Brown, Alexander Crosby. Women and Children Last. The Loss of the Steamship Arctic. 1st printing. New York: Putnam’s Sons. 1961. hardcover. isbn: none. scarcity: hard to find.

Brown is the great-grandson of James Brown, who was president of the Collins Line at the time of the disaster. The author’s book was the first to be written about the loss of the Arctic, and his access to private family archives put him in a unique position to document this event. Although the author’s writing style is informative, it is somewhat sterile in a just-the-facts sort of way. This is not a major flaw, and his contribution in resurrecting the details of the tragedy more than makes up for any lack of dynamic flair.

The first chapter opens with the launch of the new steamship, then goes on to discuss the background history of the Collins Line. This was a company outspending its resources and there was a constant running battle to keep the U.S. government funding flowing into the line’s coffers. Some of the important vessels the line built prior to Arctic are introduced, putting her in perspective with what else was plying the waves at that time. This chapter also discusses the intense rivalries and competition that existed between the Collins Line and other shipping companies, a critical element in understanding the events that are to follow.

Chapter two is a brief, but thorough description of the Arctic herself. Her specifications in length and width, her hull design, engine technology, speed, and luxurious passenger accommodations.

Starting with the third chapter, we get into Arctic’s fateful westbound voyage in September, 1854, the trip that was to end so tragically. We are introduced to many of the crew and passengers aboard, including many of Collins’ immediate family members, as well as the captain’s own son. It covers the voyage up until the moment of collision.

Chapter four introduces the other vessel in this drama, the French steamer Vesta. We get the statistics and some background on that ship. This chapter finishes with a description of the actual collision, and the immediate results. The Arctic’s Captain Luce was at first more concerned with the other vessel’s fate until he realized that it was Arctic herself that was in the most serious trouble.

Chapters five through seven cover the tragedy as it played out aboard the sinking liner’s decks. All the terrible events that followed are included in grim detail as the crew ran amok and saved their own lives at the expense of the passengers, despite Luce’s every effort to get the situation back under control.

Chapters eight through eleven explain how the various survivors were eventually rescued, including Captain Luce. Chapters twelve through fifteen cover the aftermath, including public reaction to the disaster as well as the attitude taken by various news outlets and important journals like Scientific American.

The final chapter explains the post-tragedy story of the Collins Line, which survived the Arctic disaster, but with ever worsening financial difficulties. The fatal blow to the company though was the loss of Arctic’s sister ship, the Pacific in 1856. She left port in January of that year and disappeared without a trace. She was never heard from again.

This chapter also wraps up the story of the Vesta, both after the disaster as well as her later years at sea. The careers of Arctic’s surviving sister ships, Atlantic, Adriatic and Baltic are also covered. Finally, the lives and final days of Edward Collins, Captain Luce, and some of the other prominent survivors is explained in some detail.

There is extensive material supplementing the text, including 16 plates, a map of the Grand Banks and the approach to New York, a passenger list and a crew list, a fascinating nine page account of the author’s sources, and an anonymous poem penned about the tragedy first written in 1854. There is a complete index as well.

Shaw, David W. The Sea Shall Embrace Them. The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic. 1st printing. New York: The Free Press, Simon & Schuster. May, 2002. hardcover. isbn: 0743222172. scarcity: common.

David Shaw has done a masterful job of bringing the story of the Arctic to a modern audience, not only in retelling the story more effectively than Brown did in the 1960’s, but in expanding the amount of material covered as well. Brown pretty much focused his entire book on the disaster itself. But Shaw adds valuable new information that Brown did not cover. Of particular importance is the expanded overview of how the rivalries between the liner companies drove the shipping industry during this time in history.

Shaw opens the book with a chapter on Luce’s days captaining the Red Star sailing packet Constellation. Luce was a successful mariner who had spent his entire career in the sailing ships. Luce is introduced to us as a stern but fair master who championed against the unnecessarily brutal discipline found in many American sailing ships at that time.

Despite his expertise in sail, he saw that the future was going to be in steam. His promotion to the captain of one of Collin’s new paddle wheelers was a remarkable achievement, beating out a host of applicants with equal credentials.

The next several chapters cover the maiden voyage and early years of steaming on the Arctic, a time of great pressure on her captain to maintain a schedule and achieve the fastest crossings that could humanly be achieved. Luce rose to the challenge and was admired by his superiors and passengers alike.

Then came the September 1854 voyage that was to change everything. Racing home from the Old World to the New, the Arctic was plunging full steam through heavy fog. Aboard were over 400 people comprising passengers and crew. Included in the passenger list was Mary Ann Collins, the wife of the owner of the company. The Collins’ daughter and son were also aboard as was the wife and children of James Brown, the President of the company’s family. Finally Captain Luce’s young invalid son, Willie, was also traveling with his father for the first time.

All proceeded smoothly until the Arctic reached the heavy trafficked areas near the Grand Banks. Suddenly from out of the fog came the propeller driven sailing ship, the Vesta. There was a practically head on collision and the Vesta’s bow was crushed and broken away. At first, Luce’s main concern was for the other vessel, as she was seriously crippled. He even sent his first mate with one of the Arctic’s few lifeboats to go to the aid of the other ship.

But it quickly became apparent, that the real danger was to the Arctic. Vesta had smashed several large holes in the Arctic’s bow and the ocean was flooding in. Astonishing as it is to believe, Arctic had no watertight bulkheads; the entire ship was open from stem to stern. Once he realized the danger, Luce was forced to abandon his first mate and make a run for shallow waters, hoping to ground the ship before the flooding reached the boilers. But it was a futile effort and before long, as the ship sank lower and lower, water reached and quenched the fires. Now there was not only no power for the engines, but no power for the pumps either.

All that was left was to abandon ship, and here the story turns the darkest. Unlike their British counterparts aboard Titanic who so bravely attempted to rescue as many of the women and children as possible, the American sailors of Arctic ran completely amok. Despite Captain Luce’s continuing efforts to restore order and focus on saving the passengers, he was thwarted at every turn by desertion and mutiny. As a result almost the entire compliment of passengers was left to sink with the ship, as was Luce. In the end there were just 86 survivors, and only 22 of them were passengers. Not one of the women or children were saved.

Shaw tells the story in a historical narrative style format. It is a particularly dramatic form, at times even including what people said and what they felt. The author claims to have made up nothing, only retelling what was actually stated in the documents of the time. The result is a powerful book, riveting in description and detail.

Unfortunately, there was no formal investigation into the loss of the Arctic, a critical blow to the authenticity of the evidence given by survivors. Instead the author was dependent on the newspaper reports of the time, making all testimony second hand at best.

The disaster made front page news in the American and British papers for a month, so there was apparently an abundance of material. Shaw tried to corroborate events by finding more than one source for as many of the details as he could. He gives credit to the news organizations as he found that most accounts did agree with each other, at least in the broader details.

Still, if you have read a lot about the Titanic disaster, you know how random the accuracy of newspaper reports could be. A great deal of material that made it into the papers about the Titanic was so completely wrong that either the survivors were delusional, or the reporters were spicing up their articles to make them more sensational. Unless the reporters of the 1850’s were an entirely different breed, I expect that there were similar examples of reporter misconduct in the Arctic news accounts.

Given this impediment, the author has probably come up with as reasonably accurate an account of events as can ever be determined. I can without reservation recommend this book to anyone interested in maritime disasters.

The book winds up with an Author’s Note explaining his approach to the text. The 1854 poem first made available in Brown's book is again repeated here. There is also a glossary of nautical terms, a two page bibliography and an index.

With thanks to Mike Poirer for bringing this book to my attention.