Bonsall, Thomas. Titanic. The Story of the Great White Star Line Trio: the Olympic, the Titanic and the Britannic. NY: Gallery. 1987. hardcover. isbn: 0831787740. scarcity: common.

Bonsall’s aim in this book is to tell the story of not only Titanic, but her sister ships Olympic & Britannic as well. Considering the brevity of the book, a mere 64 pages, the author does a decent job of hitting on the highlights of the histories of the three ships. This book would be of most use to someone fairly new to the Titanic story, and for those who are unfamiliar with Titanic’s less well known sister ships.

The text is, for the most part, accurate, though I did have some quibbles with some of the author’s overly dramatic language. His calling the collision between the Olympic and the warship Hawke a ‘disaster’ is one example. This was a major accident to be sure, but no lives were lost, and neither ship was ever in danger of sinking. ‘Incident’ would be a more accurate, if less sensational, word to describe the event.

There is also a most bizarre alternate theory about the breakup of the Titanic. The author proposes a theory that the ship broke apart when it hit the ocean floor, rather than at or near the surface. This is a most peculiar argument considering that the bow and stern sections are separated from each other on the ocean bottom by a distance of almost a half of a mile (1,970 feet according to Dr. Ballard). I cannot imagine how the two sections could end up so far apart from each other if the ship had hit the bottom still in one piece.