The Last Log of the Titanic: What Really Happened on the Doomed Ship's Bridge? [Hardcover]

David G. Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 3, 2000

Nearly nine decades after the event, the sinking of the Titanic continues to command more attention than any other twentieth-century catatrophe. Yet most of what is commonly believed about that fateful night in 1912 is, at best, a body of myth and legend nurtured by the ship's owners and surviving officers and kept alive by generations of authors and moviemakers. That, at least, is the thesis presented in this compellingly bold, thoroughly plausible contrarian reconstruction of the last hours of the pride of the White Star Line.

The new but no-less harrowing Titanic story that Captain David G. Brown unfolds is one involving a tragic chain of errors on the part of the well-meaning crew, the pernicious influence of the ship's haughty owner, who was aboard for the maiden trip, and a fatal overconfidence in the infallibility of early twentieth-century technology. Among the most startling facts to emerge are that the Titanic did not collide with an iceberg but instead ran aground on a submerged ice shelf, resulting in damage not to the ship's sides but to the bottom of her hull. First Officer Murdoch never gave the infamous CRASH STOP ("reverse engines") order; rather, he ordered ALL STOP, allowing him to execute a nearly successful S-curve maneuver around the berg. The iceberg did not materialize unheralded from an ice-free sea; the Titanic was likely steaming at 22 1/2 knots through scattered ice, with no extra lookouts posted, for two hours or more before the fatal encounter. Visibility was not poor that night, and the only signs of haze or distortion were those produced by the ice field itself as the Titanic approached. Most startling of all, however, is evidence that the ship might have stayed afloat long enough to permit the rescue of all passengers and crew if Captain Smith, at the behest of his employer, Bruce Ismay, had not given the order to resume steaming.

Offering a radically new interpretation of the facts surrounding the most famous shipwreck in history, The Last Log of the Titanic is certain to ignite a storm of controversy.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Nearly nine decades after the fact, the sinking of the Titanic continues to command more attention than any other twentieth-century catastrophe. Yet most of what is commonly believed about the events of that fateful night in 1912 is, at best, a body of myth and legend nurtured by the ship’s owners and surviving officers and kept alive by generations of authors and movie makers. That, at least, is the thesis presented in this compellingly bold, thoroughly plausible contrarian reconstruction of the last hours of the pride of the White Star Line.

The new, but no-less harrowing Titanic story that Captain David G. Brown unfolds is one involving a tragic chain of human errors on the part of the well-meaning crew, the pernicious influence of the ship's haughty owner, who was aboard for the maiden trip, and a fatal overconfidence in the infallibility of early twentieth-century technology. Among the most startling facts to emerge are that the Titanic did not collide with an iceberg but instead ran aground on a submerged ice shelf, resulting in damage not to ship's sides but to the bottom of her hull. First Officer Murdoch never gave the infamous CRASH STOP ("reverse engines") order; rather, he ordered an ALL STOP, allowing him to execute a nearly successful S-curve maneuver around the berg. The iceberg did not materialize unheralded from an ice-free sea; the Titanic was likely steaming at 22 1/2 knots through scattered ice, with no extra lookouts posted, for two hours or more before the fatal encounter. The visibility was not poor that night, and the only signs of haze or distortion were those produced by the ice field itself as the Titanic approached. Most startling of all, however, is evidence that the ship might have stayed afloat long enough to permit the rescue of all passengers and crew if Captain Smith, at the behest of his employer, Bruce Ismay, had not given the order to resume steaming.

Offering a radically new interpretation of the facts surrounding the most famous shipwreck in history, The Last Log of the Titanic is certain to ignite a storm of controversy.

From the Back Cover

"Absolutely fascinating--it fills a huge void in the literature of the subject. . . . Brown's familiarity with the technical aspects of shipdriving, based on his own career at sea, gives him enormous credibility. . . . The Last Log of the Titanic has more surprises than any book I've seen on the topic in the past 23 years."--Thomas C. Wingfield, Lieutenant Commander, U.S. Naval Reserve

A ship's logbook is like an airplane's "black box" in which all the specifics of a voyage are entered--the full nautical record of the journey. Imagine how fascinating the log entries from the Titanic's last hours would be. Of course, the actual log of the Titanic went to the bottom with the ship and has never been recovered. The Last Log of the Titanic, the first Titanic book written from the perspective of an expert ship handler, subjects the sinking of the Titanic to the brand of professional analysis that until now has been conspicuously missing from the literature of the great liner. Captain David G. Brown reconstructs the events leading up to the disaster, working from eyewitness accounts. He meticulously examines the official testimony given before the U.S. Senate and the British Board of Trade, as well as original newspaper accounts, allowing logic and the rigorous standards of good seamanship, rather than bias and tradition, to reveal the facts of the case. In the process he exposes the many false assumptions, obfuscations, and outrights lies that were propagated by surviving crewmembers and passengers, and by White Star officials, as he unearths long-buried truths.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 234 pages
• Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press; 1st edition (October 3, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071364471
• ISBN-13: 978-0071364478
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,672,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hmmmmmm...., February 21, 2001

By 

"timewalker" (Long Beach, New York United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Log of the Titanic: What Really Happened on the Doomed Ship's Bridge? (Hardcover)

As one of the archaeologists who has visited the Titanic site, piecing together a forensic analysis of the liner's final minutes, I am happy to report that Captain Brown's book forces me to go back to my own analysis with new questions. We all know, for example, that some minutes after the collision, Mr Shephard fell through an open hatch in the tank top - and until this book, I don't think anyone has really taken pause to ask what might have compelled the men in the forward boiler rooms open those floor hatches in the first place. Into this question Brown brings the process known as "hogging," which sheds new and credible light on some of the phenomena observed that night, ranging from the odd cracks and leaks reported by Charles Joughin, to Richard N. Williams' out-of-line door frame and the flood from below that caused the evacuation of boiler room 4. There is much to agree with, and much to disagree with in this book. One small nit arises from Samuel Hemming's (page 124) recollection of carpenter Hutchinson's statement, approximately 10 minutes after the collision: "The ship has half an hour to live, from Mr. Andrews." This clearly contradicts Brown's hypothesis that the ship was not already doomed before it resumed steaming; but at least the author is honest enough to present multiple views even when some of those eyewitness accounts contradict his interpretation of events. A less honest author would have tried to sweep the Hemming account under the rug. I happen to agree with Brown that steaming forward shifted multi-ton masses of water in Boiler Room 6, producing damaging inertial effects that, to one degree or another, sank the ship faster. Agree or disagree, this is (along with the works of Paul Quinn and Walter Lord)one of those truly rare books that, far from being another amongst hundreds of rehashes on an old subject, breathes new life into it.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An original and controversial look at the Titanic, November 3, 2000

By 

Bruce Trinque (Amston, CT United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Last Log of the Titanic: What Really Happened on the Doomed Ship's Bridge? (Hardcover)

David G. Brown's "The Last Log of the Titanic" should prove to be a controversial addition to the literature about the loss of the famous liner during her 1912 maiden voyage. This is not a book for the casual reader whose knowledge and interests about the Titanic are largely defined by the James Cameron movie. Rather, it is sharply focused upon the mechanics of the collision and subsequent sinking, together with the decisions made by Captain E.J. Smith and White Star Line chairman Bruce Ismay that influenced those events. While this book may have only limited appeal to those people mostly attracted by the human drama aspects of the tragedy, "The Last Log of the Titanic" should strongly interest persons who want to understand just what really happened to the ship itself.

The actual ship's log of the Titanic was lost during the sinking, so David Brown has "reconstructed" what that document might have been, based upon his minute-by-minute - even second-by-second - examination of the sequence of events. To do this, he has closely studied the primary evidence (especially the official inquiry testimony by survivors), but much of his reconstruction is drawn directly from his analysis of the physical damage and his own understanding of the characteristics and limitations of ship handling. Brown has relevant professional training and experience in this regard; he holds a US Coast Guard Masters License.

The most controversial portions of Brown's narrative can be summarized into three areas: First, he contends that the ship's lookouts spotted the iceberg several minutes before the collision, but failed to understand what they were seeing. Second, Brown concludes that the damage to the hull came from running over a projecting shelf of ice, not from a grazing impact along the side of the hull as depicted in numerous movies and books; and he also argues that the pattern of damage proves that the Titanic made two turns before the collision, one swinging the bow away from the berg, the second pushing the bow back towards the ice mountain. Third, Brown maintains that the rapid sinking (and thus the large number of casualties) was due to a fatal decision taken by Smith and Ismay to steam towards Halifax immediately after the collision, before the nature of the damage had been adequately ascertained; in Brown's view this action guaranteed that the stricken vessel could not remain afloat until rescue vessels arrived on the scene.

In my opinion, the evidence for the first of Brown's theses (that the iceberg was sighted, although not recognized, several minutes before the collision) is minimal and ambiguous. It does provide grounds for interesting speculation about how the history of that night could have been changed, but whether or not such a sighting was made is largely irrelevant to the main thrust of "The Last Log of the Titanic": the nitty-gritty details of how the ship actually sank. It is in these areas - the manner of the collision and the nature of the damage, plus the possibility that the damage was seriously aggravated by an incautious resumption of travel - that Brown's book will likely have its greatest impact. I cannot see how serious students of the disaster can ignore his conclusions without first making a careful evaluation of the evidence and his analysis. If Brown's explanation of the collision or of the subsequent actions taken is valid, then he has made an important contribution to our understanding of that well-remembered night.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptionally interesting analysis, May 28, 2001

By 

Susan Paxton - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Last Log of the Titanic: What Really Happened on the Doomed Ship's Bridge? (Hardcover)

Relying on his own experience of ships, David G. Brown has attempted both to reconstruct the last few pages of the Titanic's log and also to closely analyse the happenings of that night. His interpretation of the impact as being more akin to a grounding has the advantage of closely matching the actual observations of the persons on board that night, much more so than the "grazing collision" described universally elsewhere. Several years ago Walter Lord pointed out in his "The Night Lives On" that there was apparently lethal damage to the bottom of the ship, and Brown's analysis confirms this. Brown also usefully describes how ships actually handle and points out that First Officer Murdoch, just as he told Captain Smith immediately after the crash, tried to "port around" the berg - first putting on starboard helm to turn the bow away from the berg, then port helm to clear the ship's midsection and stern, explaining succinctly why the damage to the ship was limited to the first 200-300 feet. Brown also theorizes on the actual visibility from the crow's nest that night and suggests that the berg may have been sighted as a "dark mass" looming in the distance several minutes before it was seen to be an iceberg and suggests that First Officer Murdoch may have mistaken the "dark mass" for a safe path through ice. One suggestion Brown makes that I tend to disagree with is his contention that the Titanic had been manuevering through ice for some time before the impact. Even a gentle turn in a ship the size of the Titanic will cause the ship to heel noticably, particularly in a ship, like the Titanic, that lacks stabilizers. Passengers should have noticed the ship manuevering instead of maintaining a straight course, but there appears to be absolutely no testimony from anyone that night that the ship was doing anything other than steaming straight ahead. That, however, is a minor issue; this book is extremely interesting, a very valuable contribution to the literature on the subject, and I recommend it highly.