Seize the Trident | 
 enlarge | Author: Douglas R. Burgess
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $3.43
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 1067908
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 312
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0071430091
Dewey Decimal Number: 387.542094109041
EAN: 9780071430098
ASIN: 0071430091
Publication Date: April 22, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: NEVER USED AND NEAR MINT!! THIS BOOK IS NEW BUT MISSING THE DUSTCOVER SO IT IS RED AND YELLOW WITH ATTRACTIVE GOLD LETTERING!
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Product Description
Seize the Trident re-creates the Anglo-German race to build the biggest, fastest, most luxurious passenger ships in the world. Sparked in 1889 by the kaiser's declaration that he would "seize the trident" from English shipping firms, this friendly rivalry soon became a clash of fierce national pride, personal ego, and global ambitions, including those of wealthy robber barons such as J. P. Morgan. Douglas Burgess delivers a riveting account of the race's origins, how it both paralleled and influenced the naval rearmament of the same period, and the crowning irony of its outcome. In size and splendor, the Germans won hands-down, but German ships in U.S. ports were seized at the outbreak of World War I. Later, they would carry hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to fight against Germany. Seize the Trident is must reading for maritime enthusiasts, history buffs, and anyone impressed by the splendor of this bygone era.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 An excellent read on the subject... January 11, 2008
Granted, this isn't going to take the place of "The Sway of the Grand Saloon" or other ocean liner classics, but I found the book to be a very decent read. If I had to pick one particular "gripe" about the book, I think it pays a little too much time on J.P. Morgan, the man himself, but you can always skip ahead on that. The data on the ships themselves is quite good and I certainly recommend this one.
 Buyer Beware June 25, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Not recommended............. Instead of being a valuable source of the pre-1914 merchant rivalry on the North Atlantic, this book is riddled with so many prejudices and omissions and errors as to show the author to be either woefully careless or just plain ignorant. Cases in point:
PREJUDICES:
The author's pro-Cunard bias in Chapter 1 "The Gauntlet" is as amateurish as ill-informed. Cunard's initial modern liners were not so much the result of a resurgence after the staid founder's death as a brutal recognition that White Star and Inman were "eating Cunard's lunch" and the marketplace demanded better ships to survive. After all, even the author admits it was the White Star's Teutonic that set the Kaiser's ego on a Trans-Atlantic course.
In Chapter 7 "Titans" the author waxes socialistic with the cry of social injustice in the loss of Titanic. Must we always impose current values on the past? A reporting of the events is enough. While trying to embellish the facts, he only succeeds in weakening them, as noted below.
OMISSIONS:
The author omits any concept of the weekly service so vital to the regularity of the "Atlantic Ferry" and the declining number of ships necessary to maintain such service as speed and technology increased.
Also omitted are all but one reference of White Star's "Big Four," Celtic, Cedric, Baltic and Adriatic, each the largest ship in the world upon her completion.
In the meager photograph section there are no pictures of Imperator, Vaterland or Bismarck the culmination of the race for supremacy the book is about.
ERRORS:
Page 267
"The Cunard lion flew from the mainmast, just fifty or so feet back from the bows where the great bronze eagle had once perched." The mainmast is where the "house" flag flies but it is the second mast from the bow....... The mast "just fifty or so feet back from the bows" on Berengaria was the foremast that flies the flag of the nation of the next port of call.
Page 258
"From Germany's Kronprinz Wilhelm to its Vaterland, and from England's Oceanic to its Olympic, the liners that had once been prize entries in the race for Atlantic supremacy claimed the lion's share of troop-ferrying." First of all, Oceanic and Olympic were not English but Irish both being build in Belfast. The proper term to have used is British. Further Oceanic was a constructive total loss after running hard aground on the Shetland Island of Foula on 8 September 1914 and thus never carried troops in her WWI career.
Pages 145-146
"A single, appalling statistic tells the whole story: despite the oft-quoted doctrine of `women and children first,' a higher proportion of First Class men survived the disaster than Third Class children." The statistic is that more first class men were saved than third class children; no greater indictment can be made of the Titanic disaster than this but here again the author has muffed it.
Buy this book with full knowledge that while it reads well it is a woven text of half truths and sloppiness.
I guess someone didn't do their homework... August 1, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I read the book first before I read the reviews. It really was a quick and enjoyable read. But then when I come to look at what others have said, and find out that very major mistakes were made on the history in the book concerning the ships and even more important, on the history of the people which is usually much easier to find at that time period (the Victorians kept everything...I know, I've cleaned out a house from that period!), then I am disappointed that someone didn't bother to do a simple verification of facts, especially if the German material has been translated to English.
I liked the difference in looking at the immense industry that occurred from building those ships at that time period. The book also made it clear what a change in attitude there was in between the using of ships with sails for a couple of hundred years, where the expectation of safety was not high, let alone of comfort...to when enclosed ships made of steel from our local Pittsburgh magnates, well, the change is amazing. Even the steerage class had a much better chance of being safe in a floating hotel, then they ever had on other ships. I've read a lot on the Titanic and some on military battleships, and I've always wondered why the disaster on the Titanic didn't give more qualms to the many who used steerage to come to the US. I guess the need for jobs and land and freedom, was worth the chance of death (and we obviously still don't understand this and why people come North for the very same reasons even at high risk...but that's another argument for a different medium).
The book's author is a good writer. But he should have done his fact checking on both the ships, the view from the German sides, and the facts concerning the men involved whether the Kaiser or the British royalty. Like another reviewer said, that's just sloppy work.
Karen Sadler
Disappointing January 30, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
At first the book was very interesting, but then little "facts" were missing - like the remark that when the "Kaiser Wilhelm II" in 1903 at 19,000 tons - that the Kaiser was happy he had the "Largest ship in the world" - well, what happened to the White Star Line "Celtic" and "Cedric" - at 20,000 and 21,000 tons - they were the "Largest ships in the World" at this time - no, they weren't built for speed, but he didn't even mention the White Star "Big Four" in context to this subject - each of White Star's "Big Four" took her place as the "Largest ship in the World" when she was introduced - and although, the Germans measured their tonnage slightly different than the British - there was some dispute which was larger - the "Kaiserin Ausguste Victoria" or the "Adriatic" although, in a very short time period these two would be displaced by the "Lusitania". The "Cedric" is mentioned in the book as being "ancient" in 1914 - perhaps in technology - but, not in age - she lived until 1934 and was one of White Star's most successful ships. In the context of ocean liner history - the "Celtic" was the first ship built that was over 20,000 tons and was the first ship to displace the "Great Eastern" in size - all of the "Big Four" were extremely successful ships, and White Star's final abandoning the field of speed. This omission really got me to wondering if the author really knew his subject and blew it for me - like the other reviewer in this section - after reading the first couple of chapters - the book will be put back in the book shelf and remain there - an interesting addition to my collection, but, not a definitives study in the race between Germany and Great Britian in building Transalantic liners.
 Missed Opportunity September 11, 2005
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
In a word, disappointing. I wanted to like this book, which is engagingly written and has an interesting central hypothesis - that the Anglo-German liner race before WWI ended up accellerating Germany's defeat because so much tonnage was left laid up in the US. This was then seized and used to transport troops after America entered the war, hastening Germany's end. However, this hypothesis is never fully developed or explored, with alternatives considered or discussed. Added to that there are some historical errors of such schoolboy magnitude that you start to wonder what else is wrong. 'Edward was crowned monarch of England...and NORTHERN Ireland...'(p73) and Victoria's dominion apparantly extended to Bali (Dutch), Moorea (French) and Dar-es-Salaam (German) (p87) and HAPAG had a liner called AugustA Victoria.....all irritants a half decent editor should have spotted. From the Bibliography it looks as though all the research was done from secondary sources, and as I've read many of the originals such as Maxtone-Graham and Brinnin, I've read better. Not recommended.
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