“Sinkable: Obsession, the Deep Sea, and the Shipwreck of the Titanic”, by Daniel Stone

 

336 pages, Dutton, ISBN-13: 978-0593329375

Daniel Stone says in the Introduction to Sinkable: Obsession, the Deep Sea, and the Shipwreck of the Titanic that his book is “not…‘another book about the Titanic’. This is a look at our oceans and the junk we’ve left in them. It is a yarn about the oddballs and misfits who devote their lives to wayward ships. And it is a deep dive into the waters of our planet and what lurks, in every sense, just below the surface”. Except that his publisher, Dutton, didn’t read that bit, for Sinkable is unquestionably marketed as “another book about the Titanic”, although to be fair to Stone it is, just as he says, much more than that (but the HMS Titanic – and all of those who obsess about her – takes a staring role, make no mistake).

I have read a few books on the Titanic in my time, starting with A Night to Remember, Walter Lord’s account of the sinking, as well as books by Robert Ballard and his rediscovery of The Most Famous Shipwreck. But Stone is true to his introductory word as he has written a well-researched and written account of nautical history, the law of the sea, what the sea can and has done to man, what draws people to the sea and what lies below, interspersed with a plethora of characters straight out of a novel. Through it all HMS Titanic remains, if not in the spotlight, then at least waiting off stage for its solo, for while Stone’s book covers a lot of topics, the hook that draws your average reader in is the Ship of Dreams, as it has done for over a century.

The biggest flaw in the book is that Stone spends, in my estimation, an inordinate amount of time on various schemes to resurface and refloat the Titanic, all of which he (and we) knows to be pipedreams considering the condition of the wreck. Or the shine he takes to one Douglas Woolley, a deluded man who convinced himself and others that he owns the Titanic and has spent his life trying to convince others to raise and restore “his” ship. According to Stone, “[y]ou can label his life as a case study in naiveté, fantasy, fiction, and delusion. Or you could simply call him a dreamer, the kind we need more of” – OR, you can recognize a crank when you see one and give him the widest berth you can and get along in life.

But if you can get through all of the passages involving Woolley and his impossible quest, the other topics Sinkable covers – other than the ever-present Titanic, that is – include not only those mentioned above, but also marine salvage, underwater exploration, archaeology, the composition of the ocean, the effects of depth, pressure and salinity on wrecks and people, the recovery of other wrecks – including the SS Great Britain, the Soviet submarine K-129 and even the Space Shuttle Challenger – the law of the salvage and finds, the state of technology related to mapping and exploiting the oceans’ floors…and obsession with all or some of the same. A wide-ranging and in-depth look at the depths Man will go to in exploring the depths.