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.

The first, the last, the epic journey of RMS Titanic, and you are there. Some centennial observations.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. You know Titanic. It is the most famous ship that ever sailed… and the most famous ship that foundered, listed, and sank. It is this ship I ask you to board with me now, having cleared your mind of everything you know, every thought and impression you have ever had about this great ship, and so recapture the state of mind you would have had when you boarded her at Southampton, England 10 April, 1912. For you are weighing anchor towards destiny… but do not know it, no one does.

The Ritz afloat.

The White Star Line was an enterprise that dreamed dreams of magnitude, dreams of floating palaces, of luxury that made you catch your breath and hurry back to record what you saw in your diary, which your grandchildren would savor, a treasured heirloom forever. They brought the very idea of awe to their work… and it was nothing but the very truth, a source of pride to an empire that existed solely because of its command of the seas.

Born in Belfast.

The idea for Titanic and her sister ships RMS Olympic and RMS Britannic commenced in mid-1907 when White Star Line’s chairman, J. Bruce Ismay, met with American financier J. Pierpont Morgan, the man who controlled White Star Line’s parent corporation, the International Mercantile Marine Co. These men had everything… and so, of course, they wanted more. And they had the means to get it.

They insisted, they were adamant, Titanic must be the ultimate in every single element, every feature, every component, the dernier cri, the ship for which even the word acme was not good enough.

Thus they hired the renowned firm of Harland and Wolff, giving them carte blanche, with but a single command: the result must be the best, unrivalled, unexampled; colossus in the age of colossi, the incontrovertible symbol of this greatest age of man and his wondrous works.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was stinted for Titanic, and if six men were killed constructing her, with 246 injuries overall, 28 of them “severe” (meaning loss of limb), why, what did that signify… great enterprises have great costs.

Launched 31 May, 1911.

Of the many proud days in Belfast, this was amongst the proudest for this was a day when the intricate skills of the men of this turbulent city were on best display. Project supervisor Lord Pirrie, J. Pierpont Morgan and J. Bruce Ismay were joined by over 100,000 jubilant, God-fearing people who cheered to the very echo the ship, its sublime grace, the officials who dreamed, the designers who imagined, and the small army of workers who constructed this masterpiece.

So you who read of these happenings longed to be part of Titanic and its gilded future… rather impulsively buying two tickets, a present (rather expensive to be sure) for your wife, for an event you would never forget, of that you were sure.

Thus you found yourself in Southampton… head high, walking up the gangway… where you heard the unmistakable sound of a fashionable waltz, “Songe d’Automne”… it was exquisite… if a trifle sad for such a glad occasion. Yes, haunting, beautiful… mentally noting you would ask the band to play it en route when you wanted just the right sound for a perfect evening…

Thus did the great ship sail on… with no one imagining that she would soon become renowned not for every aspect of nautical expertise, but for hubris, arrogance, ineptitude and for an end that would rival the very essence of Hell itself.

11:40 pm 14 April, 1912. The end begins.

At 11:39 pm of its final night afloat, the magnificent Titanic was a glorious vision, lighting heaven itself, steaming to a ceremonial entrance in New York City, the happy berth of 2,223 people, including the creme de la creme of European and American Society, names you knew, admired, envied.

Just one minute later, suffering a glancing blow from an iceberg whilst maneuvering to avoid it, Titanic began its transformation into a metaphor, not for man’s greatness and technical abilities but for his littleness in the face of unkind and unrelenting Nature, becoming a matter of myth, not merely history.

“No, ‘t is not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ‘t is enough, ‘t will serve.” (“Romeo and Juliet”).

And so it did… a mere gash in the pristine hull an invitation for the gelid waters of the ice-flecked Atlantic to rush in, mocking the high works of man, drowning them without any effort at all, their merest motion enough for the gravest consequences.

In such times, the very best and the very worst of man’s behaviors are evidenced… how one demands that half-filled life boats be lowered into the calm sea, the only chance to live, whist another, unbidden, gives up a place of safety in that very boat, to ensure the life of a total stranger. The remaining moments on doomed Titanic evince all, telling evidence of who we are and what we may do at anytime, to anyone, for good or ill.

Then came the moment you had to decide…a single moment that shows who you are… and determines what you must do. The moment is charged with importance; it is a life or death decision… and you must make it now, decisively, without regret or recrimination, and absolutely no opportunity to alter it, even if you could.

“Darling, get in the life boat.”

And so you, like every other passenger traveling with a loved one, must act. Must do the right thing, although that thing may cost you your life. And this action must be prompt, for the great thing that was once astonishing Titanic is sinking faster now, its frightful end apparent, and with it your fate.

Thus, you look into your beloved’s eyes and realize that your lives are now separating forever… and the pain is more than you can bear. Then, as her life boat is lowered, you remember a token, sacred now, in your pocket. A locket… with pictures of you both and the single line, “Remember, 14 April, 1912″, the happy day you meant, a lifetime ago, to memorialize… Giving this is the last time you touch her hand… a fact she will never forget and will cherish forever.

Now trapped on the sloping deck, you search your soul for whatever comfort you can derive… and resolve not to die here, passive, but to jump to your fate. As you do, you hear the band still playing; the song you first heard upon boarding, the “Songe d’Automne”, now not merely a waltz… but a hymn for a ship, an era… and now… for you.

Author’s note: Of all the people who sailed on Titanic’s only voyage, just 710 survived. The remainder heard the valiant band play on, until it reached its final arrangement. There is good reason to suppose that was the “Songe d’Automne’. It was composed by Archibald Joyce, the “English Waltz King”. We shall never know for sure, because the entire band went down with the ship. Find it now in any search engine and think on its pathetic history and its final performance on the fateful ship Titanic.

*** We invite you to post your comments to this article below