But soon it became clear that the discovery actually added to the mystique.’ The salvage revealed much about the technical details of the sinking, including the fact that the ship had broken in two close to the surface, and that the funnels had become detached one by one. It produced a great range of personal goods, salvaged by RMS Titanic Inc. These added little to the historical account, but they provided poignant and often emotional links with the past when they were shown in well-attended exhibitions around the world.

The third great Titanic revival came with James Cameron’s film of 1997. Since the publication of A Night to Remember, the ship has been represented in fiction far more than any other in history. Offstage, it is included in almost every novel set in the period when it is necessary to get rid of a character or two—most recently, the loss of family heirs was the starting point for the highly successful TV series Downton Abbey. If all the fictional characters on board the ship could be counted, they would far outnumber the real passengers and crew. If they had any weight, they might sink the vessel without any help from the iceberg. Cameron’s film relied heavily on Lord’s research for many of the incidents described, a tribute to the merit of his work. The hero Jack Dawson finds it a little too easy to cross from third class to first or to go to the extreme bow, where only the crew were allowed, but in general the film was quite accurate.

The Titanic story remains as a legend. Though Walter Lord did everything humanly possible to find the absolute truth, he always knew that it could never be achieved: ‘The best that can be done is to weigh the evidence carefully and give an honest opinion.’ This is true of all historic research, and it is a tribute to Walter Lord’s skill and honesty that his work is still influential and worthy of a reprint after more than half a century.