FICTION Sea change

On a novel that manages to find a fresh take on the much-covered subject of the Titanic’s final days

NICK RENNISON The Midnight Watch by David Dyer The tale of the Titanic and its encounter with an iceberg in April 1912 has been told so many times, both in fiction and non-fiction, that it is difficult to find a new angle from which to approach it. By focusing not on the passenger liner itself but on events aboard the SS Californian, a British steamship whose captain and crew were later accused of ignoring the Titanic’s distress signals, David Dyer has come up with an original take on the tragedy.

John Steadman, a character Dyer has invented, is an American journalist with a taste for liquor and a nose for scandal. He is assigned by his newspaper to cover the story of the Californian’s arrival in Boston in the aftermath of its involvement in the search for the bodies of those drowned in the Titanic disaster. As he listens to Stanley Lord, the sternly charismatic captain of the Californian, speaking unwillingly to reporters, Steadman scents a scoop.

As he continues to investigate, he begins to hear unpleasant, inexplicable rumours. The Californian was much closer to the Titanic at the time of its sinking than Lord is prepared to admit. Some of its crew claim to have seen distress rockets fired from the doomed vessel but nothing was done in response. Does the answer to the mystery lie in the puzzling relationship between Lord and his sensitive, unassertive second officer Herbert Stone, the man in charge of the bridge during the vital hours? What did Stone tell Lord, and when?

As Steadman probes for the truth, Dyer cleverly combines his fictional and real-life characters in a narrative that refuses to apportion blame too readily, instead acknowledging the complexity of human motivations and recognising the unanticipated results of human actions. This is a moving novel that opens up a new perspective on the familiar story of the Titanic.