THE SEA SHALL EMBRACE THEM

A sensitive history of the doomed steamship Arctic and her courageous captain, demonstrating the ability of a veteran sailor and maritime author (Flying Cloud, 2000) to render nautical history both accessible and poignant.

Shaw introduces Captain James Luce, a seasoned American sailor with a reputation for just and enlightened leadership in an era when autocratic brutality was the norm on the high seas. Luce’s talent for handling people, according to Shaw, earned him not only the lucrative command of the largest and most luxurious steamship of the Collins line, but also an important role in wresting monopolistic control of the Atlantic mail trade from the smaller British steamships. Pressured by Collins himself to accept risk during the treacherous North Atlantic storm season and fueled by nationalistic Anglo-American tensions, Luce tore across the Atlantic in the midst of a thick fog. Drawing extensively from survivors’ accounts and written descriptions of earlier Arctic passages, Shaw expertly reconstructs the growing panic of the crew and passengers as the ship rammed a smaller craft mid-voyage and slowly began to sink. This panic, Shaw shows, flamed into the most notorious lapse of duty by 19th-century American sailors: 45 crewmen stole lifeboats and rowed for Newfoundland, leaving Captain Luce and his first mate to try to save the remaining 370 passengers alone. In the aftermath of the sinking, Luce watched his young son die among the wreckage and, Shaw argues, earned himself international fame and respect for his courageous attempts to salvage lives from the icy North Atlantic.

Shaw’s intimately detailed account of the Arctic’s sinking and the struggles of those who survived will appeal not only to those who reveled in the bathos of the film Titanic but to all readers with a serious interest in nautical history and courage. (8-page photo insert, maps)