Customer Reviews

The Wreck of the William Brown : A True Tale of Overcrowded Lifeboats and Murder at Sea

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On a cold April night, a ship full of passengers crossing the Atlantic from England to America struck an iceberg and sank. It was almost exactly 71 years before the sinking of the Titanic, and at almost the exact same spot. But, there were great differences in what happened in the sinking of these two ships.

After the sailing ship William Brown began to go down, the crew rushed to the two small boats the ship carried (lifeboats weren't even invented yet), and tried to leave with as few of the passengers as possible. The captain, aboard the smaller gig sailed off leaving the bulk of the crew and all but one of the passengers behind in a damaged longboat. And when the people aboard the overfilled longboat began to fear for their own survival, the crew began to lighten the load - by throwing passengers overboard to their deaths! A cause celebre at the time, one crewman was brought to trial for the events of that horrifying cruise, one man was offered up as a scapegoat.

I must admit that I have never heard of the sinking of the William Brown before I read this book. The author does an excellent job of collecting what information is known about what happened, and presenting it in an informative and compelling manner. My one complaint about this book is that the author does spend too much time in editorializing - on the 19th century immigration movement and racism, and even on the state of modern healthcare!

But, if you ignore the digressions and editorializations, you will be rewarded with a fascinating and compelling story of a little known disaster. I loved this book, and highly recommend it!

The sinking of the "William Brown" could be an interesting story. Unfortunately, we may never really know, because it does not turn out thusly in this volume. You know how the movie "Titanic" had two hours of mediocre buildup to the "good part", at which point you were treated to a full-blown special effects extravaganza and an astonishing rendition of disaster and drama? Here, the good part--the sinking--gets out of the way right at the outset, and then we get to the rest: all the gripping intrigue and high suspense of a tedious courtroom trial.

Koch disposes of the actual maritime disaster comparatively quickly and then gets to what really seized his attention: the trial of the designated scapegoat. So we get to witness the testimonies of quite a few witnesses and all of the fun that comes from parsing their statements and picking them apart for errors, lies, and discrepancies. Enjoyable for the legal enthusiast, perhaps...drudgery for most. Even here, primary materials on most of the major participants are scarce, so the author has few means to give us full psychological portraits of the various parties, with the result that he contents himself for the most part with a great deal of snark and eye-rolling.

Ultimately, this turns out to be a rather slight tale, not in its significance for legal precedence, but simply because there's not enough narrative meat, so Koch has to digress into endless asides to pad out his story, and his side jaunts are often exceptionally tangential. Additionally, there's rather too much preachy editorializing and faux outrage for my tastes.

Not recommended unless you enjoy reading court transcripts from stenography tapes.