The Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic

Very detailed. Almost too much of blood and guts. Had nightmares of what happened to these people. But I'm drawn to these books.

This book was a gift for my daughter. She reported back that she enjoyed it.

Interesting and informative. I enjoyed the book but it was not altogether what I expected. Took way too long to get into the "story" for me.

Not since Oedipus had Nemesis had it in for a traveler the way she did for Capt. James Luce, skipper of the American packet steamship Arctic, the biggest and fastest liner on the Liverpool-New York run in 1854.David Shaw, a yachtsman with a deft way of describing being at sea, devotes half of "The Sea Shall Embrace Them" to setting the stage for the calamity. The Americans had invented the idea of regular transAtlantic sailings (the famous Black Ball Line) in all weathers, one of the masterstrokes of business innovation of all time, but the British, thanks to subsidies, were taking over when the steam era got going.It was a matter of national prestige to go ahead, but even with gigantic subsidies the Collins liners were money losers. Unlike the cautious Samuel Cunard, Edward Knight Collins insisted on speed above all.It was a foregone conclusion that a Collins liner would go down, but a particularly wicked trick of Nemesis to pick a voyage on which Luce had brought his disabled son, and most of Collins' family were aboard.Shaw, using the month-long orgy of stories printed by the New York newspapers, gives as much tragedy as any reader could want, but the real interest in the book goes beyond the deaths of 400 people -- there were plenty of other maritime disasters of the era that killed as many. The loss of the Arctic won its notoriety because not a woman nor a child survived, and (except for 22 men), all who did were members of the crew.Public opinion was aghast, since landlubbers had some idea that the tradition of the sea was "women and children first." Shaw does not examine this too deeply, mostly just citing a decision of a federal district court in Philadelphia a few years earlier. This, however, was merely dicta; there was no statute requiring the crew to sacrifice their lives in favor of the passengers.Nor was there any ancient tradition. The idea of saving anybody was a Victorian innovation. Before then, ships did not carry lifeboats, and when they went down, everyone from admiral to drummer boy was likely to drown. Arctic carried a few lifeboats, as required by a novel law (which Shaw would have done well to include the history of but didn't), but not nearly enough for everyone aboard.Arctic used both sail and steam and had two crews, which didn't have much to do with each other. They were the best paid sailors in the world, earning $12 a month -- less in a year than the cost of a passage in first class. Collins' captains were paid much more than British skippers.The idea, much preached lately, that paying more gets better results didn't work out any better in 1854 than it did in 2008. Both the "sailing division" and the black gang abandoned ship, and used force to keep the women and children off the lifeboats. The upper class passengers assumed they would get the lifeboat seats, but the sailors asked, reasonably enough, why their own lives weren't as valuable as the lives of the 400 (a phrase not then in use).Shaw sides with the passengers, as did public opinion at the time.It does not make much sense, particularly in light of what happened in later years.Collins could have put more lifeboats aboard. It would have left less money for his daughters to buy fine clothes and European vacations. Afterward, the fine clothes, which dragged the women down into the ocean, seemed not such a good spending choice.Collins could have let his captains sail slower in the fog. He could have installed steam whistles and ordered his captains to use them.Luce, who is portrayed by Shaw as an especially sympathetic character, was -- compared to most -- a humane commander, and (except for not sounding a fog warning) made the correct decision in every crisis, the ones that any other first-rate captain would have made. Time after time, the correct decision worked out catastrophically, especially the decision to abandon the ship Arctic struck to its fate in a race to reach shore on Newfoundland before Arctic foundered.Luce did not know it, but the ship he had struck had watertight compartments -- Arctic did not -- and it and most of its crew and passengers survived. (The passengers, also unknown to Luce, were tough French codfishermen, and they provided the muscle that allowed damage control to save their ship.)Luce spent the rest of his life lobbying for maritime safety, including such obvious steps as sufficient lifeboats, crew drills for abandoning ship and cautious operations in foul weather.Travelers did not care. They cared, Shaw says, for nothing but fast crossings, and when Titanic went down 58 years later, there weren't enough lifeboats, although the crew did stand back and let the passengers have the few that were available.Titanic was not a Cunarder.

This book is evocative of the sorrow and loss at sea of which Walt Whitman wrote so emotionally. In contrast to Whitman's poem however, here the vessel - the steamship Arctic - did not make it to port, and rather than a son mourning for his lost father it was the other way around. The Captain of the Arctic, James C Luce, was grief-struck as he helplessly watched his son and the vast majority of the passengers drown in the frigid north Atlantic some fifty miles off Cape Race, Newfoundland.The story has its origins in competition between the UK and the US. In 1840 Britisher Samuel Cunard inaugurated steamship service on his Royal Mail Steamship Line (the Cunard Line). In 1848 he brought the competition to the US by making New York his base for transatlantic crossings. By now Cunard was operating a fleet of ten ships that provided a regular schedule of steamship service between Liverpool and New York. Cunard had also raised the ire of US officialdom. Shaw quotes a US Senator as saying "America will soon become tired of being informed now of British maritime supremacy." Shaw says the response was "a new breed of steamships, stamped with American ingenuity and backed with the might of the US Treasury [whose] sole purpose was to 'cast this man Cunard from the sea'". Three such steamships built for this purpose were the Atlantic, Pacific, and the Arctic. They belonged to the United States Mail Steamship Company or the Collins Line as it was more popularly known - named after its owner Edward Knight Collins. Collins we are told was a man bent on "maintaining schedule and setting records whenever possible." The Arctic was a 3,000 ton, wooden paddle-steamer and was the largest, most luxurious, and fastest of the line. She set a record in 1852 making the New York to Liverpool crossing in ten days.The fateful voyage of the Arctic took place in September 1854. In command was Captain James C Luce. There were over 400 aboard with more than 300 being passengers; the rest comprised the "black gang" (as the stokers for the boilers were called) and the ship's officers. Among the passengers was Luce's son and E.K Collins' wife Mary and two of their children. Everything was routine as the Arctic set off from Liverpool but she shortly ran into a rolling fog bank. Luce maintained his course and speed of thirteen knots, but unknown to him, a French steamer called the Vesta had also entered the fog. The Vesta was a much smaller ship at 250 tons but she had iron cladding and when the two collided bow on, the larger wooden Arctic came off much the worse. This wasn't immediately apparent and Luce, fearing he had crippled and sunk the smaller ship, lowered one of his lifeboats as rescue. What was supposedly a mission of mercy to another ship soon became a desperate attempt to save his own as Luce soon discovered that the Arctic had been pierced in three places and the ship was taking on heavy water through a five-foot gaping hole.Shaw's description of the ensuing events is where the book is at its compelling best and we are caught up in it. As the reality that soon THE SEA SHALL EMBRACE THEM all sank in, the best and worst of humanity emerged. Cowardice and bravery were on display, more of the former than the latter. Captain Luce ordered full speed ahead, but while she was still some twenty miles offshore with land tormentingly just in sight, the ships paddles stopped as the engines flooded. The Arctic quickly began foundering and Luce gave the order to abandon ship with women and children to be put in the boats first. There were not enough boats for all those remaining and the stokers were not inclined to wait while a raft was hastily built. They mutinied and brushed passengers aside and stormed the lifeboats. One brave officer pulled his pistol but before he could restore order a stoker bashed his head in with a vicious hit from a shovel.Forty-five persons made it into the raft before the Arctic sank and all told only 85 were eventually rescued. Captain Luce lived but was witness to what he described as "a most awful and heart rendering scene" as "men, women, and children were struggling together amidst the pieces of the wreck of every kind calling on each other for help, and imploring God to assist theem." Neither Luce's son, nor Collins' wife, only daughter, and youngest son were rescued. Tragically there was not one woman or child among those saved.What became of the survivors? The Vesta made it to port with minor loss of life. As is usually the case with such tragedies, where blame can not be properly ascribed, it falls on the Captain. Luce received a minor official reprimand and gave up the sea for a job ashore in maritime insurance. Of much greater pain would be the personal anguish of losing his son and the accusatory words of E.K. Collins ringing in his ears. The ships owner said Luce "had practically murdered his family".If you like sea stories, naval history and geography, with a little bit of 18th century US and British industrial and shipping history thrown in then you'll thoroughly enjoy this well written and thrilling tale of a little known maritime tragedy.

The author really did his homework. A FULL description of the staterooms/stewards lifestyles on board, would have been interesting - + the 'backlash' public reaction wise, from the disaster/reports of the crew involved; and the Public's response ...... But a WELL WRITTEN book!