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Titanic still captures imaginations more than a century after sinking

By Paul Collins - For The Telegraph | Apr 3, 2021

Interior view of the White Star RMS Titanic, showing a restaurant reception room, date unknown. (AP Photo)

When RMS Titanic, the pride of the White Star line, was launched in 1912, there was nothing in the world that could compare with her. At over 46,000 tons and two and a half football fields in length, she was a massive gleaming symbol of the age of grace and ease. For all intents and purposes, she was an outcropping of the excessive hubris and power of those who built her, and those who sailed aboard her into the icy depths of eternity. Titanic also symbolized the core values and social conventions of a time that has now vanished into the foggy bogs of history.

There is no other maritime disaster that stirs our collective imagination and that still captures our fascination with such an enduring allure more than the sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912. Her loss dealt a mighty blow to the arrogance and rigid class system of the age.

In the face of the many horrific disasters that have sent shockwaves around the world over the decades such as the Hindenburg, the loss of the Challenger Space Shuttle and the tragedy of 9/11, it is the fate of the fabled British ocean liner that was called ‘the ship of dreams’ that still holds us in its iron grip. Touted by her builders as being unsinkable, in a strange way she still seems to live today even though what’s left of her has rested on the bottom of the North Atlantic, over two miles down, for over a hundred years. In the minds of many, there is still an indelible, timeless and pristine image of her sailing proudly across the open water.

Asked about why the Titanic still has such a hold on so many people today, almost 109 years after she went down, noted Titanic historian Don Lynch, of the Titanic Historical Society in Springfield, Massachusetts, a man who has actually explored the wreck in a deep dive submersible, who assisted James Cameron on the 1997 blockbuster movie, ‘Titanic,’ and has co-authored the book Titanic: An Illustrated History, says, “It’s an incredible story that if it appeared in a fictional novel people would think it was unbelievable. The largest ship in the world, on its maiden voyage, loaded with wealthy and influential people, is called unsinkable and yet it strikes an iceberg and sinks so slowly that all kinds of dramatic situations can be acted out. Add to that the president of the line being on board, as well as the president of the company that designed and built it.”

On April 10, 1912 she set sail from Southampton, England on her maiden voyage to New York carrying 2,228 passengers and crew members. At 11:40 p.m. on the cold clear night of Sunday, April 14th, traveling at full speed, she careened into an iceberg 800 miles east of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. It took only seconds for the great mountain of ice to rip open a 300 foot gash along the starboard side of Titanic’s steel plated double hull. It took only a little over two hours and twenty minutes for her slip beneath the frigid waters of the North Atlantic taking over 1,500 souls with her to the bottom. To this day, her maiden voyage is perhaps the most well-known voyage in history, for the loss of life was simply unimaginable as of the 2,228 people on-board, only 711 survived; a tragedy of epic proportion.

FILE - In this April 10, 1912 file photo the Titanic leaves Southampton, England on her maiden voyage. The company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic shipwreck has indefinitely delayed plans to retrieve and exhibit the vessel’s radio equipment because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a court filing made by the firm on Friday Jan. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/File)

When Titanic set sail for New York, she was considered the ultimate state-of-the-art passenger liner outfitted with what was, at that time, state-of-the-art technology. In today’s world, she was akin to the first 747 jumbo jet that rolled off the Boeing line. Unparalleled in size, luxury and technology, the one fatal flaw in her design and outfitting was the fact that there were not nearly enough lifeboats to accommodate everyone on-board. The answer to the question of why can be found in the fact that she was deemed unsinkable by the epically arrogant men who built her; again, a reflection of the collective mindset of the Edwardian era, a period that was known as “the gilded age.” Her first class passenger list was made up of the who’s who of the day. It included Isadore Strauss, the co-owner of Macy’s, and his wife, Ida, mining magnet Benjamin Guggenheim, celebrated author and historian, Archibald Gracie and millionaires John Jacob Astor and ‘The unsinkable Molly Brown.’

The loss of this grand lady still ranks as the disaster to end all disasters. Across the decades there have been many movies made about her short life, the aforementioned 1997 James Cameron epic ‘Titanic’ being the one that sticks in most people’s minds. Additionally, scores of books have been written about the Titanic and the people who were aboard on her ill-fated maiden voyage as well. Again, Don Lynch is among those who have written definitive books on the subject. In the final analysis, this disaster may have been the single event that signaled the end of the Edwardian era.

Asked for his thoughts on the luminaries of those times, Lynch says, “Not sure what you mean by ‘thoughts.’ They were human, just like everyone else on board, but their lives tended to be more interesting to people today just as they were to people back then.” Asked about what interests him about the Titanic, he offers, “I tend to focus more on the personal dramas and stories.”

Additionally, when asked about what it is about Titanic that sets her apart from tragedies such as the Challenger Space Shuttle and 9/11, Lynch says, “Again, the length of time that allowed for so many dramatic stories to be acted out. The Challenger was over instantly. 9/11 certainly had many dramatic stories, but it wasn’t confined to one location the way the Titanic was. There’s something about the finite location that gives the Titanic disaster more of a focus.” As for the question of will the Titanic Historical Society in Springfield reopen once the pandemic is behind us, Lynch says, “Absolutely.”

Today, the undimmed mystique and timeless allure of the Titanic still holds people in its grasp over a hundred years after that fateful, chilly, star-filled Sunday night in April of 1912 when she slipped beneath the frigid water of a sea that was reportedly as smooth as glass. Her legend still captures our collective imagination and still draws us in. We are still captivated by her. I believe that somewhere deep inside of all of us, we imagine ourselves onboard the Titanic, and we secretly wonder how we might have acted on that infamous long ago night. I know that I do.

Paul Collins is a freelance writer from Southborough, Massachusetts.

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