Ghosts of the Titanic Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

Ghosts of the Titanic Book

In his introduction to this book, James Cameron, the director of the hit movie Titanic, remarks that the 1912 sinking of that great ship has yielded more books than all but two other historical events--the life of Christ and the death of John F. Kennedy. Considering that vast ocean of print, it may come as a surprise that there's much left to say about the unfortunate vessel and the iceberg that sent it to the bottom of the Atlantic. But Charles Pellegrino finds an unexplored niche with Ghosts of the Titanic, which mixes the memoirs of survivors with learned speculation on the fate of certain of the ship's passengers--some of them shot to deter a rush on the few lifeboats--to reconstruct just what happened on that fateful April night. Pellegrino also offers an intriguing look at the science behind recent forensic investigations of the Titanic, which have enabled scholars to model the minute-by-minute disintegration of the ship as it slipped into the depths--for, he argues, instead of the "traditional (and mythical) 300-foot-long 'gash' or 'split,' the Titanic was felled by a series of punches, stabs, and bullet hole-like punctures" that allowed 24,000 metric tons of water to enter the ship within minutes of its collision. Along the way, Pellegrino offers asides on such strange phenomena as the deep-ocean bacteria that are slowly devouring the wreckage, and glimpses of the odds and ends (including the well-preserved remains of a last lamb supper) that the ship has turned up. While it's almost certainly not the last word on the subject, Pellegrino's book should appeal to Titanic junkies everywhere. --Gregory McNamee Read More

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  • Product Description

    The nightmare that began on the evening of April 14, 1912, did not end even as it shattered the lives of passengers and crew, their families, and their hopes into a mile-wide field of wreckage two and a half miles below the ocean's surface. It was just the beginning. A mystery that has survived decades, the loss of the Titanic two hundred miles off the coast of North America remains a defining moment in American history. It continues to haunt and to compel archaeologists like bestselling author Dr. Charles Pellegrino to piece together the shocking secrets left behind.

    In Ghosts of the Titanic, firsthand accounts and oceanic findings join to create the most vivid picture yet of the incredible night the Titanic went down. Offering new conclusions about the sinking and new insights into human nature in the face of disaster, Pellegrino draws signposts from the past for the future.

    Using the latest technology to penetrate the ship's grave-where strange bacteria and a water temperature only two degrees above freezing have kept many of the ship's artifacts and even food from decay-Ghosts of the Titanic re-creates those last horrifying moments onboard the doomed liner and reveals fascinating details about life on the bed of the Atlantic. With new discoveries about the ship's fate and history, it showsWhat really happened to the Grand StairwayWhy the lookout never saw the massive iceberg before it was too lateHow diaries and letters from passengers came to be perfectly preserved at the bottom of the oceanWho was looting cabins as the ship went down How a 3.5-billion-year-old living fossil is turning the Titanic itself into the world's largest living organism

  • 0688139558
  • 9780688139551
  • Charles R. Pellegrino
  • 1 July 2000
  • William Morrow
  • Hardcover (Book)
  • 304
  • illustrated edition
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