Everyone in the book group finished this book, mostly because it's a very small book.
We all felt that it gave a much more realistic feel for what happened on that night, more so than the more recent Hollywood movie. Maybe because it was very realistic we also felt that it was a little dry in parts (no pun intended) with long lists of names along with a small amount of background information. It could be that because this book was written very soon after the accident that people knew the famous names mentioned in this book that meant nothing to us now. This we felt was interesting because at the time these people were like the movie stars of today, with their every move watched by millions. The lack of personality to these people in the book made us feel somewhat detached from them even though at the same time we were reading about some of the tragic demise. We thought that the lists of extremely rish people were meant to give us an impression of just how amazingly luxurious this boat was, but we felt that we wanted to know some more about those on the lower decks.
We discussed the differences between the super rich on board the Titanic compared to the rich of today and felt that those on board the Titanic were really in a completely different league. They had private trains meet them at the dockside, and not only that they seemed to think that they were different to those with less money. These days we think that people don't tend to like to show off their wealth to such an extent, it seems slightly vulgar these days when there are people with nothing. In those days the super rich seemed to be separated much more from those with nothing, we felt that maybe the days of the Titanic were probably the death throes of this kind of lifestyle. The rich seemed to think they could build anything and do anything as long as they threw enough money at it, but they were being proven wrong with things like the Titanic and other similar disasters. We wondered whether having such rigid social hierarchy was a good a or a bad thing. We thought that it maybe created a feeling of responsibility to others, and a kind of structure in which you knew what was expected of you.
It was obvious in the book that the poor were overlooked both for being rescued, and even being mentioned at all in the book. There were very few names of those on the lower decks within the pages of this book compared to the actual amount of them on the ship and also compared to the amount of rich names being thrown about.
Somehow, although we all knew the ending we all wanted it to be different in the book, we weren't sure why this was. We all felt that there were some sadly poignant moments with small babies and children dying in the water, juxtaposed against the humour of the baker who survived by seeming to drink his own body weight in alcohol prior to stepping off the ship.
We also discussed the old saying "women and children first" we wondered where this came from and when it was first used, and also is it still in use today. We also wondered whether it is used all over the world or whether it was something that only really happened during the pre-titanic era amongst the ultra-politeness of the time. It would appear, given the amount of second class men who died, that they really did stick to this. Although the first class men appeared to allow women and children first to a certain extent and then their inherant feeling of intitlement may have taken over as a higher percentage of them survived than the female steerage passengers. We all wondered how we would react, we all felt that we would put our chilren into the life boats first but after that we wouldn't really know what to do. When the fight or flight reaction takes over you have no control over yourself and we felt that people should not be called cowards just because of a hormonal reaction.
Looking back on the tragedy it's easy to see where all the errors were for example, why did they turn off all the radios at night, why did they use such inferior bolts, how did they not know what flares meant etc. To be honest given the amount of errors and the complete lack of life-saving equipment on board it is actually surprising that they saved as many people as they did. We felt that those at sea did learn from these mistakes and new measures were put in place to ensure that these errors were unlikely to happen again. We felt that the biggest error may have been human arrogance that nothing bad could happen to such an amazing ship.
Overall we gave this book 7 out of 10.
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As one who has never seen a film or read a book about the Titanic I really enjoyed this book - it could have been a very dry boring read as it was completely factual and based on the actual survivors testimonies but was made very interesting by the author's writing style. I found it fascinating that so many errors were made because of the total arrogance of the people involved: the fact that the warnings about icebergs (6 of them) were ignored; the fact that the nearest ship was not alert to the fact that the Titanic was in trouble; the fact that there were only half as many lifeboats as were needed for the number of passengers; the fact that many of the lifeboats were launched only half full; and the fact that the lifeboats that still had room refused to return to pick up the survivors etc., etc. The women and children first mantra was actually put into practice as women and childen ONLY which meant that men who could have been saved were prevented from getting into the lifeboats and the fact that the class system prevailed even when lives were at stake completely beggars belief. Although the ending is well known I found the whole story gripping and very interesting - for example I had no idea it took so long for the ship to sink. Excellently written tale of total incompetence - I would give it a 7.5
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