a) My tables make it easy to find the names of passengers and crew, or simply to find out the name of a person according to his station (First Mate, boatswain, etc.) The tables had a side-effect of emotional impact when I decided to include an "X" near the names of those who died on the voyage.
b) I found that a left-side rowspan helped to improve readability. In fact if I wanted to remove the titles for the tables I could, so long as one big cell on the left indicated what the table was about. (IE crew list, list of company executives, list of artisans.) Lightening the background color helped readability as well.
c) I was surprised to find a short video about the ship on Youtube: it just appeared there on November 14th. It has an interview with the great-great grandson of the chieftan whose insult sparked a bloody mass-murder. Hearing oral history from the Indian's point of view was refreshing and interesting...and yet chilling too. The video has emotional impact and historical importance.
The audio clip of the sea chantey lightens up the site: it's a very dark story about the ship's loss.
I didn't have to download any plugin when I viewed it with Firefox 4, and IE9 just doesn't play it. (I used MP3 and OGG.) Boat Browser mini (for android) doesn't play it either, so I linked back to the same song on youtube so it can be heard by anyone with a browser issue.
Link to The Doomed Voyage of the Tonquin
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