Two survivors' accounts of the sinking of the Titanic . The information contained in Colonel Gracie's story is available from no other source. He provides details of the final moments, including names of passengers pulled from the ocean and of those men who, in a panic, jumped into lifeboats as they were being lowered. Walter Lord, author of A Night to Remember , calls Gracie "an indefatigable detective." John Thayer was, like Gracie, one of the last to leave the ship. His account, The Sinking of the S.S. Titanic , is meticulously detailed. The sinking of the was, in his eyes, a symbol of the end of the world that he knew, and the beginning of a frightening new era.