Among the 300 books about the Titanic (including an Eyewitness Book and even a Dummie's Guide), what is notably absent is an analysis of those ill-fated last hours not through the eyes of an historian or story teller, but through the lens of a mariner and ship handler applying accepted standards of seamanship--what is known to navies and merchant fleets as the ordinary practice of seamen. To our knowledge, this book is the first close look at the Titanic disaster by an author with the ship-handling background and knowledge to make an informed reconstruction of the ship's last maneuvers. It gives book-length treatment to the final hours. By contrast, Walter Lord's Night to Remember covers the final maneuvers and the iceberg encounter in eight paragraphs. These days, every airplane crash analysis begins with the effort to recover the black boxes recording final crew conversations and instrument readings. Think how fascinating the black box from the Titanic would have been, but of course there was none. On ships of that era as well as this one, the only black box was the ship's logbook, in which all weather observations, course and speed changes, and other relevant information wer