Customer Reviews

The Other Side of the Night: The Carpathia, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic Was Lost

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From the first few pages I was entranced. The book reads like a well-written novel; I could hardly put it down. From a story I thought I already knew, no less! But the author sheds new light on the fabled CARPATHIA and the infamous CALIFORNIA. My eyes teared up while reading about Capt. Rostron and his heroic efforts to speed to the doomed liner. Particularly engaging was the equal effort of his crew - an aspect of the night I never thought about previously. To think about the black gang (the men in the inferno of the boiler rooms) shoveling coal like never before and all for speed, speed, speed! Breathtaking! Equally absorbing was when the crew was assembled and told the situation - an hour after the CARPATHIA has already turned around. Until then most of them were simply following orders, no matter how inexplicable they might have seemed. Imagine the collective shock that went through the crew upon hearing that the mighty TITANIC was sinking.

By way of a chilling, bizarre, and wholly unsettling contrast was the total lack of effort by Cap. Lord of the CALIFORNIA. I had always thought that the jury was out regarding Lord and the actual whereabouts of the CALIFORNIA, and thought that the jury could never, at this late date, even come to a verdict. But the author makes a definite case for guilty. No question. The author also details a psychological profile of Lord. This was utterly fascinating and makes sense out of behavior that before the book simply made no sense.

One night. One tragedy. And two captains with polar opposite reactions. Yep, wow.

I have always felt that the definitive TITANIC move has yet to be made. While reading the book I kept thinking: what a movie! Imagine a TITANIC movie with TITANIC as a bit player! Hollywood, are you reading this?

IMPORTANT: I believe that this book would be equally engaging to the non-TITANIC buff. It's simply a riveting story and very well told. And, you know, it's not about ships. It's about people and their reactions to extraordinary circumstances. That it's all true makes it that much more compelling.

don't miss Mr. Butler's books. I collect every book I can find on the subject, and this author not only is very readable and interesting (I'm plowing through this one as fast as the Carpathia rushing to pick up survivors) but he always manages to add new facts and ideas that weren't in other books. I find it really intruiging that he considers Captain Stanley Lord of the Californian, who didn't bother to come to the aid of the sinking Titanic, to be a sociopath. I haven't seen this theory anywhere else, but it is certainly plausible and would go a long way to explain Lord's behavior in the situation. In fact, Mr. Butler reveals more about Lord's character than I have previously read. In 1912 it's likely that the concept of sociopathy was not fully known. Lord is compared with Captain Rostron of the Carpathia, who was the hero of the hour, and whose career really took off after the Titanic rescue. I also would like to recommend Mr. Butler's earlier book, Unsinkable. I hope he will write more about the Titanic, maybe about Captain Edward Smith or Bruce Ismay. My only complaint, which is not the author's fault, is that this book went to press full of typos and printing errors. This is the second new book I've read in a few weeks that is this sloppy. What is the matter with the publishers today? I'm an editor, I notice these things.

While this treatment of the subject offers some new insights to April 14/15, 1912, especially the segments dealing with the activity on the Carpathia, it descends into another "Blame the Californian" piece, more "piling onto" Captain Loard. For a work that was published in 2009, what really stands out is the lack of reference to Sean Mulroney's 2006 "The Titanic and the Mystery Ship", which of all the books on the subject, is the fairst, most scientifically researched and best presented work on the subject. The other glaring omission is the lack of fair reference to the 1992 Reapprasial of the Evidence by the British Major Accident Investigtion Board. That document alone is worth reading and is readily accesible on the web. Mr. Butler makes the presumption that the Titanic's bow had to turn through almost 100 degrees to present the "correct" side lights to an observer to the north. Even the 1912 hearings never determined this. Mulroney does an excellent job in explaining this in his book. Again, some new, interesting material, but it leaves out facts that need to be presented for a fair comparison,

Daniel Allen Butler's "The Side of the Night: The Carpathia, the Californian, and the Night the Titanic Was Lost" is a Titanic book with a critical difference: The great White Star liner is not at center stage. Instead, the focus is firmly on two quite different ships that became intimately ensnared in the tragedy: the Carpathia, which arrived on the scene the next morning to pluck the survivors from their lifeboats, and the Californian which, although located nearer to the site of the sinking than the Carpathia, arrived only after the Carpathia had already rescued the victims.

Butler's book presents a picture of Captain Arthur Rostron of the Carpathia as a man who, on the night, of the tragedy, did everything right, while Captain Stanley Lord is portrayed as a man who did virtually nothing. For decades, Titanic enthusiasts have argued endlessly over whether or not the Californian was indeed close enough to have actually seen the sinking liner; Butler presents a compelling, although not highly analytical, case that the Californian's officers were greatly remiss in not responding to clear evidence that the Titanic was in distress (and he attacks and shatters the arguments of Stanley Lord's defenders that somehow the Californian was too far away to have seen or done anything.

In the end, whether Stanley Lord is seen as a villain or merely as a victim of unfortunate circumstances, Arthur Rostron emerges as a genuine hero of the whole episode, the right man in the right place at the right time.

While Capt. Rostron's gallant and courageous behaviour is beyond criticism, Captain Lord's activities, or rather inactivities, that fateful night the Titanic hit an iceberg, have been a stone of contention ever since. Many have sought to excuse Lord's not coming to the aid of the foundering leviathan by pointing at inconsistencies in chart positions, relative distances, other ships that may or may not have lain between Lord's Californian and the Titanic, and many books have been written to defend him, despite the overwhelming weight of evidence against him. In this book, D.A. Butler gathers all the threads, puts them on the loom and, strand after strand, inexorably weaves them into the carpet of Lord's guilt. But then, Lord's guilt had already been painfully obvious since the first book by a non-survivor appeared, "A Night to Remember" by Walter Lord, an account which mostly contented itself with describing what happened that night. Butler carefully looks at all the evidence at hand and draws the inescapable conclusion, refutes the arguments Captain Lord's defenders have been brandishing to prove his innocence and applaud his prudence and, more importantly, dissects and indicts the defender's lopsided and devious ways of neglecting certain unwelcome evidence. Butler also finds an answer to the mystery as to why Lord acted the way he did during the night, explains his erratic behaviour after the disaster and why he issued so many conflicting statements during the subsequent inquiries (which I will not give away here, of course). And last but not least, Butler compares the relative merits of the American and the British inquiries into the disaster and, surprisingly for an American, gives the British one more credit than many others have done (such as Wynn Craig Wade, who revelled in calling it a whitewash on almost every page).
I couldn't put the book down and was sorry to have finished it, which, considering the fact that the outcome of the disaster is not unknown, is quite a feat. Well done!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It is the first book I've read detailing the events surrounding the two ships Carpathia and Californian, most often mentioned when recalling the sinking of Titanic. Having read quite a few books about the disaster it was great to finally discover what it might have been like as the night unfolded for these two ships. The book also made me think of the "what if" scenerio with the Californian. If she was indeed close enough to see Titanic, had she responded to the distress signals, this might not have been the catastrophic tragedy it was!
The author obviously invested a lot of time and energy investigating and then detailing in this book, facts regarding the rescue or lack of rescue effort by these ships.
I would recommend this book to anyone serious in learning more about the Titanic and it's sinking.

Daniel Allen Butler's narrative in this book vividly contrasts the events between the frantic preparations of the Carpathia's crew and the saddening laziness of the Californian's officers during that tragic night. This author is amazing in bringing a "frantic" feeling to the sequence of events as he recalls a vivid story between hope (Carpathia) and doom (Titanic). Butler even presents a chapter that illustrates the ideal scenario that would likely have happened "if a captain like Arthur Rostron" had been at the helm of the Californian and hypothetically responded to the early distress rockets (my words in quotes). I spent many nights engrossed in this book, so much that it felt like watching a documentary or even having a conversation with Butler himself. I have even reread the book at least 5 consecutive times to pick up additional details that I didn't immediately get from previous readings. His narrative is THAT captivating! A must for those who want to know the *full* story behind the loss of a mighty liner.

This was a great view of the "other side" of the Titanic story. Very well written and full of facts. I agree that this would make a fantastic movie. I especially like the "courtroom drama" that consumes the second half of the book. It's all gripping.

I must say that I was never really aware of the contraversy among different historians about these ships... in particular the Californian. Although the author very clearly has some strong opinions about the captain of the Californian, he does a fairly good job of keeping them at bay up until near the end. (When the author calls him a "sociopath" it is such a change from the rest of the unbiased storytelling that it's a bit of a jarring interjection.)
Still, one cannot help but agree based on the facts laid out.

Great story that is very well told here. Very highly recommended.

This is an excellent companion to Butler's earlier "Unsinkable". Here the reader is given a closer look at the other two ships involved on that fateful night: the Carpathia and the Californian. Butler gives interesting insight not only into the events of that night, but in the aftermath and in the character of the men who were involved. The author's study of Stanley Lord is especially interesting.

I will say up front that I have done a good amount of reading and research on the Titanic. This book would be a good companion piece to Walter Lord's "A night to remember" or the movie "Titanic". After reading the book, I went back and re-read Lord's book and was shocked how similar they are. The Author even notes his relationship with Lord in the book. My problem with the book is the total lack of maps and diagrams of where the ships were during the night, the ice flied and the impact of the current. There should be more detail on ships lights of the time, height of the ships, curve of the earth, etc. These omission led me to research these area on the web and I found a number of good web sites with maps and diagrams. I thought the second half of the book was a good summary of the testimony, but I would recommend that there are a number of web sites that have the full testimony transcripts available.