Does the world really need yet another book on the Titanic? It all depends on the book...

In the preface to Lost Voices from the Titanic, author Nick Barratt quotes from the novel, The Cloud Atlas: “The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish and the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction – in short, belief – grows ever ‘truer.’ The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming and ever more problematic to access and reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening and ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.”

Barratt finished his book just before the death of the last survivor of the Titanic disaster, Millvina Dean, who was “the final link with an event that for everyone else on the planet is something we have only read about or viewed on television.” Barratt gathers the words of the people who actually helped construct the great ship, or sailed on its maiden and only voyage, or pulled survivors and bodies from the icy Atlantic, or testified before the inquiries held after the sinking. He enables us to feel what it was like to look at the Titanic without knowing the tragedy that was to befall it, and to have the experience of learning of that terrible night as though it were this morning’s news.

There are other quite excellent books that compile much longer first-hand accounts of the sinking -- The Story of the Titanic As Told by It’s Survivors comes to mind. But the sheer number of voices in Barratt’s book and the range of emotions they convey is particularly illuminating and moving. So did we need another Titanic book? I would say simply, yes. ( )