Sloper, W.T. (William Thomson). The Life and Times of Andrew Jackson Sloper, 1849-1933. 1st printing, SIGNED by the author. CT: by the author. 1949. hardcover. all copies signed by the author. isbn: none. scarcity: very scarce.

The memoirs of this successful businessman, collated and published by his son. Although ostensibly a biography of Andrew Jackson Sloper, much of the material is autobiographical about William himself. William was a survivor of the Titanic disaster; and the last chapter, 23 pages, details his experiences during the disaster and rescue by the Carpathia. Interestingly, although this chapter is based on an original 1912 New Britain Herald report, it was expanded and updated by Sloper sometime during the late 1940s. The chapter was a last minute addition, written just prior to the book being published.

It is unfortunate that the Titanic chapter is not very strong. Sloper tends to ramble; it takes him over six pages just to explain how he ended up on the ship in the first place! Once aboard, his narrative continues in a disjointed fashion from the voyage, to the wreck, to his time on the rescue ship. He doesn’t have a lot of insight to contribute to the story, as he was in the first lifeboat to leave on the starboard side of the ship. Another factor could be that it was written so long after the fact (although he claims to remember the event ‘as if it were 30 days ago’). There are also some curious mistakes. He claims that the Californian actually steamed past his lifeboat, for example!