>I can clearly remember what I was doing 40 years ago and what ships I visited 50 years ago. Maybe it is because I do not have a head cluttered with obsessional facts and trivia?
Peter Peter Peter....
As an author, you really ought to be careful about making such statements in public.
I COULD be cruel, and point out the salient fact that to the vast majority of the world the study of ocean liner history might seem to be the epitome of obsessive trivia. One man's fascination is another man's what-the-hell-is-the-point-of-this-and-who-cares nonsense. So, if what I enjoy in this vast sweeping panorama we call life does not dovetail to what you enjoy, let us not resort to insult.
I could ALSO be cruel and point out that if one wants to succeed in history, journalism....liner research trivia...one must study FAR beyond the scope of what one wants to write about. As such, when I decided I wanted to document shipwrecks and NYC history, I made it a point to take classes in The Science of Memory...The Mechanics of Memory...Theory of Memory....to better learn exactly WHAT it was that I was transcribing.
Pair that with obsessive study of C.S.I. before it was trendy, and from that came my refusal to use anything written, testified to, or recorded much more than a month after an event, as first rate stand-on-its-own evidence. Because, it isn't. It's a reconstruction and incredibly flawed.
And when you add a ghostwriter and an eye on publication to the mix, you have something that for historical research purposes matches what Jacqueline Susann was to fine literature.
>Maybe it is because I do not have a head cluttered with obsessional facts and trivia?
Okay. Now I WILL be cruel. Your interaction with Mr. Longo earlier on this thread was woefully lacking in substance. You did not rebut his points so much as you attempted to get him to back down through insult. NOT a good idea for an author. If you have the facts at hand...if you have, as you say, talked with the various sources in the U.K., why not quote from them...or paraphrase them? If your head is as 'uncluttered' as you claim it to be, surely you can summon forth a few facts at will.
In that spirit, would it be cruel to cut and paste Mr. Longo's comment:
>You have no opinion of the dazzle information given or the Wilkinson/Kerr lecture data presented? Or any of the photographic observations regarding the dating of your photograph page 33 top? Or any of the many visual details which serve to date these images - the bow bulwarks, the bow railings, the built-up stern, the "second observation nest" in your page 33 photo dated 1915, the guns, the schemes, the dates...nothing?
and ask you to address it as an author, researcher, and adult? Is Mr. Longo wrong? Prove him so. Is Mr. Longo correct? Have the integrity to admit it.
>Hope you enjoy reading it....
Don't be antagonistic.