Final Voyage: the world’s worst maritime disasters

Final Voyage: the world’s worst maritime disasters by Honathan Eyers

published in 2013 191 pages.

Somehow the Titanic disaster has struck a chord in our public imagination.

The loss of 1,517 people in the middle of a cold dark night on a ship that was the peak of the ship builder’s art at that time, leaves us shaken to this day.

Yet this loss was not the worst. This book lists 39 other wrecks that stagger the imagination. Some of the wrecks were from times past, and some are quite recent.

For example, the Sultana was a riverboat taking Union soldiers home after release from Confederate prisoner of war camps. When the Sultana left Vickberg on the night of April 24^th 1865, she left dock with over 2,400 people on a boat built to hold 376. On the night of April 27^th around 2am three of the four boilers exploded causing the deaths of an estimated 1,600.
We know little about the Sultana because the news of the greatest maritime disaster in American history was eclipsed in the newspapers by the assassination of President Lincoln.

I found this book to be well written and interesting to read.