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Lawrence Beesley was one of the luckiest men on the Titanic. Although the word had been given, �women and children first,� he was nevertheless ordered into a lifeboat to make up the numbers. At the end of that fateful night he stepped, dry and physically unharmed, onto the deck of the rescuing ship Carpathia. We are also fortunate in that, as a science teacher, Beesley was an intensely curious man. During the journey he had been paying careful attention to every aspect of shipboard life, from how seagulls were able to keep pace with the liner, to why the vibrations from the great engines were most noticeable when taking a bath. He put these observational skills to good use in his description of the sinking, and of how the passengers, the crew, and later the public reacted, providing us one of the most complete and thoughtful eyewitness accounts of the disaster.