100 Years

One hundred years ago tonight the RMS Titanic sank two and a half miles to the bottom of the North Atlantic. Why has this tragedy fascinated us for so long? There have been other shipwrecks, but none have captured the imagination like The Titanic. I am guilty too, I will usually stop and watch if one of the myriad of Titanic documentaries is on the Nat Geo channel. I will tell you about a funny one in a minute.

The Titanic is so interesting because it was the perfect combination of many elements. It was the largest ship in the world at the time. It was state of the art, the culmination of Gilded Age progress. It was proudly promoted as “unsinkable,” daring to defy Mother Nature and God themselves. After all of this dizzying progress through the Industrial Revolution and ruthless Gilded Age capitalism (I know the ship was British, but close enough), had mankind finally overcome chance and nature’s whim? Had we become true masters of our own destiny? The luxury was unprecedented, you had the distinct class differences onboard, which was a real factor in determining who would survive and who would not. So, technology, class, hubris…all elements for some great drama. And it was the maiden voyage. I doubt we would be so interested if this had happened on her 23rd voyage across the Atlantic. It also marked the end of an era. The Imperialist Era was about to reach a stage where there were going to be consequences for the Imperialist powers, and the embers of the Gilded Age were dying out. 1912 was only two years before the world erupted into the chaos and slaughter of World War I. Titanic sank on the precipice of the Modern Age. I think it is all of these things, plus the real drama of the stories, both of the survivors and the dead. Stories of heroes and cowards at the inadequate lifeboats.

Have you seen the James Cameron documentary they’ve been showing on Nat Geo this week, I forget the exact title, but something along the lines of “James Cameron’s Last Word on the Titanic”? It is genuinely interesting and well done, but what is so funny is what an egotistical ass Cameron is throughout. He assembles about a dozen experts on Titanic, from historians to naval engineers, and sits them down in a conference in order to definitively determine exactly how Titanic broke up and sank. Now, Cameron really is an expert. He has personally gone to the wreckage about a dozen times, and hearing him talk he does sound like an engineer. But still. I would say 80% of the time Cameron is talking, and whenever one of his experts tries to speak up and offer theories or ideas, Cameron interrupts him and either co-opts the idea making it sound like his own or he dismisses the idea and then launches into one of his own. It is like he gathered them all together so they could listen to his theories, vs. having a real conference of equals. One expert ruefully comments at one point, "Jim (Cameron) will listen to other ideas, but you better have all of your facts in a row, dancing in perfect rhythm" (or close to that, but it was funny). Like I said, the doc is interesting, but I enjoyed even more watching Cameron's ego overwhelm a room full of experts he had assembled ostensibly to exchange ideas.

Oh, BONUS anniversary. Not only did the Titanic sink 100 years ago tonight, but 47 years earlier than that tonight Lincoln was shot.