"Unsinkable": The Full Story of the RMS Titanic

by Daniel Allen Butler

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This passionate yet balanced narrative explores every facet of the Titanic's history, including her spectacular conception in an Irish shipyard and the ambitious modern-day attempts to salvage her.

The familiar story of the RMS Titanic-from her encounter with an iceberg to her demise some three hours later, taking with her more than fifteen hundred people-still looms large in the popular imagination, and in Daniel Butler's as well. He studied the Titanic's history for thirty years, intensively compiling facts about the disaster and the players involved (from Captain Smith and his crew to the ill-fated third-class passengers). He even made the startling discovery of a nearby ship that ignored the Titanic's distress call because the shipmates were afraid to awaken their captain.

Drawn from primary sources and period accounts, this new narrative puts the disaster into historical context and will serve as an essential historical resource for scholars of Titanic lore.

From Publishers Weekly

Because the story is so dramatic, this retelling of the sinking of the Titanic is a page-turner, even though Butler, a Florida-based veteran of the U.S. Army and a Titanic buff, has little to add to what is already well known. He presents interesting information on the first four days of the voyage but otherwise recounts the mishaps that contributed to the tragedy: the failure of the ship's officers to heed the iceberg warnings; the tacit refusal of a nearby ship to come to the Titanic's aid; and the fact that the few lifeboats that fled the ship were only half full, leaving behind 1500 passengers to perish. Although Butler notes that a greater proportion of first-class male passengers were saved than third-class women, he theorizes foolishly that this was due more to a conditioned lack of initiative on the part of steerage passengers than to class discrimination.

From Booklist

The world hardly needs another book on the Titanic. Yet, the public appetite for the subject seems insatiable, and Butler has added a compact and generally sound survey of the tragedy and the cultural context surrounding it. There are no shockingly new revelations here, and the cast of heroes, victims, and heels is familiar. Still, Butler's detailed description of the building of the ship is often engrossing, and his examination of the fate of those who jumped from the ship but died (many unnecessarily) in the freezing water is especially poignant. For readers who cannot get enough of the subject, and for those few who are unschooled, this is a trip worth taking; librarians who have up to this point opted out of buying a Titanic book but now realize they should have at least one on the premises should take a look here. -- Jay Freeman

About the Author

Daniel Allen Butler is a veteran of the U.S. Army. Author of The Lusitania, he lives in Atlantic Beach, Florida.

Reader Reviews

Strictly Facts, May 31, 2004
Reviewer: Barn Stableton
Let me start out this review by saying that this book was amazing. I have always been itrigued by the story of the Titanic but it was hard to get a story that didn't try to lay blame on one person or another. This book is exactly what I wanted; it is the story of the Titanic based strictly on facts and passenger accounts of what happened on board. Daniel Allen Butler did his research when he wrote this book about the worst tragedy to ever hit the ocean, it is a very detailed account of what happened from the building of the Titanic to the inquiries in to who was to blame for the incident. No other tragedy in the history of man could have been so easily averted. There was a series of events that caused this momentus loss of life, and had any one of these events been altered it could have saved the 1502 passengers lives that were lost. One thousand five hundred and two lives gone in one night with only 705 passengers saved a tragedy indeed.

The good thing about this book is that it is based on the facts. It isn't romanticized in the least bit. You can read the book and you feel you know what happened that tragic night. However it does leave you questions, which will perhaps never be answered. Yet this is a good thing, a good book is going to do that to you, it's going to make you want to learn more about the subject. Ever since reading this book I have wanted to learn more and more about the Titanic and the people on board her. This book had me hooked from the beginning and I'm still hooked now.

The only bad thing about this book is that it is loaded with so many facts that you aren't able to take them all in at once. This to me isn't a bad thing however because I will reread it in the next week and it will be like a new book with new facts that I didn't remember from the last time I read it. So if you have any interest in the Titanic or if you are simply interested by a great tragedy go pick up this book it will have you hooked in the first five minutes.

One of the best of the Titanic books, June 18, 2003
Reviewer: Patricia Barry "book maven" (Kansas City, Missouri USA)
Although I haven't quite finished this book, I believe it's one of the best I've ever read on the subject. The description of the actual sinking is truly unique in a spell-binding way and some things mentioned in other books (passengers' reactions and subsequent behavior, etc.) are more fully explored in this one. Has to rank up there with ''A Night to Remember.''

if you liked "A Night to Remember," you'll love this, March 26, 2002
Reviewer: Karen Hudson "Karen Sampson Hudson" (Reno, NV United States)
See the movie, but read this book. The movie fails to satisfy in the way "Unsinkable" will, as Butler provides us with a richly complete story of a tragedy that still grips the imagination. Walter Lord's "A Night to Remember" set the standard for non-fiction Titanic accounts; Butler refreshes the tale and provides us with even more details, and more information about the role of the Californian.

Since 9-11 it has been fashionable to say that "the world is changed forever." The sinking of the Titanic also signified the end of an era, not just Edwardian times but the end of the rigidly stratified class structure with its built-in inequities. Also, the hubris of technology suffered a blow; we were never so innocent again as to place our belief in "unsinkable" ships, or the infallibility of any work of man.

The human story, and the failure of the "state-of-the-art" ship building, are both skillfully depicted in "Unsinkable". Kudoes to the author. This book deserves a wide audience.