On April 15, in 1912, the unsinkable ship, RMS TITANIC, sank. It went down with 1500 souls. The sinking of the TITANIC was and is one of the spookiest, and eeriest events in human history, which is why it has an ongoing fascination, and a total cult status.
1912 was a very bad year for the British Empire; a year which was a precursor, a presentiment, of all the suffering the British people were doomed to suffer in the 20th Century.
In 1912, Robert Falcon Scott drove his brave men to the South Pole; only to discover the Norwegians had gotten there first. Bravery cannot overcome ineptitude.
In 1912, the sea faring genius of the British people went down to the sea, to do business on the great waters; with the finest ship ever built. Only to see that epitome of British engineering sink on its maiden voyage, by hitting, in a VAST ocean, an iceberg. What are the chances?
Genius does not overcome bad luck, or DIVINE PAYBACK.
Lincoln thought America's Civil War was Divine Payback for the sin of Slavery. This Blogger posits that all the suffering of the heroic, stoic British people in the 20th Century was Divine Payback for inventing the concentration camp to defeat the Boers (it takes a really racist society to starve blue eyed blond, Protestant children for diamonds); for allowing the Irish famine to depopulate Ireland of pesky Irish; for being unspeakable in their vengeance on Indians for the Sepoy Mutiny; for the Opium War, fought to force China into becoming a massive opium den, or the war against the Zulu.
The 1912 sinking of the TITANIC was the first installment of the Divine Payback.
(only three smoke stacks worked, the fourth was a prop)
(the last picture of the TITANIC afloat ever taken)Once this Blogger went to a convention of TITANIC fanatics in Long Beach. They did not dress as Klingons or Starship Troopers; but they were quite a bunch, just as dedicated as Trekkers but with loftier goals.
The real issue for them was this: Was the sinking preordained? There was a novel, THE WRECK OF THE TITAN written fourteen years before the actual sinking, which described the sinking in detail. Real life adhered to that novel in detail.
The last TITANIC survivor was Millvina Dean; she is now dead. There are no TITANIC survivors left.
Random thoughts about the sinking, before this Blogger turns this blog over to a very vivid account of the sinking from Elizabeth Shutes, TITANIC survivor, recorded in 1913 (note the courage of the two American men) and a comparison between the fictitious TITAN(from the 1898 novel) and the real 1912 TITANIC.
Why the sinking holds such a powerful grip on our beings is that it seems preordained. From the mentality of this writer/futurist, the interest centers on Edward Smith, the Captain of the TITANIC.
He has been under a lot of criticism since that fateful night, for speeding too fast, and even though the ship never had enough lifeboats for all the passengers and crew, he allowed the first lifeboats to row away half full.
But what this Blogger finds most interesting is his background. When he got the appointment, to Captain the TITANIC on its maiden voyage, he was Senior Captain of the WHITE STAR LINE, the shipping company which owned the TITANIC.
He granted an interview to a newspaper, after his appointment, but obviously before the maiden voyage. In it, he stated how he had been to sea for about 40 years, and that he had NEVER known disaster on the sea, never a sinking, never bad weather, never a hurricane, never a typhoon, never an emergency. He commented that he had never had a bad experience on the sea. Of all the captains, in the whole fleet, he was the ONLY one who had no experience with danger or adversity on the high seas. So when the TITANIC hit the iceberg, he knew as much about surviving on the sea, as one of the little babies who drowned.
The issue of the binoculars always fascinates interested TITANIC devotees; being an officer on the TITANIC was a great honor. Shortly before sailing, Captain Smith switched out his key officer, bringing in an old friend. The departing officer took with him the keys to the binocular cabinet in the crow's nest. Which means, the lookouts in the crows nest were scanning the dark, calm ocean for rogue icebergs by eyesight alone. The ship was carrying some of the richest people in the history of the world, and surely some of the passengers could have loaned the ship some binoculars. But the passengers were never asked. Pride on the part of the Captain? Or another factor in the preordination of the sinking.
They sent a ship out from Halifax, Canada to recover the bodies of the disaster, over three hundred TITANIC remains are buried in a cemetery there. It is troubling and a sorrowful moment to walk through the graveyard and read the names of the lost on the tombstones.
Finally, the TITANIC hulk rests at the bottom of the ocean; it will eventually be decayed and eaten away into oblivion; all the bodies have already been eaten by sea life. Eventually the only witness to the disaster will be the leather shoes at the bottom of the ocean. The Life at the bottom of the ocean does not eat leather.
AN EYEWITNESS ACOUNT OF THE SINKING From Elizabeth Shutes
“Suddenly a queer quivering ran under me, apparently the whole length of the ship. Startled by the very strangeness of the shivering motion, I sprang to the floor. With too perfect a trust in that mighty vessel I again lay down. Some one knocked at my door, and the voice of a friend said:
‘Come quickly to my cabin; an iceberg has just passed our window; I know we have just struck one.
No confusion, no noise of any kind, one could believe no danger imminent. Our stewardess came and said she could learn nothing. Looking out into the companionway I saw heads appearing asking questions from half-closed doors. All sepulchrally still, no excitement. I sat down again. My friend was by this time dressed; still her daughter and I talked on, Margaret pretending to eat a sandwich. Her hand shook so that the bread kept parting company from the chicken. Then I saw she was frightened, and for the first time I was too, but why get dressed, as no one had given the slightest hint of any possible danger? An officer’s cap passed the door. I asked: ‘Is there an accident or danger of any kind? ‘None, so far as I know’, was his courteous answer, spoken quietly and most kindly. This same officer then entered a cabin a little distance down the companionway and, by this time distrustful of everything, I listened intently, and distinctly heard, ‘We can keep the water out for a while.’ Then, and not until then, did I realize the horror of an accident at sea. Now it was too late to dress; no time for a waist, but a coat and skirt were soon on; slippers were quicker than shoes; the stewardess put on our life-preservers, and we were just ready when Mr Roebling came to tell us he would take us to our friend’s mother, who was waiting above …No laughing throng, but on either side [of the staircases] stand quietly, bravely, the stewards, all equipped with the white, ghostly life-preservers. Always the thing one tries not to see even crossing a ferry. Now only pale faces, each form strapped about with those white bars. So gruesome a scene. We passed on. The awful good-byes. The quiet look of hope in the brave men’s eyes as the wives were put into the lifeboats. Nothing escaped one at this fearful moment. We left from the sun deck, seventy-five feet above the water. ‘
Mr Case and Mr Roebling, brave American men, saw us to the lifeboat, made no effort to save themselves, but stepped back on deck. Later they went to an honoured graves.
Sometimes, the toxic masculinity of American males, so disparaged by feminists, is channeled into heroism which is mythic.
TITAN vs. TITANIC
“Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan was an 1898 novella written by Morgan Robertson. The story features the ocean liner Titan, which sinks in the North Atlantic after striking an iceberg.
Although the novel was written before the Olympic-class Titanic had even been designed, there are some remarkable similarities between the fictional and real-life counterparts. Like the Titanic, the fictional ship sank in April in the North Atlantic, and there were not enough lifeboats for the passengers. There are also similarities between the size (800 ft long for Titan versus 882½ ft long for the Titanic), speed (25 knots for Titan, 23 knots for Titanic) and life-saving equipment.
Similarities between Titanic and Titan:
- Unsinkable / indestructible
- The Titanic was the world’s largest luxury liner (882 feet, displacing 66,000 tons), and was once described as being (nearly) “unsinkable”.
- The Titan was largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men (800 feet, displacing 75,000 tons), and was considered “indestructible”.
- Number of propellers and masts’
- The Titanic had three propellers and two masts
- The Titan was equipped with three propellers and two masts
- Launched in April
- The Titanic steamed from Southampton, England on her maiden voyage in April 1912.
- The Titan was also launched in April, also from Southampton port.
- Lifeboats
- The Titanic carried only 20 lifeboats, less than half the number required for her passenger capacity of 3000.
- The Titan carried “as few as the law allowed”, 24 lifeboats, less than half needed for her 3000 capacity.
- Struck an iceberg
- Moving too fast at 23 knots, the Titanic struck an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912 in the North Atlantic, 400 miles away from Terranova.
- Also on an April night in North Atlantic 400 miles from Newfoundland (Terranova) , the Titan hit an iceberg while traveling at 25 knots.
- The Unsinkable Sank
- The unsinkable Titanic sank, and more than half of her 2207 passengers died screaming for help.
- The indestructible Titan also sank, more than half of her 2500 passengers drowning, their “voices raised in agonized screams”
Chief officer Henry Wilde wrote his sister, right before the TITANIC left for New York:" I still don't like this ship. I have a queer feeling about it."
MILLVINA DEAN, was the last survivor of the TITANIC
On the night of April 14, Millvina’s father felt the ship’s collision with an iceberg. He left his cabin to investigate and soon returned, telling his wife to dress their sleeping children and go up on deck.
Millvina, her mother and brother were placed in Lifeboat 10 and were among the first steerage passengers to escape the sinking liner. 705 people survived the disaster, but Millvina’s father, Bertram Frank Dean, who was only 25, was one of the 1,500 who perished. Like many of the men aboard, he stayed on the ship and died when it sank early, on April 15. His body, if recovered, was never identified.
EVA HART - Eva's mother did not want to sail on the TITANIC. She had had a premonition that there would be a disaster. On the way to their cabin, the TITANIC steward noticed that Mrs. Hart was nervous; so he assured her: that God Himself could not sink the TITANIC.
Hearing that, Mrs. Hart vowed to Eva's Father that she would never go to bed at night on the TITANIC; that she would stay up every night, fully clothed, waiting for God to humble them.
'I was 7, I had never seen a ship before...it looked very big...everybody was very excited, we went down to the cabin and that's when my mother said to my father that she had made up her mind quite firmly that she would not go to bed in that ship, she would sit up at night...she decided that she wouldn't go to bed at night, and she didn't!'..Eva Hart."
Eva's Father did not survive.
THE SURVIVORS-
705 People survived the most famous sinking in history.
Eight of the 705 committed suicide.
THE BEST TITANIC FILM
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER was a docudrama about the sinking of the TITANIC. It had no world famous stars, no tons of special effects, no Kate Winslet declaring her independence from male dominance by smoking cancer sticks. It was merely a BRUTAL recreation of this seminal event, when Man built a ship God Himself could not sink, and then God did sink it.
The film was based on Walter Lord’s towering book of the same name. For this Blog, the Ward Baker version of the event is far superior to the Cameron version.
Captain Stanley Lord…(No relation to Walter Lord, who wrote the book A NIGHT TO REMEMBER on which the film was based).For those of you who are versed in TITANIC lore, Captain Lord has a special, perhaps infamous place in history. He was Captain of the ship, CALIFORNIAN on the night TITANIC sank.
The CALIFORNIAN was the nearest ship to the TITANIC, and could be seen from the sinking TITANIC. The CALIFORNIAN never answered the TITANIC’s distress calls, distress signals, or distress flares. Why? No one but God will ever know.
“Over the course of the night, various officers and seamen on the deck of Californian witnessed white rockets being fired into the air over a strange ship off in the distance, totaling eight in all. Captain Lord was awakened several times and asked about the rockets to which he replied that they may be “company rockets”, to help ships identify themselves to liners of the same company. What is unclear is why Lord simply assumed this as there were no other ships in sight that night.
Meanwhile on the Titanic, after the collision, they had also spotted the lights of a ship in the distance and Fourth Officer Boxhall and Quartermaster Rowe tried in vain to contact the strange ship by Morse lamp. Observers on the deck of the Californian saw these signals and tried to signal back. However, the only person aboard the Californian with a good understanding of Morse was asleep. Not able to understand the garbled messages coming from the strange ship, (TITANIC) Captain Edward John Smith eventually concluded that signals were merely the masthead flickering and not signals at all.
“Throughout the night, no one on board the Californian attempted to wake their wireless operator, and ask him to contact the ship to ask why they were firing rockets and trying to signal them, until 5:30 AM. By then however it was too late – the Titanic had gone down at 2:20. When she had slipped below the water, the sudden disappearance of lights was interpreted by the Californian crew that she had simply steamed on her way.”
When Roy Ward Baker’s film, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER came out in 1958, Captain Lord of the CALIFORNIAN was still ALIVE. He watched it, in a crowded theater with his neighbors, and he got PISSED. “Stanley Lord was embarrassed at his portrayal in the movie and attempted to promote his own version of events. In 1958 he contacted the Mercantile Marine Service Association in Liverpool and said “I am Lord of the Californian and I have come to clear my name.”
Captain Lord’s name has never been cleared. He went to his grave belittled by his countrymen, who had just seen the film, belittled by history who remembered the film. He was belittled by what he did not do, save the drowning people of the TITANIC.
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER is a great film; it breaks your heart. The soul of the film is not artificial, and does not rely on special effects but on the stories of the people who died.
Finally, Cameron's film, TITANIC, missed its chance to make a real social statement about the rot at the heart of the British Empire in 1912. At the end of Cameron's film, he has all the survivors huddled on the deck of the rescue ship, THE CARPATHIA. He does not show the historical pregnant moment.
Which was the crew of the CARPATHIA going among the cold, wet, traumatized survivors of the worst sinking in maritime history; to ask if they were First Class or Second Class or Third Class passengers. One cannot get more Norman Conquest than that.
SURVIVORS OF THE SINKING ON CARPATHIA
“But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.” E. J. Smith, Captain of the TITANIC.
Shoes from the wreck of the TITANIC, soon all that will be left.
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