Michael Tennaro
Member
Graham Smith’s comments has reminded me of a truism. Every book is a blank slate until it is written. He is absolutely right to castigate this community for consigning Gardiner's new book to the junk heap before it has even been published, let alone read.
On the other hand, no author is an island (if I may butcher the old saw), and a writer’s reputation must stand on the merits of what he has published. For the record, Gardiner has written :
The Riddle of the Titanic (co-written by David van der Vat). This book was released in the U.S. market with the title The Titanic Conspiracy. Following was his book Titanic: The Ship that Never Sank? Next, Gardiner wrote The History of the White Star Line. Finally, he co-wrote with Robert McDougall Titanic in Picture Postcards.
As the two latter books are not centrally about his Olympic/Titanic switch theory, it can be stated that this new work will indeed be his third book on this subject.
It is unfortunate that Graham Smith chose to enter this forum with both guns blazing, as that simply begged the response in kind, which quickly degenerated into pure silliness. While this sort of stuff is kinda entertaining in its own way, it doesn’t generate any useful debate, which is the reason we are here on ET, isn’t it? I for one am willing to take up Mr. Smith’s challenge about speaking with a “dram of sense”. Or, at least I am willing to make the attempt.
My thoughts on all of this revolve around two issues, Graham Smith’s comments in his press release, and Robin Gardiner’s history as a writer. Mr. Smith first. Historically, it has been typical for PR men (and women) to state everything they say in BIG BOLD comments. While I am sure this achieves, to some extent, a goal of generating interest, I feel that as often as not it hurts the very cause the promoter is trying to achieve.
Mr. Smith opens his comments with the ill conceived phrase “best-selling author Robin Gardiner (is) the world's leading expert on the Titanic disaster”. This sort of hyperbole is most unfortunate. There are giants in the world of Titanic literature. People like Walter Lord (rest his soul), Don Lynch, Ken Marschall & David Louden-Brown, to name just a few. These men have a long and hugely respected reputation in this field. I don’t know any of these gentlemen personally, but I have never heard any of them claim to be the world’s leading expert on the subject.
About mister Gardiner himself. Smith promises “the world is going to be astonished when Robin backs up his theories with hard evidence and facts which will quite simply rewrite the history of this epic disaster”. Well that is all to the good, and I hope it is indeed so. But here comes that part about the merits of his previous books. Quite simply, Gardiner has up till now, offered little to no real evidence to support his extraordinary claims that there was a massive conspiracy to switch these two ships and sink Olympic on purpose to collect the insurance money.
If this community has tremendous reservations about Mr. Gardiner’s new book, it is not because we are a bunch of overstuffed, self-righteous prigs. It is because we have read his previous works and found them to be full of misinformation, innuendo and lacking any substantive evidence.
We are prejudging his new book on what he has written before. That may not be completely fair, but it is certainly not entirely inappropriate either. Will his new book be an entirely different animal? Can he actually support this conspiracy theory of his with real evidence? If he can, then this community will respond in kind, methinks. But if his new book is just more of what has come before, he will get a chilly reception indeed, and rightly so.
all the best, Michael (TheManInBlack) T
On the other hand, no author is an island (if I may butcher the old saw), and a writer’s reputation must stand on the merits of what he has published. For the record, Gardiner has written :
The Riddle of the Titanic (co-written by David van der Vat). This book was released in the U.S. market with the title The Titanic Conspiracy. Following was his book Titanic: The Ship that Never Sank? Next, Gardiner wrote The History of the White Star Line. Finally, he co-wrote with Robert McDougall Titanic in Picture Postcards.
As the two latter books are not centrally about his Olympic/Titanic switch theory, it can be stated that this new work will indeed be his third book on this subject.
It is unfortunate that Graham Smith chose to enter this forum with both guns blazing, as that simply begged the response in kind, which quickly degenerated into pure silliness. While this sort of stuff is kinda entertaining in its own way, it doesn’t generate any useful debate, which is the reason we are here on ET, isn’t it? I for one am willing to take up Mr. Smith’s challenge about speaking with a “dram of sense”. Or, at least I am willing to make the attempt.
My thoughts on all of this revolve around two issues, Graham Smith’s comments in his press release, and Robin Gardiner’s history as a writer. Mr. Smith first. Historically, it has been typical for PR men (and women) to state everything they say in BIG BOLD comments. While I am sure this achieves, to some extent, a goal of generating interest, I feel that as often as not it hurts the very cause the promoter is trying to achieve.
Mr. Smith opens his comments with the ill conceived phrase “best-selling author Robin Gardiner (is) the world's leading expert on the Titanic disaster”. This sort of hyperbole is most unfortunate. There are giants in the world of Titanic literature. People like Walter Lord (rest his soul), Don Lynch, Ken Marschall & David Louden-Brown, to name just a few. These men have a long and hugely respected reputation in this field. I don’t know any of these gentlemen personally, but I have never heard any of them claim to be the world’s leading expert on the subject.
About mister Gardiner himself. Smith promises “the world is going to be astonished when Robin backs up his theories with hard evidence and facts which will quite simply rewrite the history of this epic disaster”. Well that is all to the good, and I hope it is indeed so. But here comes that part about the merits of his previous books. Quite simply, Gardiner has up till now, offered little to no real evidence to support his extraordinary claims that there was a massive conspiracy to switch these two ships and sink Olympic on purpose to collect the insurance money.
If this community has tremendous reservations about Mr. Gardiner’s new book, it is not because we are a bunch of overstuffed, self-righteous prigs. It is because we have read his previous works and found them to be full of misinformation, innuendo and lacking any substantive evidence.
We are prejudging his new book on what he has written before. That may not be completely fair, but it is certainly not entirely inappropriate either. Will his new book be an entirely different animal? Can he actually support this conspiracy theory of his with real evidence? If he can, then this community will respond in kind, methinks. But if his new book is just more of what has come before, he will get a chilly reception indeed, and rightly so.
all the best, Michael (TheManInBlack) T
