THE UNFORGETTABLE HISTORY
OF TITANIC
Making of Titanic ;
The Royal Mail Steamer Titanic was the product of intense competition
among rival shipping lines in the first half of the 20th century. In
particular, the White Star Line found itself in a battle for steamship
primacy with Cunard, a venerable British firm with two standout ships
that ranked among the most sophisticated and luxurious of their time.
Cunard’s Mauretania began service in 1907 and immediately set a speed
record for the fastest transatlantic crossing that it held for 22 years.
Cunard’s other masterpiece,
launched the same year and was lauded for its spectacular interiors. It
met its tragic end–and entered the annals of world history–on May 7,
1915, when a torpedo fired by a German U-boat sunk the ship, killing
nearly 1,200 of the 1,959 people on board and precipitating the United
States’ entry into World War 1.
The Catastrophe ;
At least five separate boards of inquiry on both sides of the
Atlantic conducted comprehensive hearings on Titanic’s sinking,
interviewing dozens of witnesses and consulting with many maritime
experts. Every conceivable subject was investigated, from the conduct of
the officers and crew to the construction of the ship. While it has
always been assumed that the ship sank as a result of the gash that
caused the compartments to flood, various other theories have emerged
over the decades, including that the ship’s steel plates were too
brittle for the near-freezing Atlantic waters, that the impact caused
rivets to pop and that the expansion joints failed, among others.
The technological aspects of the catastrophe aside, Titanic’s demise
has taken on a deeper, almost mythic, meaning in popular culture. Many
view the tragedy as a morality play about the dangers of human hubris:
Titanic’s creators believed they had built an “unsinkable” ship that
could not be defeated by the laws of nature. This same overconfidence
explains the electrifying impact Titanic’s sinking had on the public
when she was lost. There was widespread disbelief that the ship could
possibly have sunk, and, due to the era’s slow and unreliable means of
communication, misinformation abounded. Newspapers initially reported
that the ship had collided with an iceberg but remained afloat and was
being towed to port with everyone on board. It took many hours for
accurate accounts to become available, and even then people had trouble
accepting that this paradigm of modern technology could sink on her
maiden voyage, taking more than 1,500 souls with her.
