August KITastrophe: Transportation and Maritime

Maritime is a subtopic under Transportation.

Ship wrecks -- according to Google, there are more than 3 million shipwrecks on the ocean floor from throughout history. Here are example of a few of various kinds with suggested books (usually found in Amazon); I have only read two of them recently.

Titanic -- numerous accounts:
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
On Board the Titanic: The Complete Story with Eyewitness Accounts by Logan Marshall
The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, the Californian and the Night the Titanic was Lost by Daniel Allen Butler
Titanic Survivor: The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessop, Who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters edited by John Maxtone-Graham

Britannic -- sister ship of the Titanic
Exploring the Britannic: The life, last voyage and wreck of Titanic's tragic twin by Simon Mills

Costa Concordia -- cruise ship that sank 100 years after the Titanic
Abandoned Ship: An Intimate account of the Costa Concordia Shipwreck by Benji Smith
Survival Was Only the Beginning: A Costa Concordia Story by Andrea Davis

Lusitania -- British passenger ship sunk by a German torpedo during World War I
Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson

Edmund Fitzgerald - freighter that sank in the Great Lakes
Mighty Fitz: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Michael Schumacher

Sultana -- steamboat that exploded during Civil War
Sinking the Sultana: A Civil Story of Imprisonment, Greed, and a Doomed Journey Home by Sally M. Walker
Sultana: Surviving the Civil War, Prison, and the Worst Marine Disaster in American History by Alan Huffman

Transportation (excluding Maritime)

Air:
There have been numerous airplane crashes plus a few space shuttle wrecks. A few are listed here in case you want to look for books about them:

General plane wrecks: Bracing for Impact: True Tales of Air Disasters and the People Who Survived Them by Robin Suerig Holleran and Lindy Philip

Specific wrecks:
Tenerife Airport Disaster -- collision of 2 jets on a runaway -- 1977 -- 583 fatalities
Malaysia Airline Flight 370 -- 2014 -- disappeared -- 239 fatalities
Iran Air Flight 655 -- 1988 -- airplane shot down -- 290 deaths
American Airlines Flight 191-- 2011 -- near Chicago -- 273 deaths including 2 people on the ground -- deadliest on U.S. soil
Space shuttle Columbia -- 2003 -- 7 deaths
Space shuttle Challenger -- 1986 -- 7 deaths

Train wrecks -- Here are a few specific ones as examples.
Terror by Rail: Conspiracy Theories, 238 Passengers, and a Bomb Train: the Untold Stories of Amtrak 188 by Lynn Radice
The Camp Creek Train Crash of 1900: In Atlanta or in Hell: by Jeffery C. Wells
The Great Circus Train Wreck of of 1918: Tragedy on the Indiana Lakeshore by Richard M. Lytle

Of course there are numerous motor vehicle (car, truck, motorcycle), bicycle, and pedestrian accidents, but the coverage of them is probably more likely to be in articles than books. Books tend to be more about the mechanics.

I think I'm going to read The Flight 981 Disaster : Tragedy, Treachery, and the Pursuit of Truth....I've had it for awhile and I just need to locate it!

Haven't looked for sure, but it's likely I'll do a Titanic read. I'll check closer, though, on the weekend and decide for sure.

I have had The Midnight Watch by David Dyer on my list forever.

Yup, Titanic read for me. The original one I was thinking has too long a wait list for the ebook, but instead:
The Band That Played On / Steve Turner

For this challenge I read A Night to Remember by Walter Lord. This is a wonderful telling of the last night of the Titanic; although this book was first published in 1955, over 40 years after the sinking, Mr. Lord was able to interview more than 60 survivors including passengers from all three classes and members of the crew. He tells the stories of the actual experiences of the people including being on the lifeboats prior to being rescued by the Carpathia. He also describes in some detail how the captain and staff of the Carpathia got ready to accommodate the survivors of the Titanic -- an interesting account which I have not read anywhere else. The loading of the Titanic survivors onto the Carpathia is also described. At the end of the book is a list by class of all the passengers aboard the Titanic, supplied by the White Star line; those saved italicized. I'm sorry there was no such list of the crew.

I've finished reading Titanic Survivor by Violet Jessop, introduced, edited and annotated by John Maxtone-Graham.
This is an autobiography of Ms. Jessop, highly edited by Mr. Maxtone-Graham, which tells the story of her life from childhood through her service on world cruises in the early 1930s. Included are her accounts of experiencing the sinking of both the Titanic and Britannic. Although these accounts are rather short, they both contain important information. Her whole account of life as a stewardess on several ships on several shipping lines is interesting. Mr. Maxtone-Graham, who interviewed her shortly before her death in the 1970s, years later edited her unpublished manuscript, adding much valuable information. (I think this book was titled Titanic Survivor to tie it to the Titanic literature; Ms. Jessop latest title for it was While I Remember.)

I know that I recommended this book for this challenge. Although it does not contain as much information about the Titanic and Britannic disasters as I had hoped, in my opinion, it still counts.

Without a Trace 1970-2016 by Sylvia Wrigley was a compilation and summary of numerous aircraft/flights that have disappeared from 1970-2016. The information was cursory and I felt that I knew more about Malaysia Flight 370 than was contained in the book. However, there were many other "missing" flights that I was unaware of. It was a good overview. If you are looking for something substantial about a specific flight, this would not be the book. However, in the back of the book were the stories of at least 30 people who claimed to be DB Cooper, the man who jumped from a plane between Portland and Seattle in 1971 and was never found. None of the marked $200,000 has ever been located, either. 202 pages 3 star

The Band that Played On / Steve Turner
3.25 stars

This book tells the biographies of the eight musicians on the Titanic. They were split into two groups on board, playing in different areas of the ship, but it seems that they joined together to play on deck as the ship sank.

I usually like biographies, but this one had eight. That’s a lot, and it was a small amount of information on each one, so as we continued on in the book, it was easy to forget who was who. It was more interesting once they boarded the ship to read about that. Much is speculation, including what songs were played, but that part was still more interesting to me.

The book continued on after they died with some information on their families, regaining any items found (though only three of the musicians’ bodies were recovered), and stories of (in one case) the father not acknowledging an illegitimate child (and therefore any compensation money should come to him, not to his son’s girlfriend and child); I can’t remember now if it was the same family (I think it was), but a sister who was mentally unstable and played a nasty “joke” on the rest of her family (that was one I believe I’d already heard about).

Overall, I’m rating it between ok (the biographies) and good (the disaster and aftermath).

>9 sallylou61: This is on my tbr, as well. I ended up reading >11 LibraryCin: instead, but Turner mentioned (and cited) Violet Jessop a couple of times. She knew some of the musicians from one of the other ships she'd been on.

September thread for "Catch-Up Month" posted:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/323282

I read Sinking the Sultana: A Civil War Story of Imprisonment, Greed, and a Doomed Journey Home by Sally M. Walker. This is actually a young adult nonfiction book, but it contains a lot of interesting information. The main reason that I chose it was because it did not first describe the battles that the soldiers on board the Sultana had been in. From watching a short movie a few years ago, I knew that the steamboat was grossly overloaded with former Union prisoners of war from the notorious Anderson Confederate Prison Camp in Georgia and the Cahaba Confederate Prison Camp in Alabama; however, I was not aware of what states these camps were in and how far the men had to travel to get to the Mississippi River where they were traveling from Also, I was not aware that in addition to the soldiers, civilian families were also on board, and had the nicest accommodations for the passengers. Moreover, some animals (horses and at least one cow) were also on board. The steamboat was supposed to hold no more than 376 passengers; although the number of soldiers is not known, there were probably over 2100 people on board, and although the number of deaths is not known, the official number (from the Customs Service) was 1537 (p.139). The sinking was probably caused by the bursting of three boilers, one of which had been repaired (patched instead of a more extensive repair) while the soldiers were being boarded. The gross overload of passengers was caused by greed: the more soldiers on board the more money to a few people.

The book describes the stories of a few of the passengers (including soldiers), the accident and how people in other boats and those living along the shore aided in rescuing people, the investigations of the disaster in which a few men were determined to be responsible but nobody was ever punished, and the reunions of the survivors. Although this was the worst marine disaster in American history, it did not get the attention that the Titanic did probably because it occurred in the midwest and involved mainly midwesterners, it occurred right after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the killing of John Wilkes Booth, and at the end of the Civil War in which numerous men died.

Finished dead wake by Eric Larson on the sinking of the Lusitania.

>14 sallylou61:
I have that set aside to read soon. I have a fascination with the Sultana story as my husband's great-great-grandfather survived that disaster.
You might be interested in Loss of the Sultana and Reminiscences of Survivors (Voices Of The Civil War), first published in 1892 and reprinted with a most interesting new forward in 2005. My husband's ancestor's story is included. He jumped into the icy Mississippi from the burning boat. According to his account, "I could not swim very much". A steamer pulled him from the river.

>15 nrmay:. That is really interesting that your great-great-grandfather-in-law was one of the survivors. Was he one of the POWs or a crew member or one of the few paying passengers? Also the book you mention sounds fascinating. What was the name of your husband's ancestor in case I read the book.

>16 sallylou61:
He was James Stuart Cooke, a Union POW at Andersonville. I like to call him the Survivor. He survived the Great Famine of Ireland, immigrated to America to survive the Civil War, Andersonville, and the Sultana disaster. He went home to Ohio after this to father the child who was my husband's great-grandfather. I'm thankful for his endurance, otherwise I wouldn't have my husband, son and granddaughters!