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The Wreck of the William Brown : A True Tale of Overcrowded Lifeboats and Murder at Sea | 
 enlarge | Author: Tom Koch
Publisher: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $1.78
You Save: $21.17 (92%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 252840
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1
ISBN: 0071434682
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.91634
UPC: 639785385226
EAN: 9780071434683
ASIN: 0071434682
Publication Date: February 23, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: NEW GREAT BUY!!
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Product Description
"More than a horrifying tale... also a penetrating examination of causes." -Denis Wood, author,The Power of Maps Seventy-one years before the Titanic, a ship loaded with Irish immigrants struck an iceberg and plunged to the ocean floor. The ship's crew stepped into two lifeboats, leaving more than half the passengers behind. Fearing for their lives, one overburdened boat's crew threw 14 men and women overboard. And the story of The Wreck of the William Brown had only begun. This chronicle of one of the 19th century's most infamous sea disasters and the uproar that followed presents a portrait of a forgotten time, re-creates a defining maritime trial, and tells of back room legal shenanigans. Newspaper readership was exploding in the 1840s, and journalists jumped on this sensational story. The resulting investigations and trial gave us the concept of "lifeboat ethics."
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| Customer Reviews:
 From Catastrophe To Courtoom December 22, 2006
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The sinking of the "William Brown" could be an interesting story. Unfortunately, we may never really know, because it does not turn out thusly in this volume. You know how the movie "Titanic" had two hours of mediocre buildup to the "good part", at which point you were treated to a full-blown special effects extravaganza and an astonishing rendition of disaster and drama? Here, the good part--the sinking--gets out of the way right at the outset, and then we get to the rest: all the gripping intrigue and high suspense of a tedious courtroom trial.
Koch disposes of the actual maritime disaster comparatively quickly and then gets to what really seized his attention: the trial of the designated scapegoat. So we get to witness the testimonies of quite a few witnesses and all of the fun that comes from parsing their statements and picking them apart for errors, lies, and discrepancies. Enjoyable for the legal enthusiast, perhaps...drudgery for most. Even here, primary materials on most of the major participants are scarce, so the author has few means to give us full psychological portraits of the various parties, with the result that he contents himself for the most part with a great deal of snark and eye-rolling.
Ultimately, this turns out to be a rather slight tale, not in its significance for legal precedence, but simply because there's not enough narrative meat, so Koch has to digress into endless asides to pad out his story, and his side jaunts are often exceptionally tangential. Additionally, there's rather too much preachy editorializing and faux outrage for my tastes.
Not recommended unless you enjoy reading court transcripts from stenography tapes.
 Fascinating and compelling, but too much editorializing November 26, 2005
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
On a cold April night, a ship full of passengers crossing the Atlantic from England to America struck an iceberg and sank. It was almost exactly 71 years before the sinking of the Titanic, and at almost the exact same spot. But, there were great differences in what happened in the sinking of these two ships.
After the sailing ship William Brown began to go down, the crew rushed to the two small boats the ship carried (lifeboats weren't even invented yet), and tried to leave with as few of the passengers as possible. The captain, aboard the smaller gig sailed off leaving the bulk of the crew and all but one of the passengers behind in a damaged longboat. And when the people aboard the overfilled longboat began to fear for their own survival, the crew began to lighten the load - by throwing passengers overboard to their deaths! A cause celebre at the time, one crewman was brought to trial for the events of that horrifying cruise, one man was offered up as a scapegoat.
I must admit that I have never heard of the sinking of the William Brown before I read this book. The author does an excellent job of collecting what information is known about what happened, and presenting it in an informative and compelling manner. My one complaint about this book is that the author does spend too much time in editorializing - on the 19th century immigration movement and racism, and even on the state of modern healthcare!
But, if you ignore the digressions and editorializations, you will be rewarded with a fascinating and compelling story of a little known disaster. I loved this book, and highly recommend it!
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