Doomed Ships: Great Ocean Liner Disasters

by William H. Miller Jr.

Book Overview

These true-life adventures unfold amid flames, collisions, and explosions, with frantic calls of SOS and a rush to clamber aboard the lifeboats. Naval historian William H. Miller, Jr., recounts the dramatic stories behind a host of ill-fated passenger ships. He takes readers beyond the newspaper headlines and formal inquiries, offering firsthand accounts of heroic rescues, daring escapes, and tragic losses.
Starting with the torpedoing of the Lusitania...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486453669
• ISBN13: 9780486453668
• Release Date: November 2006
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.9" x 11.7"

Customer Reviews

Good for a Maritime Collector

I collect maritime books primarily ships that have ended in diaster. This was a good addition. The photos were really good. I always like a brief history about its beginning till it's end. Good book to add if you collect like I do.

Doomed Ships: Great Ocean Liner Diasters**eerie**

This is a Eerie book with Black and white pictures on "Doomed ships" not all are horrible endings. Some famous, some are not, no cargo ship(container) are included. Good book.

An excellent photographic record of the fates of some really great ships.

In a book in which the legendary Titanic gets only a passing mention, this work seeks to explain with a minimum of detail how some of the greatest ever passenger liners were lost. Laid out in date order, we commence with the Lusitania in 1915 and progress almost year by year through some of the worst maritime tragedies of all time. They really are all here, the Andrea Doria, Rex, Oceanos and Achille Lauro (to name but four). Each is afforded at least one photograph of excellent quality and a brief narrative which takes the reader through the life of the ship, her different names and, of course her fate before concluding with the details of her original build. Many of the ships in this book have been the subject of my research for some years but many of the photographs used are quite new to me. Such is the quality of the pictures used. NM

Beyond The "Titanic"

Noted nautical author Bill Miller has written a new and very fascinating book on doomed ocean liners. Quite wisely he elected to skip the "Titanic" tragedy as it has been so well covered in many other books. He elected to start the book with the sinking of the "Lusitania" on May 7, 1915, by a German submarine, the "U-20." It ends with the capsizing of the "Oriana" at her berth in China during a typhoon in March 2004. Between these two bookends, there are many liner tragedies summarized, including the famous like the "Morro Castle," "Normandie," "Bremen," "Rex," and "Andrea Doria" as well as ships virtually unknown except for those personally involved in the accident in question, such as the "Alcoa Corsair," "Viceroy of India," "Empire Windrush," and "Klipfontein." The book provides a brief operational history of each ship as well as the vital statistics of each vessel. The accidents are examined in varying degrees of detail: after all there are no commonly available accounts of accidents like the fire that ravaged the "Skaubryn" in the Indian Ocean during 1958 (especially given that all passengers and crew were rescued). This points to a great strength of the book: less well-known accidents are presented here alongside famous disasters, and the lessons learned from all are valuable and interesting regardless of your exact motivation for reading the book. As an aside, I didn't keep track, but an inordinate number of losses occurred due to fire (and water from firefighting). This was especially the case among French built liners, an observation not overlooked by the author. Overall this is an excellent effort. It accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. It is not encyclopedic, nor does it claim to be, but it is an interesting book on a difficult subject to cover well.