The centennial of the great ship Titanic which sank 100 years ago… April 15, 1912… and why she sails still in our minds.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Authors program note. You cannot pick up a newspaper this week, or turn on the television… or even snatch a glance at your SmartFone without seeing the single word “Titanic” for this is the centennial not merely of a ship, albeit the grandest on earth, but of an entire cottage industry and of people worldwide who cannot get enough of the ship once called — without irony — “Ship of Dreams”, “Last Word in Luxury,” and “Millionaire’s Special.”
… But that was before she struck an iceberg and became a thing not only of history but of imagination, fascination, persistence… the most famous ship of all the ships which have ever sailed the world’s broad seas.
The facts.
11:40 pm April 14, 1912, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg.
12:07 am April 15, 1912 RMS Titanic sank, taking with her 1500 passengers and crew.
Ships of every kind had sunk before in human history; even ships on their maiden voyage, like Titanic. Passengers and crew had gone down with these ships before. Why then has Titanic seized us so, so that even the smallest detail of this ship and her catastrophic end is grasped with enthusiasm, avidity, and reverence?
To answer this question, we must start with the undeniable facts about this great engine of human ingenuity, human craft… and, as it happened, human hubris and human ineptitude.
Born to be a symbol… but not the symbol she became, the symbol which will always be a part of her riveting tale.
First of all, this is the story of men, rich men, business men, visionaries all. Not until the “unsinkable” Molly Brown (1867-1932) enters the picture in the early morning hours of April 15, at the helm of one of the too-few lifeboats, does a woman emerge… and it is significant, I think, that when woman emerges into the sharp, unremitting glare of history, she is doing the humanitarian work which has always been hers, saving souls and mending lives from the consequences of the ideas run amuck of their bruised and imperfect menfolk.
Titanic is the story of men who dreamed, who set the highest goal, who raised the considerable funds required, who insisted upon perfection… upon unexampled luxury and never-before seen efficiency, speed, and nautical mastery… of men who got everything they wanted to gain their soaring goal… but who, in the event, made error after error, thereby dooming their inspiring project, like Icarus who insisted upon flying close to the sun… and paid for his insistence with a watery death.
Titanic’s end on April 15 is one of two dates you should remember if you are interested in why male-dominated society, which was the order of this Edwardian day, began to crack and crumble; the other, of course, is July 28, 1914 when the great nations of monarchical Europe turned their full attention and resolution to the exacting business of destroying each other and a cultured civilization millennia in the making. After such glaring instances of bombast, arrogance, and miscalculation the world had enough of the very idea of male superiority. All that was missing from this sea- change was a painter of brilliance to immortalize Molly Brown, vital, vulgar, outspoken, practical, American, and very, very rich, in her moment of unimagined triumph as she brought her lifeboat of dazed and frail humanity to safety while great Titanic, her blazing brilliance still afloat, sank beneath the calm sea on that night of terror — and courage.
“God himself could not sink this ship.”
This is the most famous quotation about Titanic. It is also apocryphal, though (suitably) Captain Edward J. Smith said this several years before his plum (and last) assignment: “I cannot imagine any condition which would cause a ship to founder…. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.” This same Captain Edward J. Smith, always pictured as a man promoted above his abilities, went down with his ship, aware that no other course was possible for a pukka English gentleman… a decision which spared him a lifetime of the denigration, contempt and obloquy  which thereby accrued to the account of J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, who made sure he lived by disregarding the immemorial protocol: “women and children first.”
(Some) vindication for Captain Smith and all the men who created Titanic.
Good stories need good story tellers, people of dedication, committed to discovering all facts, and presenting them in a way that not only captures the imagination of people… but does whatever is necessary to hold that imagination until the story is well and truly told. Here Titanic has been blessed indeed… most notably by Walter Lord, now by Tim Maltin.
Walter Lord, a man to remember.
Walter Lord (1917-2002) was the right man for the arduous job of telling Titanic’s story just so. As a boy he traveled on RMS Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship and he conceived a passion for how such a marvel could simply disappear. What might cause nightmares in other children made Lord want to know more. And so years later, in 1955, his mesmerizing book was published to reviews which indicated at once that here was a classic, a page-turner, the stark sobering truth told in language that held you captive and made you read, though the matter was often horrifying and always dismaying.
In due course, Lord’s great achievement, “A Night to Remember”, became a 1958 film to remember. No one interested in the whys and wherefors of Titanic can afford to miss either. Thus Lord deserves his ineradicable connection with the ship that obsessed him until the day he died.
The benefaction of Tim Maltin.
Tim Maltin is a zealot, a man obsessed with truth — and exoneration. He is well known in Titanic circles, where his book “101 Things You Thought  You Knew About The Titanic – But Didn’t” is often cited. Maltin’s research, reported in his new e-book “Titanic: A Very Deceiving Night”, is significant. It poses the probability of a natural cause for what occurred, namely that icy waters created ideal conditions for an unusual kind of mirage that hid icebergs from lookouts and confused a nearby ship as to the liner’s identity, delaying rescue efforts for hours.
Thus his conclusion, soothing to family members and the unsettled spirts of the shroudless dead, that there was no blundering, just people doing the best they could under unexampled duress.
Earth’s nearness to the moon and the sun, a fatal factor.
Researchers from Texas State University-San  Marcos and Sky & Telescope magazine reported in the magazine’s April issue that there was another significant natural factor. They report that the Earth’s closeness to moon and sun — a proximity not matched in more than 1000 years — created much more ice than usual, including the fatal iceberg some of which uncomprehending passengers playfully used to ice their cocktails.Surely, they had nothing to worry about on this “unsinkable” masterpiece…
Sadly, they did not know that the rare gravitational pulls producing record tides — and record  ice — between December 1911 and February 1912  signalled the end of all… ship, most passengers and crew, and any vestige of cosmic certainly and the comfortable verities of the Victorians. Thus Titanic’s gliding descent into communal memory was in fact the first ceremony of note for our own nightmares… That is why we are fascinated by Titanic… compelled by her story of hell… for we are all passengers on this tragic vessel where “Nearer My God To Thee” may have been the last arrangement the brave band played as their world ended around them. We may have good need of it ourselves.  Go then to any search engine and listen to this hymn. And while you’re there, listen, too, to the score by William Alwyn (1905-1985) for that best of Titanic’s many films, “A Night To  Remember,” for it precisely captures the mixture of grandiloquence and menace required.