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Titanic: Freak Accident or Farce? (Hardback)

Maritime > Titanic P&S History > By Century > 20th Century P&S History > Social History

By Andrew Norman
Imprint: Pen & Sword History
Pages: 224
Illustrations: 32 mono illustrations
ISBN: 9781036100162
Published: 31st August 2025

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There has been speculation over the loss of the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) Titanic ever since the tragic event of her sinking, which occurred during the night of Sunday 14 to Monday 15 April 1912. Could it have been the fault of her captain, Edward J. Smith?

Hitherto, no one has managed to explain the mindset of Titanic’s captain, Edward Smith, and thereby comprehend why, on a pitch-black night in April 1912, he drove his ship full tilt into an ice field, when he knew that there were icebergs present? Was the captain mentally ill? No, not in the sense of having one of the traditional major psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, psychosis, bipolar disorder, etcetera, because this would have manifested itself earlier on in his lifetime. Captain Smith was aged 62 at the time of the disaster. Was he suffering from dementia? There is no evidence that this was the case.

In fact, Captain Smith’s state of mind provides a classic example of what was described by the ancient Greeks more than 2,000 years ago, As the reader will shortly discover!

This book contains hitherto unpublished photographs, for example of Laura May Cribb, from the author's hometown of Poole in Dorset, who survived the sinking, and of her father John Hatfield Cribb, who perished.

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 Andrew Norman

About Andrew Norman

Andrew Norman was born in Newbury, Berkshire, UK in 1943. He was educated in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Midsomer Norton Grammar School, Somerset, UK, and St Edmund Hall, Oxford.
Andrew worked as a general practitioner in Poole, Dorset, before a spinal injury cut short his medical career. He is now an established writer with biographies of Charles Darwin, Winston Churchill, Thomas Hardy, T. E. Lawrence, Adolf Hitler, Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, Beatrix Potter, Marilyn Monroe, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to his name.

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