A Night to Remember (1955)

on Sunday, December 23, 2007 I wrote:


Wow. I was again on the verge of tears. This is such a sad story.Very well written. After I read it I immediately wanted to watch The Titanic. I thought I had the movie, but guess I was wrong. ;)Now I know what to buy next. ( )

With such a glut of Titanic material on the market (books, articles, movies, miniseries - miniserieses? - etc.), I was interested in reading one of the first accounts. I appreciated that it was chronological and used eyewitness testimony; when multiple accounts differed, the author simply reported what each person said they had seen. It had less emotional impact than I thought it would, even with the survivors' personal stories, but is a good account of the tragedy, remarkably free of judgment or opinion on the author's part. ( )

Very short and readable. A large part of the back is a roster of people who were on the ship when it sank. This book is the source for several of the Titanic movies and you will recognize the scenes. ( )

The introduction by Nathaniel Philbreck called this book "the definitive account" of the Titanic disaster, particularly since at the time this book was published (1955) many of the survivors were still alive, and Lord had the opportunity to interview over 60 of them--not something future books will be able to boast. The book is a work, as Philbreck put it, of "narrative non-fiction"--but not, and I appreciate that, a work of "creative non-fiction." Lord in his minute-by-minute of Titanic's last hours pieces together the story using multiple viewpoints--but he never steps over the line into relating things he couldn't have pierced together from the eye-witnesses. I also appreciate how in the last chapter he goes over the conflicting reports and discrepancies (not even how many were lost can be nailed down, although Lord things 1,502 dead is the most accurate number.)

Most readers are likely to know many of the details and recognize the names of people involved from the popular films and many documentary programs. On an April night in 1912 the "unsinkable" ship sunk less than two hours after hitting an iceberg. There weren't enough life boats for all the 2,207 passengers and crew. Few among those who went into the below freezing waters of the North Atlantic survived to be picked up by the Carpathia that came to the rescue a couple of hours after the ship went down. There are a lot of striking individual stories of heroism and cowardice, chivalry and ignobility. Reading this reminded me of what Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist, said of his experiences in a concentration camp. He said Freud was wrong that people under stress act the same--Frankly said that rather their individual character, for bad and good, is just magnified.

It's also quite a picture of a lost age. As Lord put it, "the Titanic was also the last stand of wealth and society in the center of public affection. In 1912 there were no movie, radio or television stars; sports figures were still beyond the pale; and cafe society was completely unknown. The public depended on socially prominent people for all the vicarious glamour that enriches drab lives.” Never again would those in the different classes of travel be treated differently in such a situation--yet back then not even the steerage passengers were outraged over how they were, if not pushed to the side by policy, then not just a second thought, but last. Mostly yes, it was "women and children first." But you still had a better chance of surviving if you were a first class male than a third class child--and Lord explains why. ( )

In his classic A Night To Remember Walter Lord gives us an intimate retelling of the last hours of the Titanic, starting from the Crow’s Nest and the moment the iceberg was sighted and concluding just hours later with the Carpathia steaming off for New York with the survivors.

In the course of writing this book, Lord interviewed many of the survivors, as well as crew from the Carpathia and the Californian - the ship that was closest but didn’t hear the distress calls until far too late. The result is an authentic, detailed and sensitive account of the night of April 12. The narrative is told in straight forward manner, and with a certain emotional distance being maintained but Lord includes moments and anecdotes which clearly illustrate the human aspect of this disaster: wives resolutely refusing to leave their husbands and those forcibly placed in life boats, family’s becoming separated in the crush, a terrified young man removed from a life boat and another who covered his head in a woman’s shawl and went undetected, the gentlemen dressed in their best and those in the life boat’s in all manner of dress, the bickering whilst waiting for rescue, and the fear that meant only one life boat went back to check for survivors amongst those that were in the water. While direct quotes from the survivors are not used, it is obvious in the memories shared and the emotions described that this is a book based on first hand accounts.

In one or two sentences at the end of numerous chapters, the initial disbelief, then the growing desperation on board the Titanic’s is contrasted with (what seems to us) the unfathomable decisions being made on board the Californian, whose crew saw the strange positioning of the Titanic’s lights and then later the flares, but arrived at every conclusion to explain what they were seeing except the correct one. There is a sense of tension as the Carpathia responds and races to the scene through the ice field, and in doing so reaches a speed that surprises even her captain.

A Night To Remember is rightly held to be a classic. It has a quiet power, is utterly compelling and in including the recollections of those involved, Lord gives readers plenty of insight into what it was like during the Titanic's last hours. ( )