Sinking feeling for Titanic kin

The families of two Titanic survivors are furious that a party to promote a new book about the pair will be sponsored by Iceberg Vodka. Descendants of US tennis players Dick Williams and Karl Behr, who met aboard a rescue ship before becoming Davis Cup teammates, are fuming over Lindsay Gibbs’ tome “Titanic: The Tennis Story.” Williams’ granddaughter, Lydia Williams Griffin, blasted it as “inaccurate, unacceptable and distasteful,” and calls Iceberg’s involvement “in poor taste, really disheartening and upsetting.” She added, “Good thing I have a sense of humor.” The publisher of the book said that Iceberg will provide bottles for the bash. Behr’s granddaughter, Lynn Sanford, meantime, also has weighed in, lamenting, “How sad and sorry I am that my grandfather’s true story has been bastardized.” She noted the book lists Karl’s biography, “Starboard at Midnight: A Story of Two Titanic Passengers,” in its acknowledgments, but ignored its facts. Gibbs’ book “is historically inaccurate, twisted, and purloined,” she told us. “I am beside myself with misery. The [publishers] should be punished.” The book bills itself as a “historical novel,” and its publisher Randy Walker told us parts of the book were factual and other parts were creative license.