History, Natural History & the Arts
This week on The Historians Podcast Bryan Jackson discusses his new book Why the Titanic Was Doomed (White Owl, 2022).
White Star’s HMS Titanic, the most magnificent ocean liner of her time, was destined for disaster before she left the docks at Southampton in April 1912 according to Jackson – doomed by her owner, designers and the men who sailed her. [Read more…] about The Titanic Was Doomed: A New Book By Bryan Jackson
In 1780, a young man traveled from his provincial hometown in Baden-Württemberg to London to meet his elder brother who had settled there two years previously as a wooden instrument maker. The many small states that constituted Germany at the time had a reputation for developing and producing musical instruments. The export of technology was an important feature of German design and many craftsmen had migrated to London (and eventually to New York and other American cities).
The seedy location of his brother’s workshop must have come as a shock to the youngster and he was eager to better himself. Four years later he left the capital for the docks of Southampton, carrying few belongings and a number of flutes with him, and set sail for America. Half a century later he owned large parts of Manhattan.
This remarkable tale could have served as one of the “rags to riches” stories that made Horatio Alger such a popular author in America during the later decades of the nineteenth century. [Read more…] about The Astor Dynasty: Rag Street to Broadway, A Waldorf Tale of New York
Every spring Staatsburgh State Historic Site, which includes a Beaux-Arts mansion designed by McKim, Mead, and White and the home’s surrounding landscape in the Ogden Mills & Ruth Livingston Mills State Park in Dutchess County, NY, offers tours of the mansion commemorating the tragedy of the Titanic disaster.
This year, with the ongoing pandemic, the historic site has instead released some online content about the Titanic that can be accessed from home. [Read more…] about Annual Titanic Commemoration Goes Online
In the past 200 years, a few ships have borne the name Plattsburg. In the War of 1812, there was the unfinished vessel at Sackets Harbor, a project abandoned when the war ended.
There was the rechristened troop transport that hauled thousands of troops home from the battlefields of the First World War. There was the oil tanker that saw service in the Pacific theater during the Second World War, and there was the cruise boat that plied the waters of Lake Champlain in 2003–4. One of them played a role in the most famous maritime disaster of all time. [Read more…] about Plattsburgh’s Brush with HMS Titanic
In her new book for young adults, Titanic: Voices from the Disaster (Scholastic Press, 2012), Deborah Hopkinson, noted author of historical fiction and nonfiction for young readers, resurfaces a hundred-year-old tragedy through the stories and voices of those who survived the sinking of the RMS Titanic in April 1912.
Voices from the Disaster includes letters and narrative accounts from Titanic’s passengers to prompt readers to think of those whose journey ended along with what Hopkinson calls “a masterpiece of human engineering:” [Read more…] about A New Titanic Book for Young Readers