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Here it is, explained like you are 10:
Archibald Gracie was a passenger on the Titanic, the huge ship that sank in 1912. On that terrible night he helped women and children into the lifeboats, the boats used to escape a sinking ship. Then the ship went down and he ended up standing on an upside down boat in the freezing sea until help came. After he was rescued, he spent the rest of his life writing down what happened, hour by hour. This book is his record.
Colonel Archibald Gracie, a first class passenger travelling for his health, spends the night of the sinking helping at the lifeboats. When the Titanic goes down he is swept into the sea and survives on an overturned collapsible boat until rescue at dawn. Back home, and knowing his own health is broken, he spends his last months writing down the whole night in order.
The book is built like an inquiry. Gracie goes boat by boat and hour by hour, setting his own memories beside testimony from fellow survivors and checking one account against another. He names names, corrects rumours and keeps his tone sober even where his own escape was extraordinary.
It works because it trusts facts to carry the feeling. There is no exaggeration and no showing off, which makes the details land harder. Historians still build on his record, and ordinary readers come away feeling they have heard the disaster described by the most careful witness who lived through it, even now.
Archibald Gracie was a first class passenger on the Titanic, a retired American army colonel, and he spent the night of 14 April 1912 helping load lifeboats before the ship went down under him. He survived on an overturned collapsible boat, and he spent his remaining months setting down exactly what happened, boat by boat and hour by hour, checked against fellow survivors' testimony. Published the year after the sinking, it is a sober record historians still build on.
Archibald Gracie was a first class passenger on the Titanic, a retired American army colonel travelling for his health, and he spent the night of 14 April 1912 helping load lifeboats before the ship went down under him. He survived on an overturned collapsible boat, standing in the water with a crowd of men until rescue came at dawn, and he spent the remaining months of his life, he died that December, setting down exactly what happened: who did what, boat by boat, hour by hour, with testimony from fellow survivors checked against his own memory.
Published in 1913, the year after the sinking, his book is not a sensation piece but a careful, sober record, and historians of the disaster still build on it. Starvard shelves it as a primary source, a separate book from the other Titanic account in the library, and the two reward reading side by side. Anyone drawn to firsthand history, told by a man who was there and knew it mattered, will find this account quietly gripping from beginning to end, and trust it.
Edition: Text: Project Gutenberg ebook 67584.
The first chapter
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE TITANIC
Title: The Truth about the Titanic
Author: Archibald Gracie
Release date: March 8, 2022 [eBook #67584]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67584
Credits: MFR, Sam W. and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
THE TRUTH
ABOUT THE TITANIC
BY
COLONEL ARCHIBALD GRACIE
AUTHOR OF
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHICKAMAUGA
SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS
Publisher's logo
NEW YORK
MITCHELL KENNERLEY
1913
Copyright 1913 by
Mitchell Kennerley
Press of J. J. Little & Ives Company
East Twenty-fourth Street
New York
COLONEL ARCHIBALD GRACIE
CONTENTS
Source: Project Gutenberg. Published 1913. Author died 1912. Public domain. Share this book: WhatsApp
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