THE TITANIC
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, by Walter Lord; Longmans, English price 16/-. \ HEN the Titanic went down in 1912, it was more than 1500 people who went down with her-it was also the complacency of an age shortly to receive even ruder collisions. "There is your beautiful nightdress gone," said Lady Cosmo Duff Gordon to her secretary as from boat No, 1 they watched | the ship plunge vertically in the starlit | dark. And there was the gentleman who | insisted on changing into evening dress | for the occasion, and the band that kept on playing. The officers of the Titanic behaved with discipline and fortitude. So did most of the crew, and many of the passengers. Others in* the "unsinkable" maiden-voyager acted out the sad human comedy of exhibitionism, fatalism, opportunism. Those involved were some of the best (wealthiest) from both sides of the Atlantic: it was the order of the natural world that the order for the boats should be first-class passengers (of both sexes), second-class women and the lucky ones, and the steerage left to fend for itself. But if Edwardiana went down with the Titanic, Marconi shares went up. The new S.O.S. first sparked on the air; but constant listening watches were not then kept, and a ship ten miles away was no more than slightly puzzled that rockets should be firing for so long. Brutal conclusions: The Titanic should not have been doing 23 knots after repeated ice warnings; officers of the Californian should not have been so unseamanlike; the lifeboat requirement regulations should not have been so casually inadequate. We have had other and bigger disasters since-and the recent loss of the Andrea Doria-and it is curiosity rather than compassion that ‘is aroused by Mr. Lord’s carefully sifted account of the disaster.
Denis
Glover
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 899, 26 October 1956, Page 14
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299THE TITANIC New Zealand Listener, Volume 35, Issue 899, 26 October 1956, Page 14
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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