Poseidon adventure. Paul Gallico. 1969.

This is the story of the physical and spiritual nightmare endured by fifteen ordinary, yet eventually quite un-ordinary people when the Christmas holiday cruise of one of the largest liners in the world turned into an appalling marine tragedy.

In a period of ten hours, within the bowels of the great ship they faced and struggled against obstacles, dangers and hardships known to adventurers who have conquered the far corners of the earth, to find themselves at the story’s end wholly different persons than they had been before.