The Wreck of the William Brown: A True Tale of Overcrowded Lifeboats and Murder at Sea
by Tom Koch
International Marine/McGraw-Hill

The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime
by William Langewiesche
North Point Press

Depending on Neptune's mood, an ocean can cover the worst crimes. In the depths, there's plenty of room for secrets. But there are ghosts below the waves, wronged and outraged, and ghosts are bound to haunt the living. The ghosts of the William Brown — a ship that struck an iceberg and plunged to the floor of the north Atlantic 71 years before the Titanic — will haunt readers of Tom Koch's work.

Like the Titanic, the William Brown was helmed by an experienced captain well aware of the dangers of the Atlantic in April. Both ships were traveling at maximum speed, fueled by greed and profit. But Captain George Harris, along with every sailor under his command, lived to tell the tale — though, to conceal culpability, they chose not to. As it turned out, their survival was methodical, not miraculous.

The 48 souls lost to the frigid sea in that wreck were all passengers, mostly poor Irish emigrants. Thirty-one, including 18 children, vanished with the ship. Fourteen of them, safely aboard the larger of the ship's two lifeboats, were cruelly manhandled by sailors and thrown overboard. Pouring rain helped give a small section of the overcrowded lifeboat's stern the appearance of a gushing leak. "We cannot all live," decided a panicked Rhodes. "Some of us must die."

With no images of the William Brown, no photographs of Harris, Rhodes, or any of the sailors or passengers, no survivor reunions to reference or quote, there's not much to go on beyond hearsay and conflicting reports. Still, Tom Koch's painstaking reconstruction of the 1841 sinking and its aftermath, presented in a terse, no-nonsense writing style and the precise, paraphrased 19th century language he chooses to replicate, paint nightmarish images that pack an emotional wallop.

Documented facts do come to light as the story progresses to "United States vs. Holmes," the resulting trial of a scapegoat seaman. Alexander William Holmes, the lone sailor to perform what was unanimously considered a courageous act, wound up as the fall guy. He stood trial for manslaughter, and faced damning testimony from the very passengers he'd worked to save. That Harris and Rhodes would cut Holmes loose is one of the many galling and fascinating aspects of this exploration of the dark side of human nature. The book moves from a story of impossible choices to one of political manipulation and conspiracy. The modern concept of "lifeboat ethics" arose from Holmes' trial: how to decide who gets saved when limited resources force the regrettable matter of picking and choosing.

"When hard choices must be made," writes Koch, "would we, could we do the same? Would we be so callous? Would we be so bold?"

Tough questions, all. And the tough questions continued as Neptune claimed more victims more than 150 years later.

Two chapters of William Langewiesche's "The Outlaw Sea" detail the horrors of the 1994 sinking of the Estonia, a passenger ferry now lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. When the ferry's bow gave way during a storm, the Estonia literally flipped, taking down 852 passengers with it. As with the William Brown, as with all maritime disasters, there was much biased inquiry, political jockeying and finger pointing. Langewiesche, who wrote with terrific insight and passion about the cleanup of the World Trade Center collapse in "American Ground," uses his skills to construct passage after passage of emotional terror, conjuring gut-wrenching images — now horribly real — from 1972's The Poseidon Adventure:

One of the survivors, a young man who had been trying to guide his parents and his girlfriend to safety, got separated from them in the chaos while gaining the stairs. When he looked back to find them, it was obvious that they would be incapable of negotiating the open space, across which increasing numbers of people were fatally sliding. They shouted at him to save himself. It was practical advice. There was no time to linger over the decision. He turned and continued on alone.

Investigations of the tragedy, to this day inconclusive, are characterized as wonders of bureaucratic incompetence. A German journalist, convinced of conspiracy, appears more interested in the casting of British actress Greta Scacchi as a glamorized version of herself in Baltic Storm than in the accuracy of the film's content. Langewiesche makes the victims, survivors and surrounding circus fascinating.

"The Outlaw Sea" is also an eye-opening account of what's happening on our oceans, namely, reckless pollution in the form of oil spills, modern-day piracy, and the frightening ways in which shipping is falling well beyond regulatory control. Langewiesche points out that the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for monitoring roughly 95,000 miles of coastline. Later, he cites rumors that Osama bin Laden "is said to own or control up to twenty aging freighters." Not good. "For public consumption," he writes, referring to our oceans, "the officials still talk bravely about the impact of new regulations and the promise of technology, but in private many admit that it is chaos, not control, that is on the rise."

Only the ghosts of the sea, doomed to linger, know for sure what chaos lies in store. Wronged and outraged and owing us nothing, they remain silent. They wait for the souls of the next William Brown, the next Titanic, the next Estonia. They wait for new souls to join their ranks. And more are coming, they're certain. On the outlaw sea, on its awful face, they always come.

— Robert McEvily (robertmcevily@yahoo.com)