Sail On – At Sea – [06/02/2017]

“Write a book and before you know it you’re living with her. Before you know it you’re married to her. And let me tell you something, there is no divorcing Titanic. Not ever” ~ Her Name, Titanic

It is difficult to understand or explain what Titanic means to me, her roots run deep and have affected me as long as I can remember. What started as terror has become scholarly interest (okay some would say obsession) and if I could make my living studying her, I would jump at that chance. She’s symbolic, she grabs you and she speaks to you. You do not forget her.

But it seems we have not learned from her.

Or perhaps we have just forgotten what we learned all those years ago. Forgotten the lesson that is buried under the water.

Pride cometh before…

They said she was unsinkable, and then they said she was unfindable. Soon, she will be gone. Because we simply cannot leave well enough alone.

She has become a multi-million dollar business when, if she could express herself, I’m sure all she wants is to be left alone with her ghosts and her tears and the cold water.  Had she plummeted just a few feet to the side of where she lies, she would have been lost down a crevasse. I have often wondered if that might not have been better. When Ballard first found her, he refused to give out the coordinates, to this day, despite all my digging and reading, I’ve yet to find out what (or how much) caused him to break that vow of silence. Had he not, we would know less perhaps, but she would have peace. As it is, the salvage attempts have caused more damage than they have insight…

We challenged the forces of nature, nature pushed back, and is now reclaiming that which we challenged her with. The truth is that there has been no ship like her since. Modern liners, while faster, larger, and “fancier” are neither as sleek or nor as luxurious. As the book I’m currently reading said “There has never been another ship like Titanic, because it simply hurt too much when we lost her.”

Here, on this particular itinerary, she is everywhere. There is a Canadian connection to the disaster that few even think about. They think about Belfast, and New York, and the Carpathia and the Californian, but it was not they who dealt with the aftermath, who dealt with the gruesome task of numbering and bringing in the lost. That fell to Canada, to Halifax, and it is why 150 souls from the most famous shipwreck in history rest in Canadian soil. When they sent out the cable ships to the wreck, they paid the crew double and extra rum rations, because they knew what the work was going to be.  Many of the bodies were returned to the ocean, for there were not enough coffins or embalming supplies onboard. And even in death, the class system survived: first class was carried off in coffins, second and third in canvas bags, crew? Crew in open stretchers.

And the world mourned, and then the world forgot. Until over seventy years later, a determined ocean explorer found what no one thought could be found. And she woke up, so to speak.

Something about this ship touched the public’s conciseness. It was a disaster that changed the world, the reason that the liners I travel on have spare lifeboats and life jackets, the reason we are drilled so constantly and know exactly where everything goes down to the last step…traces back to that cold night in April over 100 years ago.

And now the world stands on the brink once again, we challenge the planet and think we will win, that somehow “conquering” nature makes us stronger, that not acknowledging that we are so very dependent on something so very fragile and carefully balanced somehow makes us more powerful. We constantly think only of the next great thing we can achieve, rather than thinking of the cost that it may bring to us, and those who love us, and who come after us.

We have not learned. For all our study and all our pride we have not learned.

We are still on a ship, metaphorically speaking, and one has to wonder…are there really enough lifeboats?