Rare twice-signed book: The Sinking of the S.S. Titanic: April 14-15, 1912. Limited first edition, numbered 316/500. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Privately printed, 1940. Hardcover with green boards and gilt lettering, 6 x 9, 30 pages. Signed and inscribed on the first free end page in fountain pen, “To Mrs. Charles M. Long, with best wishes from John B. Thayer,” and then again on the colophon in the same manner. Autographic condition: very good to fine, with scattered staining to the signed page. Book condition: VG/None, with minor edgewear and aforementioned staining to endpapers.
When the Titanic began to sink in the frigid waters of the Atlantic, the author, John B. ‘Jack’ Thayer, then just 17, was one of the 40 or so people who fell off or jumped into the water and lived to tell the tale. Thayer's mother, Marian, also survived, but his father, railroad executive John B. Thayer, Sr., did not. Per the preface, Jack wrote and privately published this account "primarily as a family record for the information of my children and perhaps their children." While not a commercial success, the book assisted a later author in establishing the exact location of the Titanic's demise, as well as in determining that the boat split in two before sinking, contradicting conventional wisdom.
