Built in 1927, the German ocean liner SS Cap Arcona was the greatest ship since the RMS Titanic and one of the most celebrated luxury liners in the world. When the Nazis seized control in Germany, she was stripped down for use as a floating barracks and troop transport. Later, during the war, Hitler's minister, Joseph Goebbels, cast her as the "star" in his epic propaganda film about the sinking of the legendary Titanic. Following the film's enormous failure, the German navy used the Cap Arcona to transport German soldiers and civilians across the Baltic, away from the Red Army's advance. In the Third Reich's final days, the ill-fated ship was packed with thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Without adequate water, food, or sanitary facilities, the prisoners suffered as they waited for the end of the war. Just days before Germany surrendered, the Cap Arcona was mistakenly bombed by the British Royal Air Force, and nearly all of the prisoners were killed in the last major tragedy of the Holocaust and one of history's worst maritime disasters. Although the British government sealed many documents pertaining to the ship's sinking, Robert P. Watson has unearthed forgotten records, conducted many interviews, and used over 100 sources, including diaries and oral histories, to expose this story. As a result, The Nazi Titanic is a riveting and astonishing account of an enigmatic ship that played a devastating role in World War II and the Holocaust.
The SS Portland was a solid and luxurious ship, and its loss in 1898 in a violent storm with some 200 people aboard was later remembered as “New England’s Titanic.” The Portland was one of New England's largest and most luxurious paddle steamers, and after nine years' solid performance, she had earned a reputation as a safe and dependable vessel. In November 1898, a perfect storm formed off the New England coast. Conditions would produce a blizzard with 100 miles per hour winds and 60-foot waves that pummeled the coast. At the time there was no radio communication between ships and shore, no sonar to navigate by, and no vastly sophisticated weather forecasting capacity. The luxurious SS Portland, a sidewheel steamer furnished with chandeliers, red velvet carpets and fine china, was carrying more than 200 passengers from Boston to Portland, Maine, over Thanksgiving weekend when it ran headlong into a monstrous, violent gale off Cade Cod. It was never seen again. All passengers and crew were lost at sea. More than half the crew on board were African Americans from Portland. Their deaths decimated the Maine African American community. Before the storm abated it became one of the worst ever recorded in New England waters. The storm, now known as “The Portland Gale,” killed 400 people along the coast and sent more than 200 ships to the bottom, including the doomed Portland. To this day it is not known exactly how many passengers were aboard or even who many of them were. The only passenger list was aboard the vessel. As a result of this tragedy, ships would thereafter leave a passenger manifest ashore. The disaster has been blamed on the hubris of the captain of the Portland, Hollis Blanchard, who decided to leave the safety of Boston Harbor despite knowing that a severe storm was hurtling up the coast. Blanchard, a long-time mariner, had been passed over for a promotion for a younger captain. He decided he wanted to show the steamship company that they had made a mistake by getting the Portland safely into port ahead of the imminent storm. Author J. North Conway has created here a personal, visceral account of the sinking and the times and the people involved, with stories to bring readers onto the Portland that day: Here is Eben Heuston, the chief steward onboard the ill-fated ship. More than half of the crew of the ship were African Americans. Hueston was an African American who lived in the Portland community of Munjoy Hill and was a member of the Abyssinian Church. After the sinking of the Portland the African American community disappeared and the church closed. And Emily Cobba nineteen year old singer from Portland’s First Parish Church who was scheduled to give her first recital at the church on that Sunday. And Hope Thomas who came to Boston to shop for Christmas and because she decided to exchange some shoes she purchased missed taking the ill-fated Portland. Because of the lack of communications from Maine to Cape Cod, it was days before anyone was able to get word about the fate of the ship or survivors. Author J. North Conway has painstakingly recreated the events, using first-hand sources and testimonies to weave a dramatic, can’t-put-it down narrative in the tradition of Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm and Walter Lord’senduring classic, A Night to Remember. He brings the tragedy to life with contemporaneous accounts the Coast Guard, from Boston newspapers such as the Globe, Herald, and Journal, and from The New York Times and the Brooklyn DailyEagle.
"On the night of April 14, 1912, as it made its first voyage, the luxury steamship Titanic struck an iceberg. Then, a few hours after midnight on April 15, the ship sank thousands of feet before settling on the ocean floor. And that's where it stayed, whereabouts unknown, for the next 73 years until it was discovered by oceanographer Robert Ballard and his crew. The pictures and video Ballard brought back from the 1985 discovery helped stir new interest in the Titanic's voyage and its resting spot"--Amazon.com.
This original and “meticulously researched retelling of history’s most infamous voyage” (Denise Kiernan, New York Times bestselling author) uses the sinking of the Titanic as a prism through which to examine the end of the Edwardian era and the seismic shift modernity brought to the Western world. “While there are many Titanic books, this is one readers will consider a favorite” (Voyage). In April 1912, six notable people were among those privileged to experience the height of luxury—first class passage on “the ship of dreams,” the RMS Titanic: Lucy Leslie, Countess of Rothes; son of the British Empire Tommy Andrews; American captain of industry John Thayer and his son Jack; Jewish-American immigrant Ida Straus; and American model and movie star Dorothy Gibson. Within a week of setting sail, they were all caught up in the horrifying disaster of the Titanic’s sinking, one of the biggest news stories of the century. Today, we can see their stories and the Titanic’s voyage as the beginning of the end of the established hierarchy of the Edwardian era. Writing in his signature elegant prose and using previously unpublished sources, deck plans, journal entries, and surviving artifacts, Gareth Russell peers through the portholes of these first-class travelers to immerse us in a time of unprecedented change in British and American history. Through their intertwining lives, he examines social, technological, political, and economic forces such as the nuances of the British class system, the explosion of competition in the shipping trade, the birth of the movie industry, the Irish Home Rule Crisis, and the Jewish-American immigrant experience while also recounting their intimate stories of bravery, tragedy, and selflessness. Lavishly illustrated with color and black and white photographs, this is “a beautiful requiem” (The Wall Street Journal) in which “readers get the story of this particular floating Tower of Babel in riveting detail, and with all the wider context they could want” (Christian Science Monitor).
The ghost ship The Flying Dutchman has been spotted around the world for centuries. According to legend, this spooky ship is doomed to roam the seas forever, unable to make port. The ship is thought to be a bad omen for anyone who encounters it. Sightings of the legendary ghost ship continue to this day.
In this sequel to Marusek's stunning debut novel "Counting Heads," the international program to seed the galaxy with human colonies has stalled as greedy, immoral powerbrokers park their starships in Earth's orbit and begin to convert them into space condos.
