Author: Allen Gibson
Genre: History
Publisher: The History Press
Delving deep into Titanic’s legacy, Allen Gibson presents a comprehensive history with a refreshing argument, that Titanic represented a considerable achievement in maritime architecture. He determines the true causes of the disaster, telling the story of the ‘unsinkable’ ship against a backdrop of a tumultuous and rapidly emerging technological world. The book exposes the true interests of the people involved in the operation, regulation and investigation into Titanic, and lays bare the technology so dramatically destroyed. Juxtaposing the duelling worlds of economics and safety, this study rationalises the mindset that wilfully dispatched the world’s largest ship out to sea with a deficient supply of lifeboats.
Review by Amazon Reader about need for revision..
cuthbertus
3.0 out of 5 starsI'd certainly buy a revised, second Edition.
20 September 2016
Format: Hardcover
I received this in 2012 as a present. I agree entirely with the earlier reviewer, that much of it is full of valuable and illuminating information, and that it would benefit hugely from careful revision and editing. I wrote a detailed review of this work and sent it to the publishers back in 2012. Here is a greatly abbreviated digest of some of that review.
1. Gibson has clearly done extensive research amongst original documents, histories, and findings of the inquiries. This is fascinating, valuable, and entirely praiseworthy; when he is quoting these sources, his English is clear, cool, factual, and concise - a pleasure to read; and his facts are accurate, so far as I - a layman - can tell.
2. When he is writing his own narrative and observations, though, it is as if there are two separate authors: himself, and (above) the official records and documents. Alas, his own English is so poor that his meaning can be totally obscure; on occasions what he writes comes out as the complete opposite to what he (presumably) means. Sometimes this is extremely funny; sometimes merely grating.
This latter can be briefly categorised as a) factual error; b) misspelling; c) wrong word; d) odd, slangy words which sit very ill in the text of a serious non-fiction historical work): e) gross, bombastic purple prose parading cliché after cliché (perhaps I may be permitted to quote him, and say: "showcasing his clichés", (only some of which is intelligible. As examples, refer to the final paragraph or so of each chapter, where he clearly seeks to make a Big Bang - almost as if some manual somewhere says that this is what an author should do).
a) factual error: steel...lighter than iron, albeit weaker (19); steel...stronger than iron (217,218); wireless telegraphy vs wireless telephony (95); sea temperature was 31 F (0.6 C) (106); freshwater freezes at 28 F ( -2 C) (218); buoyancy is confused with stability and with trim (37, 210); hogging vs sagging (229); the difference between a cruiser and a battlecruiser (232); and, unsurprisingly, the hoary old chestnut of "knots per hour" (202). (It is interesting that all these are nautical details - as he is writing about nautical matters, shouldn't he or his editor have corrected them?)
b) just a few: look them up yourself (as I did, and his editor didn't): battle royale (intro); plateaus (20); draft (43); miniscule (118); slinked (153); (he) practiced (that old chestnut); shined (261). There are others, and I don't include any of the split infinitives.
c) wrong words. Where do I start, and where do I stop? Just some: White Star marketed their brand as a byword for decadence in sea travel; brutally opulent (12); little rectitude in failure (21); the masts reclined (36); Bruce...harangued in disrepute (72); Murdoch's infamous order (81); A far worse affiliation in history (82); She will not reach landfall again (92); particularly unworn engines (107); It may seem chevalier (118); being the concerted type Smith was (204); society's new mediocrity: second class (223); armour vs armament (255); and the funniest of all of them: "Ismay's underlining (sic) reason to reject Carlisle's additional boats, however, was neither inspired by economics nor hydrodynamics, but by ascetics". (137: images of thin men in turbans sitting under pipul trees float into my mind.) Aesthetics, perhaps???
d) uneven register: math; to leverage his own agenda; moniker; debunked (58); glitz (88); underwhelming (116); savvy (221) etc.
It's actually rather a shame, because this book seeks to bring together all kinds of angles and backgrounds which simply don't get addressed in other single-volume Titanic books, and for about 60% of the time, succeeds marvellously. It's just that it needs a steely-eyed editor with proper command of the English language, a decent dictionary like the Chambers, and a revised, second, edition. Which I would certainly buy.
