I find it difficult not to judge historical people by today's standards. I understand that they are products of their time and place. They've grown up with different sets of values in a different era with different ideas and different points of view. I still think Lawrence Beesley is kind of a dick.

Beesleys book about the disaster was one of the first to come out, and his story from his point of view obviously could not fill up a whole book (especially since he left out every day of the journey except the first and last). This meant a good portion of the last part of the book was Beesley waxing philosophically about the disaster, it's implications, the legislation that should be enacted because of it, and lots of boat nonsense I didn't care about.

He also goes into numbers and percentages about the survivors, and suggests that more crew members should have stayed on the ship and died so that passengers could have been saved. He also theorized that a well behaved intelligent Englishman (such as himself) had more right to be on a lifeboat than a drunken stoker.

I understand that right after the disaster Mr. Beesley and his book must have seemed like a calm, British, voice of reason. He dispelled rumors (although he adamantly argued the ship did not break in half), and told a matter-of- fact story that placed little blame except on the deceased captain.

Beesley comes off as elitest, self-important, biased, and dull.