Description
From the national bestselling author of The Food Explorer a fascinating and rollicking plunge into the story of the worlds most famous shipwreck the RMS Titanic
On a frigid April night in 1912 the worlds largestand soon most famousocean liner struck an iceberg and slipped beneath the waves She had scarcely disappeared before her new journey began a seemingly limitless odyssey through the worlds fixation with her every tragic detail Plans to find and raise the Titanic began almost immediately Yet seven decades passed before it was found Why And of some three million shipwrecks that litter the ocean floor why is the world still so fascinated with this one
In Sinkable Daniel Stone spins a fascinating tale of history science and obsession uncovering the untold story of the Titanic not as a ship but as a shipwreck He explores generations of eccentrics like American Charles Smith whose 1914 recovery plan using a synchronized armada of ships bearing electromagnets was complex convincing and utterly impossible Jack Grimm a Texas oil magnate who fruitlessly dropped a fortune to find the wreck after failing to find Noahs Ark and the British Doug Woolley a former pantyhose factory worker who has claimed since the 1960s to be the true owner of the Titanic wreckage
Along the way Sinkable takes readers through the two miles of ocean water in which the Titanic sank showing how the ship broke apart and why and delves into the odd history of our understanding of such depths Author Daniel Stone studies the landscape of the seabed which in the Titanics day was thought to be as smooth and featureless as a bathtub He interviews scientists to understand the decades of rust and decomposition that are slowly but surely consuming the ship It is expected to disappear entirely within a few decades He even journeys over the Atlantic during a global pandemic to track down the elusive Doug Woolley And Stone turns inward looking at his own dark obsession with both the Titanic and shipwrecks in general and why he spends hours watching ships sink on YouTube
Brimming with humor curiosity and wit Sinkable follows in the tradition of Susan Orlean and Bill Bryson offering up a pageturning work of personal journalism and an immensely entertaining romp through the deep sea and the nature of obsession
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