Titanic Victims and Villains

Book excerpt: Why are there so many heroes attached to the sinking of the Titanic? Why do we accord impossible glory to the miserable, misbegotten drowning of the equivaletn of a small town? Who were the real heroes, and how were they overlooked? What did society - and the press - do with its overriding need for blame? The creation of heroes where they did not exist offers us insights, in throwing off the blanket of boasting a century later, that bring history's most famous shipwreck back into sharper focus. We see into the nature of prejedice, social values and the overriding political and national considerations of the time. This book also looks at the offered sacrificial victims of the time, in particular the character of Captain Stanley Lord of the Californian, the man charged with abandoning 1,500 people to their fate. Backed up with new photographic archives and bolstered by a series of contemporary extracts to support its arguments, this is Titanic history presented in an entirely new authentic light.