The Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic

By the mid-19th century, steamships were eclipsing traditional sailing ships in the lucrative transatlantic trade. The largest of these, the American Arctic, collided with a smaller vessel in 1854 with a frightful, and unnecessary, loss of life. David W. Shaw's The Sea Shall Embrace Them tells the story of this disaster, eerily similar in many ways to the later sinking of the Titanic. Shaw lays out the immediate and secondary causes of the disaster: bad weather, no established shipping lanes, the ship's owners' preference for speed rather than prudence, and an appalling lack of safety precautions. As well, he describes the suffering and grotesque deaths of many aboard and dozens of acts of pure cowardice on the part of the crew. The writing for the most part is vivid and effective, though the physical layout of the ship is somewhat murky. The story of the Arctic is not only sad and the tragedy avoidable, but one that, as Shaw points out, would be repeated many times in the decades to follow. --H. O'Billovitch