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Titanic on Trial
- The Night the Titanic Sank, Told Through the Testimonies of Her Passengers and Crew
- Narrated by: Peter Altschuler
- Length: 9 hrs
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Titanic on Trial
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Summary
April 15, 2012, marked 100 years since the Titanic sank. Since that fateful night, stories about the sinking have become legendary - how the band played to the end, how lifeboats were lowered half-empty - but amongst the films, novels and academic arguments, only those who were there can separate truth from fiction. After the sinking, inquiries into the loss of 1,517 lives (out of 2,223 aboard) were held in both the UK and US. The proceedings produced 1,000 pages of transcripts. Some of the testimonies were inevitably less than impartial, but as a whole the transcripts represent the most thorough and complete account of the sinking, told in the voices of those who were there.
For the first time these transcripts have been specially edited and arranged chronologically, so that they tell the story of the Titanic's sinking as a narrative, rather than a list of questions and answers in a courtroom. The witnesses are transformed into characters in a much bigger story, and the events are described from different perspectives of people in every part of the ship, from a stoker in the boiler room escaping his section before the water tight doors sealed behind him, to first class passengers trying to buy their way onto lifeboats. Capturing the disbelief, the chaos and the terror of the disaster, this unique book brings to life the tragedy through the voices of those who survived it.
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What listeners say about Titanic on Trial
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Stuart
- 21-04-15
Interesting for Titanic buffs
Good extracts from the inquiry transcript but narration may need a bit of patience to listen to in its entirety.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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- Anonymous User
- 07-02-22
Titanic Review
Likes the narration. And the pace gentle and respectful interesting and good to absorb at my own leasure.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- arthur bland
- 31-08-22
amazing insight into the Titanic Story
really interesting view of the tragedy which made the incident accessible and understandable. recommended.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Ang mcq
- 19-06-16
Enjoyed.
really good audio book. Enjoyed all the background stories of the people on the titanic. very interesting and informative.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Terry
- 05-10-16
very good listen
very good book to listen to. Amazing detail. Very happy with this listen. 5 stars
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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- S. Morris
- 11-12-22
What They Actually Said
I've read a few books on Titanic on Audible, there are plenty to choose from. Titanic on Trial takes a different approach to much of the available material in that it lets the listener hear the transcripts of those who survived the disaster and their recollections of it. Many books also contain such memoirs of the historic event, but tend to be recollections written or spoken about many years later.
For those who are quite familiar with this subject and have read several books covering it, there really isn't anything particularly new here. Most of the personal accounts have, to one degree or another, been included somewhere else, but this book does afford the Titanic aficionado a glimpse into the unedited, raw accounts at the time of the British and American enquiries.
Some of the distortions as seen in Cameron's 1997 movie, Titanic, are exposed as such. Case in point, Bruce Ismay did not coerce captain Smith to go as fast as possible.
Having said that, the transcripts also point to the human trait of remembering the same event differently. Perhaps the most controversial of these is whether the ship broke up on the surface during its death throws. Some accounts say emphatically not, while others say the direct opposite. The evidence clearly shows a break up on, or near the surface,so proves how human perception is an unreliable thing.
These transcripts also go to show why some of the crew failed to load life boats to their maximum capacity, something I cannot recall reading anywhere else. We also find that the treatment of third class passengers with respect gaining access to life boats was not as depicted in Cameron's movie, as good as that was.
Further, this book also questions those responsible, and knowledgable of ship operations at the time, about why the ship was going so fast in an ice field. Here's where we here actual reasons given and not the judgements about it.
Also included are the testimonies of the captains of the Carpathia and Californian as well as members of their respective crews. This sheds further light on how those third parties interpreted and dealt with the unfolding disaster.
Titanic on Trial should be in your Titanic book collection, if for nothing else than for the sake of completion and perhaps a clearer telling of the facts as seen by those there with fresh memories shortly after the disaster.
Other reviewers have mentioned the narration, so a word here from me on that. The narrator has a British accent, but also seems to pronounce certain words a little oddly. Maybe the pronunciation is correct from an "old world" perspective and it's our modern ear that finds fault with it, I am not sure. However, given it's somewhat old fashioned sound, it fits quite well with the source material and isn't that difficult to listen to.
Titanic on Trial can easily be listened to in small bite sized chunks, so you can dip in and out as you please without losing much of the current thread. If you're unsure about this book and are fascinated by all things Titanic, then I'd say go ahead and get this. The casual listener may find it less appealing though.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- C. Hamilton-welsh
- 26-10-17
really interesting
i have read and seen most things titanic but this brings a much closer version through the statements of those who lived through the disaster. interesting to hear what happened to them too. highly recommended
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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- David Darrell
- 24-01-19
Poor narration of an excellent book
Fascinating and insightful book, but the narrator’s poor and at times strange pronunciations are distracting
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5 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- John
- 16-10-22
Sober account
Drawn from the recorded testimonies at the time, this is a straightforward factual account of the great Titanic tragedy. It gives the answers provided by both the US and UK inquiries to the enduring questions, but the contemporary accounts allow the listener to teach their own conclusions.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Lee
- 26-10-22
Sad on all accounts.
A cracking book surround the Titanic but told via the personal statements of survivors and others. Sad and grim in parts but it’s not written to shock rather to take you back to that terrible night in 1912…
Well written and narrated.
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