Shipwrecks: An Encyclopedia of the World's Worst Disasters at Sea [Hardcover]

David Ritchie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996

More than just a catalog of the world's best-known nautical tragedies, Shipwrecks captures the drama and significance of the most amazing maritime disasters, such as the Arctic, an American ocean liner infamous for the behavior of its crew, who abandoned ship before the passengers. Over 400 entries depict in vivid detail the captains, the ships, the causes, and the casualties associated with these tragedies. The book also covers the trials and publicity that followed these disasters, the environmental issues raised by oil tanker and nuclear submarine wrecks, and the work of both archaeologists and treasure hunters.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this large volume Ritchie (UFO: The Definitive Guide to Unidentified Flying Objects and Related Phenomena, LJ 1/95) lists several hundred shipwrecks alphabetically by ship name; vessels named after people are in last name order. The greatest number of wrecks he includes date from the middle 1800s to the 1940s. Specifically excluded are ships sunk during combat. Some wrecks are given page-long coverage and contain many colorful anecdotes. Other entries offer only the bare essentials of when, where, and how the ship sank. Ritchie gives good, balanced accounts of such controversial wrecks as the Mary Celeste, SS Waratah, Lusitania, and Titanic. He presents all sides and tries to tell as accurate a story as current theories allow. He also includes a chronology of shipwrecks and a brief bibliography. While no work could list all shipwrecks, his reference would be a nice addition for public library reference collections.
John Kenny, San Francisco P.L.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Facts on File; 1 edition (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816031630
• ISBN-13: 978-0816031634
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,887,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Too short and left out., October 14, 2000

By A Customer

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This review is from: Shipwrecks: An Encyclopedia of the World's Worst Disasters at Sea (Paperback)

The book is quite good as far as it goes. The writing is good. One wonders at the author's choice of shipwrecks as some wrecks with considerable loss of life are not included.. It would seem that too extensive a listing is given to some obscure wrecks. Also, a number of entries are not on shipwrecks but associated items and places, perhaps too many such entries.

Also, in my opinion, a number of articles were too short, and a number of shipwrecks that should have been included were omitted.

Too Short: Third World wrecks that are included, Estonia, Exxon Valdez, Flying Enterprise, Wilhelm Gustloff (shipwreck with the most victims), Lakonia, Mikhail Lermentov, Morro Castle, Noronic, Oregon, USS Pollux, Princess Sophia, Princess Alice, Principe de Asturias, Principessa Malfala, Queen Elizabeth, USS Squalus, Sultana, HMS Thetis(sub), USS Truxton, HMS Vanguard , HMS Victoria.

Left Out: Athenia, Baychimo, USS Cairo, Derbyshire, HMS Edinburgh, Farallon, Grosvenor, HMS Hood, CSS Hunley, I-52, Iron Mountain, Joyita, Laconia, Lancastria, Achille Lauro, Mary Rose (Tudor), Melbourne, USS Memphis, HMS Natal, Oceanus, Ohio, Pacific (Collins Line), Princess Victoria, Prisendam, HMS Royal Oak, Royal Charter, Veendam, Volturno, Yankee Blade, and probably any number of wrecks occuring in Third World countries.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice reference work, but uneven, January 1, 2000

By 

Mr Mondo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shipwrecks: An Encyclopedia of the World's Worst Disasters at Sea (Hardcover)

David Ritchie has produced a good basic reference work on shipwrecks throughout the world.

It is a bit uneven in concentrating on New England, the Outer Banks, the Great Lakes, the Columbia River bar and the Caribbean. Other areas of the world, by comparison, receive relatively short shrift.

I was particularly puzzled why Ritchie left out some shipwrecks that were very well-documented and dramatic. The one that immediately comes to mind is the burning of the immigrant steamer Volturno in the mid-Atlantic in 1913. Hundreds of the ship's passengers were rescued thanks to the bravery of the ship's captain and crew and those of the rescue ships that steamed to the scene.

I also would highly recommend that in subsequent editions, Ritchie consider a detailed entry on the Derbyshire, a mammoth freighter that disappeared during a typhoon in the South China Sea in the 1980s. The recent discovery of the ship in water nearly two and a half miles deep helped solve a mystery, bring closure to a horrible loss for the crew's families and offered engineering lessons that may well save the lives of hundreds of seamen in the years ahead.

If you want good narrative (and aren't too finicky about accuracy of detail), try to obtain a copy of Jay Robert Nash's book on disasters. (Hint to a publisher: This one urgently needs to be dusted off, updated and republished, as do Dwight Boyer's works) Until that happens, Ritchie's book will do yeoman service in your reference collection.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars SKIP THIS ONE, October 8, 2006

By 

Severin Olson (Hyattsville, Maryland United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shipwrecks: An Encyclopedia of the World's Worst Disasters at Sea (Paperback)

In the introduction the author apologizes to the reader for not being able to include 'every shipwreck' in the text. Some readers, he noted, were bound to be upset that a particular sinking was left out. Now of course we all know no book could cover every shipwreck or every disaster at sea, but certainly one could do better than this. As it is, all but a very few are given no more than a paragraph, making this more of a dictionary than encyclopedia. On top of it all, the book is filled with errors. The reader might just as well stick to the list of sinkings provided at the end, and ignore the text. Ritchie writes well, and could have produced an exellent work if only he had spent more time on the research and organization.