Hold Me Up In Mighty Waters, Keep My Eyes On Things Above
"Some jump, some fall, each dotting the water's surface like the period at the end of a sentence. Then, the stern slips under the water, plunging everyone into a coldness so intense it is indistinguishable from fire. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. The inchoate wail of fifteen hundred souls slowly fades to individual cries from the darkness. Seven hundred survivors stand by in lifeboats built for twelve hundred, afraid to act for fear of getting swamped. They tell themselves that the voices from the water do not belong to their husbands or their loved ones. They are merely the cries of the damned..." - "Titanic" Original Screenplay
A drawing done after the sinking. (Click any image to enlarge)
I have been borderline obsessed with the story of the R.M.S. Titanic since I was eight years old. I'm not sure what it is that's always drawn me to it (it's been suggested many times over the years that maybe I was involved with it somehow in a past life), but I just can't get enough when it comes to learning about the ship and the disaster that made it even more famous. When I was a kid, I had a friend who was similarly (and also inexplicably) obsessed with all things Titanic and we immediately bonded. We had to do some writing project one semester and we both chose to write about Titanic but our teacher said we couldn't both choose the same topic. We almost went to blows over this project and who would get to write about the ship. I lost the battle and was forced to write about another ship (I chose the Californian), but I was allowed to base my story on the Titanic disaster. I was 16 when James Cameron's "Titanic" was released into movie theaters. I had been, 'meh' about everything I'd heard about it while it was in production, mostly because the 1958 film, "A Night To Remember" (based on the fantastic book by Walter Lord) was so good that I wasn't sure any other movie could live up to it. And I also was not sure about throwing fictional characters onto the ship or how the actual people who were on it would be portrayed. I saw it the first week it was out and it's the only time in my life I've ever been silent during a movie, from beginning to end. I didn't know it until I actually saw the film and read some stuff about it afterward, but Mr. Cameron himself is a Titanic buff and did his homework and then some. The casting of historical figures of the time was so spot on. The scenes of the sinking were incredibly accurate for what we knew at the time. I even liked the fictional Romeo and Juliet-esque plot because it humanized the tragedy. It wasn't just about a big boat that sank and people died and it became an icon. It was about the people on board the ship and their lives and the tragic fate that 1,500 of them met.
Picture taken of the survivors from rescue ship Carpathia.
The 100th anniversary of the sinking has brought more specials (and pretty damn good ones) and facts, quite a few that I had not heard until now. A century after it sank and some twenty years after I became interested in the subject, I love that I am still able to learn new things. Lately I find myself fascinated by the stories of the people. I know the ship; I've seen every picture and painting and read every description. I know all about the sinking and even about the iceberg that brought about its demise. But I think it's easy to get wrapped up in the grandeur of the ship and the tragedy of the sinking and forget all about the people who were actually a part of it all. Fifteen hundred perished, seven hundred survived but sadly very few of those survivors were ever really able to live because their ordeal followed them the rest of their lives. Some couldn't live down the stigma of being branded cowards for having gotten to lifeboats while other women and children died. Others felt tremendous guilt for having survived and, although no one knew it at the time, were likely suffering from PTSD (how could you not after that). In fact, one man who survived had nightmares for years afterward and his hair went from brown to white in the span of a month after the sinking, and he was only 40.
The Laroche family.
Something I didn't know until recently is that there was an interracial family on the ship. A man named Joseph Phillippe Lemercier Laroche, his wife Juliette and their two daughters were second class passengers. Joseph was black and the nephew of the president of Haiti and had an engineering degree but was denied work because of his skin color. Juliette was white and pregnant with the couple's third child, a son. After the ship struck the iceberg, Joseph loaded his wife and girls into a lifeboat and went down with the ship. Later that year, Juliette had the couple's son and named him after his father. Another story that struck me was about the men who worked in the belly of the ship, stoking the boilers so the ship could sail smoothly. None of these men survived, and I'm sure they had to know that they wouldn't, but they kept working and kept the power on in the ship so people could find their way above decks and try to get to safety. Nearly every eyewitness said the lights on the ship continued to stay on until just moments before the ship went under. Who knows what would've happened if there'd been no power and people were stumbling around in the dark? The death toll could've been much worse. I think James Cameron put it best in his National Geographic special this month when he said that one of the reasons Titanic grabbed so much attention is because it symbolized the end of an era. Up until that point it had been all about progress and technology and people were seeing and experiencing things that they had not only never seen or experienced before, but that they likely never thought they'd see in their lifetime. The problem (then, much as it is now) is they became incredibly dependent on that technology and when the Titanic, the epitome of new technology, sank it showed that they were human after all. It was a number of factors that led to the sinking but technology definitely played its part, along with arrogance. To dub anything 'unsinkable' is to almost dare the powers that be to do their damnedest to destroy what you've created. I think that ship was doomed from the second it was given that description. Unfortunately, 1,514 people were the victims of the White Star Line and, ultimately Bruce Ismay's, arrogance (and btw, he got exactly what he deserved in the aftermath of the disaster. He NEVER should have survived, but that's another post.).
Sketches by a survivor made hours after his rescue.
As with any disaster, there were inquiries and lawsuits (filed to the tune of about 22 million dollars in the U.S. alone) and men in suits trying to find out who was at fault. But very few of the survivors who chose to testify before the British and American inquiry boards were taken seriously (who's the big nerd who actually read the findings and notes from the inquiries? That would be me.), and this continued for years. One survivor, 12 at the time of the sinking and an elderly woman when she testified at yet another inquiry in the 70's, spoke about how she saw the ship break apart before finally going under the water. She told a very detailed and very believable story, only to have some suit stand up after her and make it clear that what she'd just testified to was her "opinion" and that the board did not believe the ship broke up at all. This was similar to what had been said at the original inquiries, with several survivors saying it had split in the center and then sank. However, a senior officer from the ship testified that it did not break up and so that board decided that his testimony held more weight than that of the other survivors. The official inquiry incorrectly states that the Titanic sunk in one piece. It wasn't until 1985, when Robert Ballard discovered the wreck, that the debate was finally settled that it did indeed break apart, just as the witnesses had always claimed.
2010 Pic of the wreck site.
Plates on the sea floor.
Unfortunately, Bob Ballard's discovery of the wreck opened up a whole new can of worms. It renewed interest in the disaster and with that came grave robbers. The technology to get to the depth where the wreck lies was relatively new and limited to only a few people at that time, but eventually it became much more accessible. There were a ton of expeditions to recover artifacts which are now on display in several sites all over the world. (None of which would be possible if Ballard had claimed the wreck site as his own. Had he taken a single thing from the site at the time of discovery, it would legally be his property and no one could venture down there without his permission. He didn't do this because he didn't want to disturb the resting place of those who perished but in hindsight I'm sure he wishes he had taken something. What's worse? Removing one thing to protect the entire site or watching as money hungry folk bring up hundreds of items and sell them?) Whether the people taking things and taking trips to the wreck want to admit it or not, they are messing with the resting place of a number of souls. But there is legislation working its way through congress to stop the scavenging and it could go into effect by the end of this year.
Series of wireless communications between Titanic and Californian and Californian and Carpathia after the sinking.
So, 100 years after the fact, what has anyone learned from the sinking of the Titanic? There were a lot of changes in the immediate aftermath of the sinking and there has not been a disaster at sea of that magnitude since Titanic. There was an ice patrol (that still exists to this day) set up to keep an eye out for icebergs in the Atlantic and there has not been an incident of the same scale with an iceberg since 1912. Every ship now has to have enough lifeboats and life jackets for every single passenger on board and crews have to practice disaster-preparedness often. Another major change, and something that could've saved a lot more people had it been in effect in 1912, was that wireless operators had to be at their stations twenty-four seven. At the time of the sinking, the Californian was the closest ship to the Titanic. The Californian was stopped for the night because of unusually high amounts of ice in the area, something their wireless operator had tried to warn the Titanic about. But Jack Phillips, the wireless operator for the Titanic, was busy sending out messages for passengers and brushed off the attempts to relay the ice warning. The wireless operator for the Californian finally gave up on sending out the warnings after getting a stern response from Phillips and went to bed, leaving the wireless unmanned. It's believed the Californian could've gotten to Titanic before it sank had they been able to hear their distress call. It's one more thing that could have changed the outcome for the better, one more just miss that likely resulted in the loss of more lives.
Poster for the 1958 movie.
Of course, there have been countless books and movies about what happened, fiction and non-fiction. There will no doubt be countless more, although it'll be interesting to see how much interest there is after this year. The wreck will probably be gone sooner than later as it's rapidly disintegrating, something not helped by the many submersibles that visit the site for one reason or another. One of the specials I watched posed an interesting question, asking what you would do if you were on the ship. Knowing what you know now; that there was another liner two miles away and that there was no saving the Titanic, what decisions would you make? Taking into account the fact that the ship has already hit the iceberg and pierced five of its watertight compartments, that fifth one (thought to have only been about two feet wide) being the death blow, how would you try to survive or, if you're Captain Smith, how would you try to save your passengers? I'm not sure there's much you could do, short of fully loading the lifeboats. If you do that, you save at least 1200 people easy. Any other idea someone comes up with would probably involve technology more advanced than what was available back then. But it's interesting to think about. Titanic fascinates and will continue to fascinate people because in a way it is the ultimate failure of technology, and in a time when the technology was far less advanced than it is now. It was a combination of human and technological error and arrogance that sent it to the bottom of the ocean. It's a cautionary tale. That even the grandest inventions can be taken down by the simplest things.
(The only actual footage of the ship believed to exist.)
