“When you’re in very deep water, you’re dead before you realize that something is happening, so it’s just not a problem.” – Paul-Henry Nargeolet
111 years ago a grand ship slipped beneath the ocean, taking with her 1500 souls. Her loss was so unexpected and so tragic that it left an indelible mark on the world. She changed how we thought, how we acted toward each other, and even the very face of the marine industry as a whole. It’s because of her that we have safety drills and iceberg patrols.
And those of us who continue to love her to this day, stayed pretty quietly in our little corner of the historical research world. The Titanica community is not huge, I imagine there are perhaps 100,000 of us world wide. Most of us are the armchair variety, content to watch our documentaries and delve into books of theories of a long past event. The rest of the world pretty much ignores us, after all we don’t have historical reenactments and replica battle uniforms. We’re a fairly quiet bunch (unless you get one of us going on the switch theory).
But in the last few days, the world has shone its spotlight back out to our little corner of obsession. And our little community has responded as best we can with grace and compassion.
Because we are also grieving. In a very layered and complex way, we are grieving.
The loss of the Titan sub was purely and completely avoidable. There were corners cut and safety measures ignored, and to those of us who know her history and her story – the parallels to the wreck the Titan was diving are all too obvious. These voyages should never have been happening in the first place. She is not a tourist attraction, she is a grave, and she has already been violated enough.
We are grieving because we lost one of our own; there’s a reason PH was known as ‘Mr Titanic’, he has left a hole in our communal hearts that will not soon be healed. But we are also grieving because the ship that we love, which has already been through so much, is being shoved into the spotlight in a way that she does not deserve. She did not claim these lives, human pride and greed did, much like it was human pride and miscommunication that sent her to the bottom in the first place.
My heart goes out to the families of those lost. Unlike the passengers who walked her decks so long ago, these men knew the risks – PH especially knew the risks – but no matter how foolish your choices, you expect the companies providing you with those opportunities to have been properly vetted, certified and checked. If you go skydiving you expect the company to have checked the parachutes. Their deaths were due to foolish decisions and bad choices, but that doesn’t mean their deaths are worthy of celebrations. Their deaths are not some kind of victory over the rich, or a blow to the idea of capitalism. All those things will go on, the world will go on, it will just go on without one foolish CEO (who’s wife has now lost 3 family members to the Titanic’s story, two of them just happened to be 111 years ago), one amazing 77 year old researcher, one billionaire, one father, and one 19 year old boy. That’s not a victory, that is simply a tragedy. A tragedy no more valid or invalid than any of the others that take place every day all over the world.
I am proud of my small corner of the historical community through all this. I like to think that we have shown that Titanic still exists in grace and elegance, as she always did and always will. And I hope the mocking spotlight of social media turns away from us soon, and allows us to grieve in peace. There are, after all, much bigger things for the world to worry about right now.
Rest in peace, to her, to them, and to all those they rest with.