how they differed. There is a lot of information on the stratified and class conscious society at that time. I was interested to learn that US immigration laws stipulated passengers of different classes must be separated on liners by locked metal barriers to stop the spread of contagion. Also, that it was considered very bad manners to go and look round lower class decks onboard liners ("slumming expeditions"), which many first class passengers did when crossing the Atlantic as though studying another form of life. Information on the experience which greeted third class and steerage passengers at Ellis Island was also very illuminating and stories of those emigrating to America to find a better life often extremely touching.

Titanic was supposed to bring a new era to Atlantic crossing and passengers often claimed, "You would never imagine you were on board a ship." On board the largest ship in the world it was easy to forget the power of the ocean. This fascinating book looks at the people who were responsible for building Titanic and where it was built. The general idea was to build ships which replicated the amenities the rich expected of luxury hotels. Lifeboats were, apparently, discussed for five or ten minutes" during a meeting, but it is worth pointing out that Titanic was no worse than other liners and that they fulfilled all the regulations of the day. For passengers, steam travel was both quicker and safer.

On board Titanic were a huge number of rich and influential passengers, including John Jacob Astor IV and Benjamin Guggenheim. First class passengers often cancelled and booked last minute in their constant "breathless rush across continents", which is likened to, "the same scene in a new setting". Once on board, the author discusses all the pleasures and activities they could have indulged in. There is also detailed information on both Second class, with its clergymen, shopkeepers, chauffeurs, teachers and engineers. Third class is also looked at in depth, as are the officers and crew on board. The stories about the passengers are often unbearably sad. On Titanic were professional gamblers, missionaries, adulterers, a child kidnapper, millionaires, farmers and economic migrants from many parts of the world, all with a story to tell.

As the book nears its conclusion you almost hope for another ending, but obviously that is not to be. The collision and the sinking of Titanic are recounted with emphasis on the personal stories. Titanic's doom aroused malicious satisfaction as well as horror. It was packed with millionaires,who aroused envy and migrants,who aroused contempt. Not everyone wished to "die like English gentlemen" or "treat death like an awfully big adventure". Captain Smith (whose grandson was my old geography teacher at school and who so resembled his grandfather it was like seeing him appear in the pictures of this book!) was anxious to avoid panic and shaken by the knowledge that their were insufficient lifeboats. Therefore passengers were often given mixed messages about how dangerous the situation was, with passengers often being told to return to their cabins, until water actually seeped under the doors.

There are stories of immense bravery in this book and of men refusing places in the lifeboats - "No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward!" proclaimed the millionaire and certainly Guggenheim, Astor and Strauss were three prominent men who were proclaimed heroes, as was the ships band who courageously played on to stem panic, The Band that Played On: The Extraordinary Story of the 8 Musicians Who Went Down with the Titanic. It is certainly true that men were allowed to board on one side of the ship and not the other and that men were excluded needlessly, even if there were spare places in the boats (of which there were many not full to anything near capacity). Young boys especially were considered as men - I mentally cheered when Astor plunked a girls hat on an eleven year old boys head and thrust him into a boat. The true tragedy were the tales of tiny bodies recovered from the sea and nearly half the children on board lost, although gender was more important than class in surviving the disaster.

Lastly, the book looks at the aftermath of the tragedy. How some were called heroes and others, including Bruce Ismay and the Duff Coopers, made scapegoats How to Survive the Titanic or The Sinking of J. Bruce Ismay. There was "a thrill at the heroism and self sacrifice", but undoubtedly men had survived and women had died, along with children. National mourning ensued, especially in New York, Paris, London and Southampton, where many of the crew lived. Overall, this is an extremely interesting and very moving read, which gives great detail on how people lived and travelled during the time of Titanic and of the lust for speed which caused ships to take risks, as well as the mistaken belief that the liners were so huge and powerful they were invulnerable to nature. If anything good came from this terrible tragedy, it was a change to safer sea routes and laws demanding every ship had enough life boats for all passengers and crew. Excellent read and highly recommended.

I loved this book.

I was fascinated as Richard Davenport-Hines set the infamous maiden voyage in its historical and cultural context.

Far from being a dull list as one reviewer would have it the book interestingly begins with the "life" of the fateful iceberg and then carefully moves on to reveal the race at the beginning of the 20th century to produce bigger, faster and grander steam ships, although, he notes, they were largely crewed by men trained in sail power and pretty much universally set to sea with fewer lifeboats than would be needed in case of disaster. It wasn't just the Titanic. In fact the Titanic carried more than the officially designated number for a ship of its size, and anyway it was said she was so sturdy and unsinkable she was herself just one big lifeboat.

Davenport-Hines beautifully sets the scene as commission hungry shipping line agents sold the American dream to potential immigrants who clamoured for the promised land, only to be met with harshness and scarcely hidden racism at Ellis Island. He compares this to the lives of the first class passengers and their snobbery - inherited wealth looking down upon new found wealth, and the second class, with men running away with their mistresses. In second class he tells the story of the only black passenger on the ship, with his white wife and their children, all looking for a new start in a more open-minded land, as well as a Japanese priest who would survive the disaster but be fired from the church for the shame of doing so.

My one criticism (and the only thing preventing 5 stars) would be that the author covers perhaps too many of the people on board and so we are sometimes only given scant detail of their lives and reasons for heading to New York. But that is really only a minor point. We still learn plenty of the lives of people like the millionaire Astor's, Lord and Lady Duff-Gordon, and Archie Butt, the aide to President Taft, and his "best-friend", the artist Francis Millett, who, before they went down with the ship, lived together in a house with red and pink rose wallpaper and a staff of Filipino boys (and nobody thought to guess - innocent times indeed).

After the people on board were brought to life I thought it reiterated the ultimate event as a real human tragedy. The touching piece on how a thirteen year old boy was hidden below the skirts of women in a lifeboat, only to be forcibly removed at gun-point by an officer insisting on women and children first, was particularly vivid. The boy, who although new to being a teenager was obviously deemed to be a man, lay on the deck, sobbing into his hands and assigned to his fate as the women were lowered on the lifeboat with nearly half the spaces completely empty. Many of them were never able to shake that memory and Davenport-Hines touches upon the aftermath of the disaster - not only how it shocked the world, but how it effected the mental state of those who survived.

I came away realising that it wasn't just the iceberg that sank the Titanic, but the culture that said men must die like men and women were fragile creatures that needed male protection. We believed that your social standing counted for more than your deeds and imposed rigid codes of social etiquette, employed casual racism and held an unshakeable belief in our ability to conquer nature and the power of industry. So much so that even as the ship was buckling in two and people were clinging to the railings to prevent them from sliding down the deck, some still believed the Titanic couldn't go down.

Perhaps the sinking of the Titanic had to happen to snap the human race out of its self-important daydream, just in time for the Great War to smash it altogether.

... to an oft told tale.

Rupert Davenport-Hines has divided his book up into three main parts. The first, Embarkation, has chapters titled Shipowners, Shipbuilders, Sailors, Atlantic Migrants etc. The second discusses the different classes and the crew and Part III has only two chapters - the collision and the aftermath.

Enhanced by photographs, Titanic Lives is full of information. The only slight criticism is that Titanic enthusiasts will probably know it all already and the general reader may find it a little top-heavy. It probably works better as a reference book rather than a straightforward read. And if one chooses to have only a very limited section of books on the Titanic, this would be a good volume to choose.