Friday, 13 April 2012
One hundred years ago today, the Titanic was venturing on her maiden voyage. She launched from Southampton, England, on April 10th, stopped in France later that day, then Belfast, Ireland the next day.
The RMS Titanic was intended to be the third in a trio of ships – the other two being the Olympic and the Oceanic – that was to make a transatlantic journey every few weeks from England to New York.
The Titanic first averted disaster about five minutes after embarking. She was so heavy, the water displacement caused both of the Oceanic and the USS City of New York (docked nearby) to be lifted by a bulge of water, then dropped into a trough. New York’s mooring cables couldn’t take the sudden tension increase and snapped. The ship swiug her around stern-first towards Titanic. The two ships avoided a collision by about 4 feet. The incident delayed the Titanic for about an hour while the City of New York was brought under control.
Exactly 100 years ago today, the Titanic covered 597 standard miles heading southwest in the North Atlantic.
Saturday, 14 April 2012
100 years ago today, the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. This one, actually:
The ship struck the berg at 11:40 PM (local time).
Several years ago, I read the book Titanic: A Survivor’s Story, by Col. Archibald Gracie. Gracie spent the night (or would that be early morning?) of the disaster standing on an overturned lifeboat. In the panic to release the lifeboats, one of them snapped from the rigging and tumbled to the water as things always to when they fall: with the wrong side facing up. The weight of two dozen men standing on an upside down boat kept it below the surface about a foot, and the men struggled to keep the circulation in their freezing legs and feet. Go read his book, it was an amazing eyewitness tale.
Sunday, 15 April 2012
…And today is the anniversary of the sinking.
The oldest living survivor of the Titanic is Milvina Dean, who lost her father in the disaster. She and her parents and brother were headed to America to start a new life in the midwest. But upon losing her husband, Milvina’s mother decided to return to England and so Milvina, who was supposed to live her life in the USA, ended up living her entire life in England. She was two months old at the time of the voyage and passed away on May 31, 2009, at 97 years old.
Milvina, at right, and her brother Bertram (also a Titanic survivor).
Here are some linguistic outgrowths from the disaster (taken from AWAD):
The disaster has also cemented many idioms in the language. “To rearrange chairs on the deck (of the Titanic)” is to engage in a futile or entirely pointless activity.
Another such idiom is “And the band played on.” Although the selfless members of the band continued playing music to soothe and distract panicked passengers on the sinking ship, the term is now derogatory and implies putting one’s head in the sand in the face of an approaching disaster.
On August 6, 2001, Jennifer and I toured the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Not only was this the best museum we toured during our 8-day Canadian vacation, it was also one of the best museums I’ve ever visited. It holds a considerable collection of Titanic memorabilia. Halifax was the nearest major post to the disaster and, as such, launched rescue boats and saw many survivors pass through (and some victims – as the nearby Fairview Lawn Cemetary attests). While there, we purchased the book Titanic Remembered, which, while not an eyewitness account like the book I noted above, provides a good overview of the ship, the disaster, and the aftermath – which accounted, in large part, to its lasting fame. The book contains photos of the permanent collection of Titanic artifacts housed at the museum. The book was a great handbook to have at the museum, as little maritime flag icons next t certain photos indicated that the subject of the photo was housed at the museum.
Jennifer and I placed our museum admission stickers on the inside back cover of the book.
