The Seventh at Sea

Historian and author Gareth Russell, author of The Ship of Dreams: The Sinking of the Titanic and the End of the Edwardian Era (2019), is known for examining the personal lives and experiences of the Titanic’s more notable passengers to immerse his audience in the story of one of history’s greatest disasters.  In this lecture, he focuses on two men who were closely related to the Armory’s Seventh Regiment—Archibald Gracie IV, a veteran member of the Regiment and part of an old New York family, and Frank Millet, a notable artist whose work at the Armory in 1880 has been recently restored. Within a week of setting sail, they were caught up in the horrifying disaster of the Titanic’s sinking, one of the biggest news stories of the century. Today, we can see their stories and the Titanic’s voyage as the beginning of the end of the established hierarchy of the Edwardian era. Using previously unpublished sources and artifacts, Russell immerses his audience in a time of unprecedented change in British and American history.

Gareth Russell is a historian, novelist, and playwright who was educated at Oxford University and Queen’s University Belfast. His 2019 book, The Ship of Dreams, was named a Book of the Year by The London Times and a Best History Book of 2019 by The Daily Telegraph. Previous works include Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Catherine Howard, Fifth Wife of King Henry VIII (2017), A History of the English Monarchy from Boadicea to Elizabeth I (2015), and An Illustrated Introduction to the Tudors (2014).