New Revelations of Titanic Passengers

Centenaries are often just a dusting off and reassessment of faded historical memory. But 100 years after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, it is remarkable to contemplate how little the ship has drifted from public consciousness. Schoolchildren the world over still recognize the luxury liner's name thanks to a century's worth of books, articles, films and deep-ocean exploration. The interrupted stories of those who died on its voyage, however, and the troubled post-disaster lives of those who survived, are less well known. Two new books attempt to fill that void. Yet like the crew members who ushered the wealthy into the lifeboats first, these narratives favor first class over steerage.

The Canadian Hugh Brewster joined the committed ranks of Titanic-philes in the mid-1980s, when he spent a year creating a book from images and data of Robert Ballard's discovery of the wreck. In Brewster's new book, “Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage,” he revisits the ill-fated trans-­Atlantic crossing as experienced by the “rare gathering” of famous and affluent among the approximately 1,500 who died and the 705 who survived.

Brewster's nuanced account introduces us to a plutocracy frolicking in the sunset of England's Edwardian era and Ameri­ca's Gilded Age. He pushes past stereotypes to vividly describe the elite realm on deck, a place where the American politico Archie Butt, a right-hand man to Presidents Roosevelt and Taft, might have shared pleasantries with Capt. Edward J. Smith or chatted with John Jacob Astor IV as he exercised his Airedale, Kitty. A bugler's call signaled passengers to rise from their gilt-edged loungers in the Turkish bath, or to put down their stogies in the opulent public room designed to emulate Versailles, and descend the grand staircase in white tie and splendid gowns for a lusty meal including “Oysters à la Russe,” “Chocolate Painted Éclairs” and, of course, Champagne (more than 22,000 bottles of wine, beer and spirits were onboard). The women would have had to go light on the 11-course meal, as most were still squeezed into corsets. The inconceivable distance between this twinkling reality and death in the dark, icy waters was but a few hours.