The Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic
by David W. Shaw
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Book Summary Information
Author: David W. ShawEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-04-29
ISBN: 0743235037
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Free Press
Book Reviews of The Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic
Book Review: Quick, easy read - good info on mid 19th century at sea
Summary: 4 Stars
Bought the book to learn more about immigration in the 1850s. My great great grandfather brought his family from Germany to USA in 1853 on the USM Atlantic, a sister ship of the Arctic.
Enjoyed this book very much!
Summary of The Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic
The 1854 collision at sea between the American ship Arctic and the Vesta, a much smaller French steamship, set in motion one of the most harrowing events in maritime history. David W. Shaw has based this fascinating account on the firsthand testimony of the few who survived the wreck, including the Arctic's heroic captain, James C. Luce, who was forced to fight his mutinous crew as they took the lifeboats and left hundreds of passengers to suffer a cruel and painful death. Not only did 400 people -- including Luce's own frail son -- die by daybreak, but the wreck also ended the domination of the seas by the American maritime fleet for the rest of the nineteenth century.Utterly compelling, The Sea Shall Embrace Them is a stirring slice of heretofore little-known American history. Beautifully written, it puts the reader on deck as a ship full of men, women, and children do battle both with a mighty ocean and with their own baser instincts.
By the mid-19th century, steamships were eclipsing traditional sailing ships in the lucrative transatlantic trade. The largest of these, the American Arctic, collided with a smaller vessel in 1854 with a frightful, and unnecessary, loss of life. David W. Shaw's The Sea Shall Embrace Them tells the story of this disaster, eerily similar in many ways to the later sinking of the Titanic. Shaw lays out the immediate and secondary causes of the disaster: bad weather, no established shipping lanes, the ship's owners' preference for speed rather than prudence, and an appalling lack of safety precautions. As well, he describes the suffering and grotesque deaths of many aboard and dozens of acts of pure cowardice on the part of the crew. The writing for the most part is vivid and effective, though the physical layout of the ship is somewhat murky. The story of the Arctic is not only sad and the tragedy avoidable, but one that, as Shaw points out, would be repeated many times in the decades to follow. --H. O'Billovitch
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