Monthly Gather­ing

One Hundred and Sixty Minutes: The Race to Save the RMS Titanic

by William Hazelgrove

You may think you have heard everything there is to know about Titanic, but you probably haven’t. William Hazelgrove will share fascinating information about “amazing heroism and astounding incompetence against the backdrop of the most advanced ship in history sinking by inches with luminaries from all over the world. The race to save the largest ship in the world from certain death would reveal both heroes and villains.”

John Landecker recently interviewed William on WGN Radio about “One Hundred and Sixty Minutes” and enthusiastically commented, “It was just great!”

As William describes the story, “One hundred and sixty minutes. That is all the time rescuers would have before the largest ship in the world slipped beneath the icy Atlantic. It is a story of a network of wireless operators on land and sea who desperately sent messages back and forth across the dark frozen North Atlantic to mount a rescue mission. More than twenty-eight ships would be involved in the rescue of Titanic survivors along with four different countries.”

The Titanic sinking is certainly a great tragedy, but a third of the people were saved. As William points out, “At the heart of the rescue are two young Marconi operators, Jack Phillips, 25, and Harold Briden 22, tapping furiously and sending electromagnetic waves into the black night as the room they sat in slanted toward the icy depths and not stopping until the bone numbing water was around their ankles. Then they plunged into the water after coordinating the largest rescue operation the maritime world had ever seen and thereby saving 710 people by their efforts.”

As well as the heroic efforts of the radio operators and the ships that came to the rescue, William also discloses the dereliction of duty by other ships that could have helped and did not.

William Hazelgrove is the national bestselling author of ten novels and seven nonfiction titles. His books have received starred reviews in Publisher Weekly Kirkus, Booklist, Book of the Month Selections, ALA Editor’s Choice Awards Junior Library Guild Selections, Literary Guild Selections, and History Book Club Selections. Several of his books have been optioned for screen and television rights.

He was the Ernest Hemingway Writer in Residence where he wrote in the attic of Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace. He has written articles and reviews for USA Today, The Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications, and has been featured on NPR All Things Considered. The New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, CSPAN, and USA Today have all covered his books with features.