On a frigid April night in 1912, the world's largest ocean liner struck an iceberg and slipped beneath the waves. The Titanic had scarcely disappeared before its new journey began, a seemingly limitless odyssey through the world's fixation with its every tragic detail. Plans to find and raise the ship 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 an absorbing tale of history and science, 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 plan to use 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 Noah's Ark; and Brit Doug Woolley, a former pantyhose factory worker who claims 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, shows how the ship broke apart and why, and finds dozens of other famous, mysterious, and mind-boggling wrecks in every corner of the planet. Author Daniel Stone studies the landscape of the seabed, which in the Titanic's 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. 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.
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