Titanic Disaster. Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Commerce United States Senate
Washington, DC: Government Printing Office [for the] U.S. Senate, 1912. First Edition. Hardcover in custom clamshell case. Title continues: Sixty-Second Congress Second Session. Directing the Committee on Commerce to Investigate the Causes Leading to the Wreck of the White Star Liner "Titanic". Thick, large 8vo. With three folding maps. Bound in tan buckram with black rules and lettering on spine. Text clean, light soiling to cloth, spine slightly darkened. Rear hinge starting. Contemporary owner signature in pencil. Housed in a custom clamshell box of half-red morocco over red cloth, gilt lettering on spine. Very Good / Clamshell case Fine. Item #7159 The colossal meeting of hubris, poor navigation and exceptionally bad timing resulted in a disaster that reverberates ad infinitum. Books on the subject continue to pour forth, running perhaps fourth behind Jesus, Napoleon, and the Civil War as fodder for speculation, fresh insight and metaphorical discourse. This report, with dramatic first-person accounts, remains a foundational text. Scarce.
"They said, 'nothing serious is the matter' ... I did not realize it, the whole time, even to the last moment ... I would never believe such a thing could happen." The US Senate investigation convened over 18 days, with 86 witnesses informing the record at-hand. Among them, Bruce Ismay, the Managing Director of the White Star Line; Second Officer Charles Lightoller (who figures prominently in the Walter Lord bestseller A Night to Remember), Guglielmo Marconi, inventor and electrical engineer, whose name was synonymous with radio wave-based wireless system telegraphy, and whose company provided wireless service for both the Titanic and the Carpathia, the ship that responded to the Titanic's distress signal, and Captain Arthur Rostron of the Carpathia, among many surviving passengers and crew.
Price: $8,000.00