Aftermath: “What a tale of woe is this!�

The legends, truths, falsehoods, and lore surrounding Titanic began even before she settled onto the bottom of the North Atlantic. The pulp press that inhabited New York City were in the wireless offices of the Marconi Company as the ever more urgent distress calls came into that office from this developing tragedy at sea. When the transmissions stopped coming in, people came to differing conclusions. A recent book on the subject recounts over two hundred differing newspaper accounts of what had happened the night and early morning of April 14 and 15, 1912. Many accounts were simply the stuff of fiction created by imaginations trying to fill in the blanks in time and across space that occurred between the time that Titanic foundered and the rescue ship Carpathia arrived on the scene to pick up the survivors floating there in the inadequate number of lifeboats that had been almost an afterthought for this seemingly unsinkable ship. Some of the more astute members of the press, chiefly the New York Times, decided to take a leap of faith and had banner headlines in their early morning editions announcing to New York and the world that Titanic had gone down after hitting a berg with a great loss of life. It was a decision that would vault the Times to preeminence in the New York newspaper wars that she has not relinquished until this very day. Other papers were not so fortunate. One paper announced that Titanic was in tow to New York with all passengers still safely aboard. Another announced that all passengers had been taken off of the ship and that there had been no loss of life at all. Although the New York Times had been wrong with some facts, she had basically gotten it right when she said that the ship had gone down with a great loss of life.

The whole event shocked the whole civilized world and, as some would say many years later, it was the real end to the elaborate and all so brief gilded age. That age was filled with fluff and an ever increasing confidence in machines and corporations as the unfailing benefactors and deliverers of goods and services to the beginnings of the great twentieth century middle class. Titanic was representative of that confidence as there are many historians who will tell you that the disaster of April, 1912 put an end forever to the belief that machines would be the salvation of our world.

There were many rumors that would surround Titanic for most of the twentieth century. She was a finely build ship featuring some of the best craftsmanship that the world had ever known up to that time. Her final minutes would be the stuff of debate up until the Ballard expedition discovered her remains in the mid 1980’s. People debated on how she went down and the White Star Line put out a substantial media campaign to dissuade anyone from believing that she had split in two before her final plunge. They may have lost the ship but, to hear them tell it, she had gone down in one piece to her grave. The very idea that shipbuilding in the advanced age of 1912 could not produce a craft that would stay in one piece was a threat to the other ships in the Olympic class that were already at sea or being prepared for duty in the very competitive North Atlantic crossing wars. Olympic, the first of the three ships, was taken back into Belfast to be refitted as a double hulled vessel to reduce the possibility of anything happening to her that had happened to Titanic. The third ship of the three was rumored to be named Gigantic but after the April disaster she took on the more sedate name of Britanic. She was also refitted as a double hulled craft and certain other modifications were made to her before she ever left the ways in Belfast. This third ship would also have a very brief lifespan as she would meet her end as a hospital ship in the Mediterranean when she supposedly struck a mine and sank in approximately 240 feet of water. Only the Olympic would sail on to a natural death when she was sold to the scrappers in the mid 1930’s after many years of faithful service in war and peace. Across the remainder of her career she would be featured in so called “Titanic cruises� where the stories of what had happened aboard her ill fated sister would be told as passengers went from point to point aboard this almost identical twin. Titanic had never really faded completely from memory although she was overshadowed for almost a half a century by two wars and a depression that so often distracted the public at large from those always ever present and fateful events.

A Titanic revival occurred in the mid 1950’s when Walter Lord published his now iconic book on the subject called simply “A Night To Remember�. So many of the survivors of Titanic still lived in the first half on the century that not as much was said about her out of respect to them. As they began to age and pass away, however, their dwindling numbers seemed to rekindle memories of the ship as so many of them seemed to realize the great heritage that they held for the world and for those who had died such tragic deaths. Somewhere along the way The Titanic Historical Society came into being and it did wonders for keeping the ships memory alive. The Ballard expedition which discovered the ships remains around 1985 caused a great revival across the world and solved some disputes while it may have created about as many as it laid to rest. There was no question that the Titanic had split in two as the after part of the ship was found some 1500 hundred feet away from the much more intact front of the ship. What happened to the back portion of the ship bespoke of the great suffered that had gone on aboard Titanic on the night and early morning that she went down. Those in the engineering compartments must have died horrible deaths as what happened to them was nothing short of an explosion. None of them survived.

It has been said that the space between the portions of Titanic is filled to this day with a field of shoes worn by those who were aboard the ship and apparently did not survive to even die of freezing. As the ship went down many aboard took refuge in their cabins and they were simply crushed to death as the ship sank to a depth of over ten thousand feet. Nothing would have been left of their bodies except perhaps their footwear after a few years had gone by. It was things like this that led the Ballard expedition to try to keep the exact location the ship a secret but, however, many others would find the remains and would seek to profit from what they had salvaged there. This led to a great debate worldwide over whether this wreck was an archeological site to be harvested or whether it would remain a great graveyard for the over 1500 people who had sacrificed their lives for the forces that had brought Titanic to her untimely end. There are cases to be made on both sides of the issue because Titanic is a great treasure trove of artifacts from the so very brief Gilded Age. Recently the corporation that had harvested so many items from the ship along her miles wide debris field offered them at auction with an appraised value of around 189 million dollars. We were privileged to see some of this collection displayed in Nashville, Tennessee a few days before the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. As we viewed what was on display we were attracted to a display of children’s items and as we viewed some children’s marbles we simply broke down crying. So many, we are sure, have done the same thing over the years as Titanic still has this special ability, one hundred years later, to simply reach inside someone and steal their heart.

Perhaps the nicest thing to happen to so many Titanic followers was the release of the 1997 film, simply named Titanic. The movie was, in so many ways, faithful to the ship and the tragedy although so many film critics dismissed it as a fluffy love story for teenagers because of its concentration on the almost Romeo and Juliet like narrative between its two young lovers. The three hours and fifteen minutes of the film lasted longer than the two hour and forty minute sinking of the ship but it was and still is one of the quickest times that so many have ever spent in a theater environment. Titanic, the movie, was the first film to ever draw a billion dollars in film history.

So, now we are past the centennial of Titanic and many are predicting that she will now fade away into history. That may depend on what history we face and create as a civilization just down the road. The greatest lessons that Titanic can teach us are about greed, sacrifice and love. It was greed that drove Titanic to an early grave. It was sacrifice that caused so many to give their loved ones a final goodbye on both sides of that issue. And, it was the love that the survivors exhibited to their precious lost ones over a lifetime that still affects us to this very day. None of them live among us any longer but the last one with any memory of the event to pass away, at the last Titanic convention that she attended simply told those there that she hoped that they would not forget them. And, it is, after all, our duty to ourselves, to them, and to the future not to do that. Because, at its essence, if we lose Titanic, we lose one of the very best parts of ourselves!

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.