Ship of Dreams

The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era- Gareth Russell
Atria Books
Release Date: November 19, 2019

Rating:
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Synopsis: In April 1912, six notable people were among those privileged to experience the height of luxury—first class passage on “the ship of dreams,” the RMs Titanic: Lucy Leslie, Countess of Rothes; son of the British Empire, Tommy Andrews; American captain of industry John Thayer and his son Jack; Jewish-American immigrant Ida Straus; and American model and movie star Dorothy Gibson. Within a week of setting sail, they were all caught up in the horrifying disaster of the Titanic’s sinking, one of the biggest news stories of the century. Today, we can see their stories and the Titanic’s voyage as the beginning of the end of the established hierarchy of the Edwardian era.

Writing in his elegant signature prose and using previously unpublished sources, deck plans, journal entries, and surviving artifacts, Gareth Russell peers through the portholes of these first-class travelers to immerse us in a time of unprecedented change in British and American history. Through their intertwining lives, he examines social, technological, political, and economic forces such as the nuances of the British class system, the explosion of competition in the shipping trade, the birth of the movie industry, the Irish Home Rule Crisis, and the Jewish-American immigrant experience while also recounting their intimate stories of bravery, tragedy, and selflessness.

Masterful in its superb grasp of the forces of history, gripping in its moment-by-moment account of the sinking, revelatory in discounting long-held myths, and lavishly illustrated with color and black and white photographs, this absorbing, accessible, and authoritative account of the Titanic’s life and death is destined to become the definitive book on the subject.

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Just when you think a subject has been studied to pieces, that nothing new can be written about it, along comes a book like Gareth Russell's The Ship of Dreams.  Thanks to intense research, Russell brings readers into the lives of first class passengers Lucy Leslie, Countess of Rothes; Thomas Andrews; Ida and Isidor Straus and others: the American millionaire businessmen, British aristocrats, and glamorous movie stars who were among those who sailed on Titanic's maiden voyage.  Readers are swept into the day-to-day life on Titanic through Russell's meticulous attention to detail, his brilliant writing style making you feel as if you are on the deck with the passengers.  This holds true both before, during, and after Titanic hits the fatal iceberg- making for some chilling scenes.

 The opulent furnishings and gilded luxuries of the first class cabins strike many of us today as symbols of an ending era. Russell takes this further, connecting Titanic and her passengers to the changes of society that would come with the end of the Edwardian era and the beginning of World War I.  Russell follows specific people to help connect readers to aspects of the larger world of which Titanic is a microcosm: the British aristocracy, the slowly changing class system and the Irish Home Rule Crisis; the early days of the movie industry and the economic competitions that contributed to the making of American millionaires as well as the Titanic and her sisters; the immigrant experience of Jewish-Americans, the connecting of the world through technology like wireless communication, and more.  Occasionally these shifts from individual stories to the world at large were a little clumsy and hard to follow, but I largely found them both relevant and interesting.  

Russell examines many of the long-held myths of Titanic: that steerage passengers were locked below and unable to get to the lifeboats; that fires in the engine room or substandard metal contributed to the sinking; that the sinking was itself an insurance conspiracy by the White Star Line, and more,  He carefully and without prejudice examines each myth in its turn: why they may have arisen and how accurate (or more often, inaccurate) evidence suggests they were.  What do we know about Titanic from physical evidence versus survivors' memories and how accurate could those memories be?  What images are seared into our collective minds from movies and yet are not wholly rooted in fact?  The Ship of Dreams explores the Titanic as both a symbol of an era and a clash of man and nature.  While its focus is more limited than other books that try to explore the entire experience of the ship from staff to steerage, it certainly deserves to take a place among the greatest and most defining book on the iconic ship and her place in history.      

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review