Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A colourful and deadly history of ocean liner disasters from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Disaster at Sea is a chronicle of the most frightening episodes in the maritime history of the North Atlantic. From 1850 to the present day, the Atlantic has been home to hundreds of ocean liners and cruise ships, each more lavish than the last...all of them symbols of wealth and luxury. Perhaps this is why readers have always been fascinated by the lives of these ships ?and their deaths. Many of us know the stories of the Titanic and the Lusitania. Both tragedies caused tremendous loss of life, even as they made the ships immortal. But there are many little-known accounts of extraordinary survivals at sea, such as the Inman and International liner City of Chicago that jammed her bow into an Irish peninsula in 1892 but stayed afloat long enough for all to be rescued, or the City of Richmond that survived a dangerous fire in 1891, and a year earlier the City of Paris, whose starboard engine exploded at full speed in the mid-Atlantic and yet miraculously still made port. Often such tales are forgotten even if the ship sank: In 1898 the Holland-America liner Veendam hit a submerged wreck and sank at sea, but all lives were saved ?so this vessel's dramatic story seemed less important in maritime history than incidents involving human loss. As recently as 2000, the Sea Breeze I sank off the East Coast of the United States while on a positioning voyage, but all her crew members were rescued in a heroic effort by U.S. Coast Guard helicopters. These stories and many others are dramatic, and acclaimed maritime scholar William Flayhart has spent much of the last forty years in search of material from which to create colorful narratives. Author of The American Line: 1871?902 and coauthor of Majesty at Sea and the first edition of QE2, Flayhart retells classic ocean liner disaster stories while bringing to light never-before-published but compelling episodes in man's ongoing battle with the sea. 26 illustrations. Originally published in hardcover under the title Perils of the Atlantic.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. 11)
• Chapter 1 Disaster at Sea: Shipwrecks, Storms and Collisions on the Atlantic (p. 17)
• Chapter 2 The Wreck of the Arctic, September 27, 1854 (p. 19)
• Chapter 3 A Hostile Shore, Stormy Weather, and Inattentive Lookouts Make for a Deadly Combination: The White Star Liner Atlantic Fails to Make Halifax, April 1, 1873 (p. 39)
• Chapter 4 The Ville du Havre and the Loch Earn: The Sudden Loss of the Second-Largest Ship in the World, November 22, 1873 (p. 56)
• Chapter 5 The SS Pennsylvania of the American Line and the Great Hurricane of 1874, February 23, 1874 (p. 69)
• Chapter 6 Grounding of the Steamship Rusland of the Red Star Line off Long Branch, New Jersey, March 17, 1877 (p. 79)
• Chapter 7 The Graceful City of Brussels and the Deadly Fog of the Irish Sea, January 7, 1883 (p. 92)
• Chapter 8 The Loss of the Cunard Liner Oregon, March 14, 1886 (p. 100)
• Chapter 9 An Inconceivable Horror: Two White Star Liners Crash off New York-The Collision of the Celtic and the Britannic, May 19, 1887 (p. 118)
• Chapter 10 An Atlantic Disaster Narrowly Missed: The Explosion of the Engines on the City of Paris, March 25, 1890 (p. 126)
• Chapter 11 Fire at Sea on the City of Richmond, June 1891 (p. 146)
• Chapter 12 The City of Chicago and the Old Head of Kinsale, July 1, 1892 (p. 155)
• Chapter 13 Ocean Racing Can Be Hazardous!: The St. Paul and the Campania Experience Near Disaster, January 25, 1896 (p. 164)
• Chapter 14 The Loss of Holland America's Gallant Veendam to Causes beyond Comprehension, February 6-8, 1898 (p. 185)
• Chapter 15 A Sinking Tanker in Heavy Weather Can Be a Tricky Thing: The Vindobala, December 1898 (p. 196)
• Chapter 16 The Wireless Brings Aid for the First Time: The Republic and the Florida in Collision, January 23, 1909 (p. 204)
• Chapter 17 The Ultimate Catastrophe: The Largest Ship in the World, the SS Titanic, Strikes an Iceberg in the Middle of the North Atlantic, April 14-15, 1912 (p. 223)
• Chapter 18 Fog in the St. Lawrence Can Be Deadly: The Loss of the Empress of Ireland, May 29, 1914 (p. 255)
• Chapter 19 The Lusitania Meets an Untimely Fate, May 7, 1915 (p. 271)
• Chapter 20 Fire at Sea, a Dead Captain, and a Sociopathic Killer: The Morro Castle Disaster, September 8, 1934 (p. 290)
• Chapter 21 It Never Should Have Happened: The Collision of the Italian Andrea Doria and the Swedish Stockholm, July 26, 1956 (p. 308)
• Chapter 22 A Final Voyage Can Have More than One Ending: The SS Seabreeze I, December 18, 2000 (p. 329)
• Notes (p. 333)
• Bibliography (p. 353)
• Index (p. 365)