I’ve often wondered what it must have been like in one of those half-empty lifeboats when the ship finally went under. There were hundreds of people in the water, screaming for help as they slowly froze to death. In some boats, crewmen who suggested pulling people from the water were dissuaded by their terrified passengers; in other boats, women begged to go back but were told it was too dangerous by the sailors in charge. The desperate screams of the drowning went on for more than an hour; in one lifeboat, passengers and crew sang loudly to cover up the sound. Only Lifeboat Number 14, commanded by Fifth Officer Harold Lowe, attempted a rescue. “If anybody had struggled out of the mass, I was there to pick them up, but it was useless for me to go into the mass,” he later testified. “It would have been suicide.” He waited for the crowd to “thin out”—for the weakest to die—but underestimated the lethal effect of the freezing water. By the time he returned, he found only four people alive, one of whom died not long after.
While the excerpts of Congressional testimony in this book are my own creation, the questions and responses were inspired by the actual hearings, which began the day after the Titanic survivors arrived in New York. The complete transcripts of the US and British inquiries into the disaster are available online at www.titanicinquiry.org, and those exchanges were a great help in understanding the conventions of the time. (It was an era of stiff upper lips, not tearful oversharing.) I was also struck by whose stories were deemed important; the people who testified were overwhelmingly crew members and first-class passengers. Only a few third-class passengers were questioned, none of them women, and there was no testimony at all from second-class passengers.
Titanic researchers have no shortage of sources, and I consulted many of them during the writing of this book. The Encyclopedia Titanica (www.encyclopedia-titanica.org) is an extensive, well-maintained site that includes passenger and crew bios, deck plans, and links to current Titanic scholarship. One particularly helpful reference was Titanic: An Illustrated History, by Don Lynch, which I consulted constantly while writing shipboard descriptions. Titanic Voices, by Hannah Holman, includes more than sixty first-person accounts of the disaster, offering a wide range of perspectives. Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From, by Richard Davenport-Hines, introduced me to the fascinating backstories of the ship’s lesser-known passengers. Yes, the Titanic had more than its fair share of aristocrats and millionaires, but it also carried people with secrets: husbands traveling with “wives” who were really their mistresses, card sharks, a father who’d kidnapped his children from his estranged wife, and men who were traveling discreetly with their male partners. In sum—a wealth of ideas for a novelist.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people cheered me along during the writing of this book. Here are a few who deserve special thanks:
My parents, Mike and Judy Canning; my sister, Rachel; and my husband, Bob, who were there when I came up with the initial concept during a family vacation and never once said, “Aren’t there enough Titanic books already?”
My agent, Danielle Egan-Miller, who also believed in this idea from the very beginning.
Jodi Warshaw, for giving the OK to a pitch that began, “The Titanic, but not cheesy.”
Jenna Land Free, for caring about my characters almost as much as I do.
My daughter, Clara, for her advice on character names.
My sons, Alan and James, for making me laugh every single day.
Kim Bold, my official British consultant, for her suggestions on Charlotte’s story line.
Veronica Robinson at the Swedish American Museum in Chicago, who provided me with resources on Swedish immigration to the United States.
The Glenview Public Library and Northbrook Public Library in suburban Chicago, where much of this book was written.
Librarians everywhere, for sharing their love of books. You are my tribe.
Some people are constants in your life; others circle in and out. I’m grateful for the friends who’ve been there during all the stages of my career as a writer, as well as those I’ve reconnected with in recent years. We all tell ourselves stories about our lives, but once you start comparing notes with others who were there, you sometimes discover that the truth is more layered than you thought. That realization became an underlying theme of this book, in part because I was living it. So my final thanks go to the people who helped me figure that out—and made this more than just a Titanic book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 Heidi Jo Brady / HJB Photo
Elizabeth Blackwell is the author of In the Shadow of Lakecrest and While Beauty Slept. A graduate of Northwestern University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she lives outside Chicago with her family and piles of books she is absolutely, positively going to read someday.
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