When the Titanic hit that iceberg and a thousand men prepared to die, J Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner and inheritor of the White Star fortune, jumped into a lifeboat with the women and children and rowed away to safety. Accused of cowardice, Ismay became the victim of a press hate campaign and his reputation never recovered.
While other survivors were piecing together their accounts, Ismay never spoke of his beloved ship again. Frances Wilson explores the reasons behind Ismay's jump, his desperate need to make sense of the horror of it all, and to find a way of living with lost honour.
