Ghosts of the Titanic

Pellegrino's sequel to his 1996 bestseller, Her Name, Titanic, is a tour de force incorporating new information about the shipwreck and the nightmarish human dramas of survivors, reconstructed from letters, diaries and oral histories. An oceanographer, paleontologist and space scientist, Pellegrino draws on his 1996 deep-sea expedition to the Titanic as well as other marine scientists' recent research. Contrary to the popular notion that the ship succumbed to a gigantic gash after it hit an iceberg, he shows that the Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912, was felled by a series of ice stabs and bullet-hole-like punctures adding up to just 12 square feet of openings through which tons of water poured. The Titanic's Grand Stairway, all five stories of it, probably broke free and floated out of the disintegrating ship, he concludes. According to survivors' testimony, the accident occurred because the ship was traveling at a reckless speed: its owners decided to arrive in New York a day early as a publicity coup, and this meant lighting extra boilers, which led to an out-of-control bunker fire. The ship didn't simply run up against a lone icebergDit encountered a field of icebergs over 10 miles wide. By correlating eyewitness accounts, Pellegrino establishes that many shootings did occur on the ship, as crew and officers armed with guns prevented third- and fourth-class passengers from boarding the lifeboats. His fresh re-creation of the Titanic's final hours provides an eerie and astonishing adventure, a time capsule gracefully wrapped in elegant prose, deserving a place alongside Walter Lord's classic A Night to Remember. (July)