The Titanic Fleet

On the night of 14-15 April 1912 RMS Titanic sank with the loss of around 1500 people after hitting an iceberg. The ship was on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic to New York and it was the worlds worst shipping disaster at that time. The dramatic events surrounding the tragedy have captured the worlds imagination ever since and yet the story covers many more ships than just Titanic itself from sister ships and tenders bringing out the passengers and mail, to ice patrol vessels, the rescue ships that raced to the scene when disaster struck and those who arrived later and picked up the bodies. Controversy surrounded some ships such as Californian immediately after the disaster, Carpathia and Mesaba later ended up on the seabed themselves, the liner Asturias not only had passengers going overboard but a suicide that could have turned into a murder, others such as Mackay-Bennett and Britannic featured in later documentaries, but all these ships had their own fascinating careers, some serving their country as well as their owners, transporting or evacuating troops in wartime, experiencing collisions and being torpedoed by U-boat and all sailed in an era when todays safety rules and sophisticated chart data fed by a global positioning system did not exist. In The Titanic Fleet: The Ships Involved in the Titanic Disaster maritime author Richard M. Jones reveals the stories behind the ships involved in the Titanic disaster. The career of each vessel is told from start to finish, including its eventual fate and how it links into the Titanic story. Illustrated throughout, it will appeal to all those with an interest in the Titanic as well as those interested in maritime history.