“
When the ship docks, I'm getting off with you.
This is crazy.
I know it doesn't make any sense, that's why I trust it.
”
”
James Cameron (James Cameron's Titanic)
“
What were you thinking when we were holding hands diagonally?" I ask. Jeff says, "I was thinking, 'It's going to be so hard for her when she chooses not to get on that lifeboat and stay with me.'"
I decide I can't start this marriage with a lie.
"Really?" I say. "'Cause I was thinking that it was going to be so hard for you when I got on the lifeboat and you had to stay behind." He is appalled. I plead my case. "Remember when we saw Titanic how mad I was at Kate Winslet when she climbed out of the lifeboat and back into the ship? I think she encumbered Leonardo DiCaprio. If she had gone on the lifeboat, then he could have had that piece of wood she was floating on and they both would have survived. I would never do that to you."
I wait for his response, hoping that in the twenty-first century romantic love can be defined as not lying about your plans to get on the lifeboat and remembering to get your partner some pills. He just laughs. With that settled, we begin our married life.
”
”
Tina Fey (Bossypants)
“
La memoria es como libro en el cual se escribe toda nuestra vida. Algunas veces deseamos cerrarlo y olvidarlo para no recordar todos los escabrosos detalles, y otras veces deseamos abrirlo y observarlo detenidamente, queriendo volver a sentir lo mismo que sentimos en aquel momento.
”
”
Audrey Dry (Sin mirar atrás)
“
It's all about perspective. The sinking of the Titanic was a miracle to the lobsters in the ship's kitchen. (Oct 4, 2011)
”
”
Wynne McLaughlin
“
Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever "truer." The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to "landscape" the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future?
One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each "shell" (the present) encased inside a nest of "shells" (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of "now"likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
It’s . . . From the moment we’re born we’re on the Titanic. We’re going down, we won’t survive this, it’s already been decided. Nothing can change that. But we can choose whether we’re going to run around screaming in panic, or whether we’re like the musicians who play on, bravely and with dignity, although the ship is sinking.
”
”
Benedict Wells (Vom Ende der Einsamkeit)
“
His ship was powered, and the Martian war effort was powered, by a phenomenon known as UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness—that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (The Sirens of Titan)
“
It would be difficult to tell," Wulf said. "I've always been a romantic. I've seen Casablanca twice, and I sat through the entire ordeal of Titanic".
"Didn't you enjoy Titanic?"
"I was relieved when the ship went down".
”
”
Janet Evanovich (Wicked Business (Lizzy & Diesel, #2))
“
Skip your fancy talk, Captain Lord Blackthorn. If I do your bidding, and I’m still discussing that with the Almighty, it will only be to save my arse.” Katie O'Reilly to Captain Lord Jack Blackthorn in "Titanic Rhapsody
”
”
Jina Bacarr
“
That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.
At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar."
"Titanic City" was born.
It's the song, they said.
No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.
It's the sex, they whispered.
Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo.
"Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead.
”
”
Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
“
The Titanic woke them up. Never again would they be quite so sure of themselves. In technology especially, the disaster was a terrible blow. Here was the "unsinkable ship" -- perhaps man's greatest engineering achievement -- going down the first time it sailed.
But it went beyond that. If this supreme achievement was so terribly fragile, what about everything else? If wealth mean so little on this cold April night, did it mean so much the rest of the year?
”
”
Walter Lord (A Night to Remember)
“
—¿Cómo una persona puede sentirse sola cuando está rodeada de gente? —le pregunté.
—Supongo que en eso consiste la soledad —me respondió—. En aislarte cuando se supone que tienes que sentirte rodeada.
”
”
Audrey Dry (Sin mirar atrás)
“
Your mom is like the Titanic: if you stay with the ship, you'll go down too. Those people who clung to the boat ultimately perished. You need to get yourself on a lifeboat and get as far away as you can.
”
”
Dina Silver (Finding Bliss)
“
The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is the deadliest disaster in maritime history, with losses dwarfing the death tolls of the famous ships Titanic and Lusitania. Yet remarkably, most people have never heard of it. On January 30, 1945, four torpedoes waited in the belly of Soviet submarine S-13.
”
”
Ruta Sepetys (Salt to the Sea)
“
Naphta loathed the bourgeois state and its love of security. He found occasion to express this loathing one autumn afternoon when, as they were walking along the main street, it suddenly began to rain and, as if on command, there was an umbrella over every head. That was a symbol of cowardice and vulgar effeminacy, the end product of civilization. An incident like the sinking of the Titanic was atavistic, true, but its effect was most refreshing, it was the handwriting on the wall. Afterward, of course, came the hue and cry for more security in shipping. How pitiful, but such weak-willed humanitarianism squared very nicely with the wolfish cruelty and villainy of slaughter on the economic battlefield known as the bourgeois state. War, war ! He was all for it – the universal lust for war seemed quite honorable in comparison.
”
”
Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain)
“
In the same way that the stewards of the Titanic were more concerned about the unemptied ashtrays on the bar than the enormous hole in the side of the ship which was letting in zillions of gallons of water, I too was worrying about the unimportant and ignoring the vital.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
If there was one thing that made Captain Lord Jack Blackthorn smile more than holding a pretty woman in his arms, it was a winning hand at cards. To his dismay at the moment he had neither.
”
”
Jina Bacarr (Titanic Rhapsody)
“
Y, entonces, en ese instante que tan solo dura un segundo, el cerebro se encarga de abrir la cerradura del cofre en el cual guardas todo lo que aprecias. Cede de tal manera que la tapa se abre y todo lo que hay en el interior sale de forma tan rápida y tan fugaz que no puedes detenerlo.
”
”
Audrey Dry (Sin mirar atrás)
“
I definitely give more chances than I should, but when I’m done, I’m done. I mean it... like, that ship has sailed... and it was the Titanic. I’m done.
”
”
Steve Maraboli
“
Titanic city" was born.
It's the song, they said.
No, the sea, the luxury, the ship.
It's the sex, they whispered.
Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo.
"Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster.
”
”
Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
“
Many of those who elected to remain might have escaped. 'Chivalry' is a mild appellation for their conduct. Some of the vaunted knights of old were desperate cowards by comparison. A fight in the open field, or jousting in the tournament, did not call out the manhood in a man as did the waiting till the great ship took the final plunge, in the knowledge that the seas round about were covered with loving and yearning witnesses whose own salvation was not assured.
”
”
The Sinking of the Titanic and Great Sea Disasters
“
Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship’s captain: But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort. E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic Captain Smith’s ship sank in 1912 in what became the most talked-about shipwreck in history.*
”
”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable)
“
In the same way that the stewards on the Titanic were more concerned about the unemptied ashtrays on the bar than the enormous hole in the side of the ship which was letting in zillions of gallons of water, I too was worrying about the unimportant and ignoring the vital. Sometimes it's easier that way. Because although there was little I could do about the huge hole, it was within my power to empty an asthray.
”
”
Marian Keyes (Watermelon (Walsh Family, #1))
“
The first chap we said was loafing, until he died. That's nearly always the verdict on a sailing ship, anyway. A man is invariably 'mouching' until he dies, and then we say, "Oh, he must have been bad after all." --Charles Lightoller
”
”
Richard Davenport-Hines (Voyagers of the Titanic: Passengers, Sailors, Shipbuilders, Aristocrats, and the Worlds They Came From)
“
Ensuring that our home planet is healthy and life sustaining is an overwhelming priority that undercuts all other human activities. The ship must first float.
Our failure to grasp these fundamental tenants of existence will be our undoing. And one thing is for certain. No calvary is going to come charging to our rescue. We are going to have to rescue ourselves or die trying.
Workable solutions are urgently needed. Saving seals and tigers or fighting yet another oil pipeline through a wilderness area, while laudable, is merely shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic. The real issue is our elementary accord with Earth and the plant and animal kingdoms has to be revitalized and re-understood.
The burning question is, How?
”
”
Lawrence Anthony (Babylon's Ark: The Incredible Wartime Rescue of the Baghdad Zoo)
“
There are many types of ships. There are wooden ships, and metal ships, and ships that sail the sea. But the best are friendships, and may they always be.” Old Irish
”
”
Penelope Carlevato (Tea on the Titanic: 100 Years Later)
“
Most people don't know that Titanic is a true story about a massive ship that sank. That ship was called The Olympic.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Powdered Saxophone Music)
“
Then, all of a sudden, there was a great black hull, stretching farther than my eye could see.
”
”
Ellen Emerson White (Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, R.M.S. Titanic, 1912 (Dear America))
“
Mrs. Carstairs is terribly excited about being aboard this particular ship, as it is the Titanic's maiden voyage, and she is suppose to be the largest ever built.
”
”
Ellen Emerson White (Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, R.M.S. Titanic, 1912 (Dear America))
“
There are no voice pipes or telegraphs, as Titanic had, and barely any brass, but so many beeps and screens that I wonder if ships will soon be able to drive themselves.
”
”
Rose George (Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, the Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes on Your Back, Gas in Your Car, and Food on Your Plate)
“
Oh, may you shun the Iceberg, By the dreadful work was wrought, And prosper by the lesson This mighty ship has taught.
”
”
J.H. McKenzie (The Titanic Disaster Poem)
“
5) More than 1,500 people perished in the Titanic disaster, while 705 people escaped in lifeboats and were eventually rescued by a ship named the Carpathia.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
Did that chicken girl compare MY ship to TITANIC ?
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Mark of Athena (The Heroes of Olympus, #3))
“
Welcome to the ship of dreams. You'll find life belts on the top of the wardrobe, just in case.
”
”
Ed W. Marsh (James Cameron's Titanic)
“
After the Titanic hit the iceberg at 11:40 P.M., the ship’s radio operator sent out an SOS. An SOS is the international distress signal in Morse code. Unfortunately, the only ship near the Titanic had turned off its radio for the night. All the other ships who received the message were too far away to help. When the Titanic sank around 2:20 A.M., she was all alone.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
In many ways, the steamships of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries had become the secular equivalent of medieval cathedrals. They were the source of endless pride to the communities and nations that built them, and were just as much an expression of men's hopes and dreams of technical perfection as the great churches had once been of hopes for spiritual purity.
”
”
Daniel Allen Butler (Unsinkable: The Full Story Of The RMS Titanic)
“
It would appear to a quoting dilettante—i.e., one of those writers and scholars who fill up their texts with phrases from some dead authority—that, as phrased by Hobbes, “from like antecedents flow like consequents.” Those who believe in the unconditional benefits of past experience should consider this pearl of wisdom allegedly voiced by a famous ship’s captain:
"But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS
Titanic Captain Smith’s ship sank in 1912 in what became the most talked-about shipwreck in history.
”
”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“
I mean, I love waking up in the morning not knowing what’s gonna happen or, who I’m gonna meet, where I’m gonna wind up. Just the other night I was sleeping under a bridge and now here I am on the grandest ship in the world having champagne with you fine people. I figure life’s a gift and I don’t intend on wasting it. You don’t know what hand you’re gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you… to make each day count.
”
”
Jack Dawson - Titanic
“
As an example of consequential knowledge— knowledge affecting decisions with meaningful consequences in people’s lives— the officers in charge of the Titanic no doubt had much complex knowledge about the intricacies of ships and navigation on the seas. But the most consequential knowledge on a particular night was the mundane knowledge of the location of particular icebergs, because collision with an iceberg is what damaged and sank the Titanic.
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Social Justice Fallacies)
“
I haven't known up 'till now why I do not want to go. But now I do know. [...] Because this is the ship that they say is unsinkable,' she replied, 'and that is flying in the face of the Almighty. That ship will never reach the other side.
”
”
Eva Hart (A Girl Aboard the Titanic: The Remarkable Memoir of Eva Hart, a 7-year-old Survivor of the Titanic Disaster)
“
Late at night, on April 14, 1912, an English ocean liner was making her first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. She was going to New York City. Carrying 2,200 passengers, the ship was four city blocks long. Most people believed the ship was unsinkable
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
I have often perplexed myself over what I saw in Nelle Snyder's aged face at that moment. It was no look of paranoia. It was a look of waiting. Perpetual waiting. That look was to come back to me sixteen years later when I heard Rose's narration at the end of James Cameron's Titanic, with its line about survivors "waiting for an absolution that never came." Yet the waiting I saw in Nelle Snyder's face seemed larger even than a waiting for absolution. It seemed vaster even than Titanic herself. Call it the waiting of the Mother of all Perished Vessels. Or of a Ship of Honeymoon Dreams perchance, with a passenger list spanning all humanity, that once proudly sailed but was lost, aeons ago, and sank to a dark, unreachable abode where nothing whatsoever can be grasped about her except her perplexing power still to haunt us.
”
”
James Glaeg
“
we learned afterward that the iceberg had ripped open probably four of her larger forward compartments on the starboard side; and also that if we had only hit the ice head on, instead of making too late an attempt to avoid it, the ship would in all probability have survived the collision.
”
”
John B. Thayer (The Sinking of the the SS Titanic April 14-15, 1912)
“
The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them, with their nuclear-family implications, as 'Fat Man and Little Boy.') And a river runs through it. And on this river, the Taedong River, is moored the only American naval vessel in captivity. It was in January 1968 that the U.S.S. Pueblo strayed into North Korean waters, and was boarded and captured. One sailor was killed; the rest were held for nearly a year before being released. I looked over the spy ship, its radio antennae and surveillance equipment still intact, and found photographs of the captain and crew with their hands on their heads in gestures of abject surrender. Copies of their groveling 'confessions,' written in tremulous script, were also on show. So was a humiliating document from the United States government, admitting wrongdoing in the penetration of North Korean waters and petitioning the 'D.P.R.K.' (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) for 'lenience.' Kim Il Sung ('Fat Man') was eventually lenient about the men, but not about the ship. Madeleine Albright didn't ask to see the vessel on her visit last October, during which she described the gruesome, depopulated vistas of Pyongyang as 'beautiful.' As I got back onto the wharf, I noticed a refreshment cart, staffed by two women under a frayed umbrella. It didn't look like much—one of its three wheels was missing and a piece of brick was propping it up—but it was the only such cart I'd see. What toothsome local snacks might the ladies be offering? The choices turned out to be slices of dry bread and cups of warm water.
Nor did Madeleine Albright visit the absurdly misnamed 'Demilitarized Zone,' one of the most heavily militarized strips of land on earth. Across the waist of the Korean peninsula lies a wasteland, roughly following the 38th parallel, and packed with a titanic concentration of potential violence. It is four kilometers wide (I have now looked apprehensively at it from both sides) and very near to the capital cities of both North and South. On the day I spent on the northern side, I met a group of aging Chinese veterans, all from Szechuan, touring the old battlefields and reliving a war they helped North Korea nearly win (China sacrificed perhaps a million soldiers in that campaign, including Mao Anying, son of Mao himself). Across the frontier are 37,000 United States soldiers. Their arsenal, which has included undeclared nuclear weapons, is the reason given by Washington for its refusal to sign the land-mines treaty. In August 1976, U.S. officers entered the neutral zone to trim a tree that was obscuring the view of an observation post. A posse of North Koreans came after them, and one, seizing the ax with which the trimming was to be done, hacked two U.S. servicemen to death with it. I visited the ax also; it's proudly displayed in a glass case on the North Korean side.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays)
“
By high school, the anorexia epidemic spreads its tentacles into the bodies and/or minds of almost every girl you know. It creeps into town and stalks its victims; girls collapse on the gymnasium floor, on the running track, in the shower. They are scraped off floors and lawns and bathtubs, shipped off to the hospital, then to rehab.
”
”
Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman (Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir)
“
The Convergence of the Twain
Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928
(Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”)
I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”. . .
VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her—so gaily great—
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.
X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one August event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said “Now!” And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
”
”
Thomas Hardy
“
The accursed ship didn't sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavour! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I have been violated; violated by a team of accountants.
”
”
Paul Murray (An Evening of Long Goodbyes)
“
On the Titanic, there were 20 lifeboats. To save all the passengers, the ship needed twice as many. But with all the confusion on board, a number of the lifeboats were not even full when they left the ship. Many third-class passengers did not have a chance to get into any of the lifeboats because they were on the lower decks and didn’t know where to go.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
In one dream, I went to a party on a cruise ship and watched a lone dolphin circling in the distance. But in the dream journal, I reported that I was actually on the Titanic and the dolphin was a shark that was also Moby Dick and also Dick Tracy and also a hard, inflamed penis, and the penis was giving a speech to a crowd of women and children and waving his gun around.
”
”
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
“
-Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction--in short, belief--grows ever 'truer.' The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
-The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to 'landscape' the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
-Symmetry demands an actual + virtualfuture, too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up--a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
-Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows--the actual past--from another such simulacrum--the actual future?
-One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each 'shell' (the present) encased inside a nest of 'shells' (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of 'now' likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.
-Proposition: I am in love with Luisa Ray.
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
Themes of descent often turn on the struggle between the titanic and the demonic within the same person or group. In Moby Dick, Ahab’s quest for the whale may be mad and “monomaniacal,” as it is frequently called, or even evil so far as he sacrifices his crew and ship to it, but evil or revenge are not the point of the quest. The whale itself may be only a “dumb brute,” as the mate says, and even if it were malignantly determined to kill Ahab, such an attitude, in a whale hunted to the death, would certainly be understandable if it were there. What obsesses Ahab is in a dimension of reality much further down than any whale, in an amoral and alienating world that nothing normal in the human psyche can directly confront.
The professed quest is to kill Moby Dick, but as the portents of disaster pile up it becomes clear that a will to identify with (not adjust to) what Conrad calls the destructive element is what is really driving Ahab. Ahab has, Melville says, become a “Prometheus” with a vulture feeding on him. The axis image appears in the maelstrom or descending spiral (“vortex”) of the last few pages, and perhaps in a remark by one of Ahab’s crew: “The skewer seems loosening out of the middle of the world.” But the descent is not purely demonic, or simply destructive: like other creative descents, it is partly a quest for wisdom, however fatal the attaining of such wisdom may be. A relation reminiscent of Lear and the fool develops at the end between Ahab and the little black cabin boy Pip, who has been left so long to swim in the sea that he has gone insane. Of him it is said that he has been “carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro . . . and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps.”
Moby Dick is as profound a treatment as modern literature affords of the leviathan symbolism of the Bible, the titanic-demonic force that raises Egypt and Babylon to greatness and then hurls them into nothingness; that is both an enemy of God outside the creation, and, as notably in Job, a creature within it of whom God is rather proud. The leviathan is revealed to Job as the ultimate mystery of God’s ways, the “king over all the children of pride” (41:34), of whom Satan himself is merely an instrument. What this power looks like depends on how it is approached. Approached by Conrad’s Kurtz through his Antichrist psychosis, it is an unimaginable horror: but it may also be a source of energy that man can put to his own use. There are naturally considerable risks in trying to do so: risks that Rimbaud spoke of in his celebrated lettre du voyant as a “dérèglement de tous les sens.” The phrase indicates the close connection between the titanic and the demonic that Verlaine expressed in his phrase poète maudit, the attitude of poets who feel, like Ahab, that the right worship of the powers they invoke is defiance.
”
”
Northrop Frye (Words with Power: Being a Second Study of the Bible and Literature)
“
The ceilings had set off a ghostly echo, giving all the desperate hilarity the quality of a memory even as I sat listening to it, memories of things I'd never known.
Charlestons on the wings of airborne biplanes. Parties on sinking ships, the icy water bubbling around the waists of the orchestra as they sawed out a last brave chorus of "Auld Lang Syne." Actually, it wasn't "Auld Lang Syne" they'd sung, the night the Titanic went down but hymns, lots of hymns, and the Catholic priest saying Hail Marys, and the first-class salon which had really looked a lot like this: dark wood, potted palms, rose silk lampshades with their swaying fringe. I really had had too much to drink. I was sitting sideways in my chair, holding tight to the arms (Holy Mary, Mother of God), and even the floors were listing, like the decks of a foundering ship; like we might all slide to the other end with a hysterical wheeee! piano and all.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
“
A song about my life If there were to be a song ‘bout my life
It would sting like a bee
It would cut like a knife
If there were to be a song ‘bout my life
It would dig deep
Scratch old wounds and make them bleed
If there were to be a song ‘bout my life
It would be quite a burden to carry
Painful and heavy
If there were to be a song ‘bout my life
It could be labelled ‘Titanic’
The unsinkable ship that sinks
If there were to be a song ‘bout my life
It would be an incomplete one
Short of words and unsung
I guess this is how it ends
”
”
Aman Kumar (A Book of Poems)
“
1) The Titanic hit the iceberg in the North Atlantic, approximately 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. 2) The Titanic was considered unsinkable because she was built with huge watertight doors to contain any possible leaks. However, when the ship hit the iceberg, six watertight compartments quickly filled up with water, dooming the ship. 3) The signal SOS was chosen as an international distress call because of the simplicity of the three letters in Morse code: three dots, three dashes, and three dots. 4) No one knows for certain exactly how long the musicians played on the Titanic, but legend says they played until the ship went down, and their last song was the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.” 5) More than 1,500 people perished in the Titanic disaster, while 705 people escaped in lifeboats and were eventually rescued by a ship named the Carpathia. 6) After the sinking of the Titanic, laws were changed so that every ship was required to have enough lifeboats to carryall its passengers. Also, the International Ice Patrol was formed, so that ships would have warning about ice conditions. 7) In 1985, a scientist named Dr. Robert Ballard discovered the undersea wreck of the Titanic.
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Tree House, #17))
“
THE ACCURSED SHIP didn’t sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavor! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I had been violated; violated by a team of accountants. Laura, prostrated by grief, lay weeping on my lap. Frank stared stolidly at the credits, over which, as a coup de grâce, a cat or cats were being strangled to the effect that “My Heart Will Go On,” which at this moment in time was not a sentiment I could endorse.
”
”
Paul Murray
“
London time, and on regarding that of the countries he had passed through as quite false and unreliable. Now, on this day, though he had not changed the hands, he found that his watch exactly agreed with the ship's chronometers. His triumph was hilarious. He would have liked to know what Fix would say if he were aboard! "The rogue told me a lot of stories," repeated Passepartout, "about the meridians, the sun, and the moon! Moon, indeed! moonshine more likely! If one listened to that sort of people, a pretty sort of time one would keep! I was sure that the sun would some day regulate itself by my watch!" Passepartout was ignorant that, if the face of his watch had been divided into twenty-four hours, like the Italian clocks, he would have no reason for exultation; for the hands of his watch would then, instead of as now indicating nine o'clock in the morning, indicate nine o'clock in the evening, that is, the twenty-first hour after midnight precisely the difference between London time and that of the one hundred and eightieth meridian. But if Fix had been able to explain this purely physical effect, Passepartout would not have admitted, even if he had comprehended it. Moreover, if the detective had been on board at that moment, Passepartout would have joined issue with him on a quite different subject, and in an entirely different manner.
”
”
Jules Verne (Around the World in Eighty Days: Titan Classics (Illustrated))
“
The musicians, who were all English, included one pianist, Theodore Ronald Brailey; three cellists, Roger Marie Bricaux, Percy Cornelius Taylor, and John Wesley Woodward; a bassist, John Frederick Preston Clark; and three violinists, John Law Hume, Georges Alexandre Krins, and the bandmaster, Wallace Hartley. They were brought on deck near where the lifeboats were being loaded early on to help keep morale high. As the night went on and the situation became more dire, they continued to play, probably believing it was all they could do to express their own anguish and comfort the increasingly panicked crowd. Many survivors reported hearing them playing until shortly before the sinking.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
Many speak of the legendary and gigantic starship Titanic, a majestic and luxurious cruise liner launched from the great shipbuilding asteroid complexes of Artrifactovol some hundreds of years ago now, and with good reason. It was sensationally beautiful, staggeringly huge and more pleasantly equipped than any ship in what now remains of history (see page 113 [on the Campaign for Real Time]) but it had the misfortune to be built in the very earliest days of Improbability Physics, long before this difficult and cussed branch of knowledge was fully, or at all, understood. The designers and engineers decided, in their innocence, to build a prototype Improbability Field into it, which was meant, supposedly, to ensure that it was Infinitely Improbable that anything would ever go wrong with any pan of the ship. They did not realize that because of the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately. The starship Titanic was a monstrously pretty sight as it lay beached like a silver Arcturan Megavoidwhale among the laserlit tracery of its construction gantries, a brilliant cloud of pins and needles of light against the deep interstellar blackness; but when launched, it did not even manage to complete its very first radio message—an SOS—before undergoing a sudden and gratuitous total existence failure.
”
”
Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3))
“
What was your family life like, Savannah?" I asked, pretending I was conducting an interview.
"Hiroshima," she whispered.
"And what has life been like since you left the warm, abiding bosom of your nurturing, close-knit family?"
"Nagasaki," she said, a bitter smile on her face.
"You're a poet, Savannah," I said, watching her. "Compare your family to a ship."
"The Titanic."
"Name the poem, Savannah, you wrote in honor of your family."
"'The History of Auschwitz.'" And we both laughed.
"Now, here's the important question," I said, leaning down and whispering softly in her ear. "Whom do you love more than anyone in the world?"
Savannah's head lifted up from the pillow and her blue eyes blazed with conviction as she said between cracked, pale lips, "I love my brother, Tom Wingo. My Twin.
”
”
Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)
“
A CANINE EULOGY TO THE TITANIC:
The ship’s log says that twelve dogs boarded The Titanic
Airedales
a King Charles Spaniel
Fox Terrier
Chow Chow
a Poodle
French Bulldog
Great Dane
a Newfoundland.
Two Pomeranians and a Pekingese were smuggled off in lifeboats concealed in blankets
a Scottish Deerhound de-boarded moments before leaving port
the captain returning the dog to his young daughter.
One woman lived the rest of her life haunted by the memory of her Poodle clinging to her pajamas as she left her cabin. The rip of fabric. The panicked cry. The scritch of nails on the wood of the cabin door.
Another left a lifeboat after being told her Great Dane was too large to be permitted to join her. Their bodies were found, days later. The woman frozen, still clutching her dog.
Who made the right choice?
”
”
Sassafras Patterdale (With Me)
“
The designers and engineers decided, in their innocence, to build a prototype Improbability Field into it, which was meant, supposedly, to ensure that it was Infinitely Improbable that anything would ever go wrong with any pan of the ship. They did not realize that because of the quasi-reciprocal and circular nature of all Improbability calculations, anything that was Infinitely Improbable was actually very likely to happen almost immediately. The starship Titanic was a monstrously pretty sight as it lay beached like a silver Arcturan Megavoidwhale among the laserlit tracery of its construction gantries, a brilliant cloud of pins and needles of light against the deep interstellar blackness; but when launched, it did not even manage to complete its very first radio message—an SOS—before undergoing a sudden and gratuitous total existence failure.
”
”
Douglas Adams (Life, the Universe and Everything (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #3))
“
The field stretched on for miles, climbing a gentle slope of land, and standing at the horizon was the Dark Tower. It was a pillar of dumb stone rising so high into the sky that he could barely discern its tip. Its base, surrounded by red, shouting roses, was formidable, titanic with weight and size, yet the Tower became oddly graceful as it rose and tapered. The stone of which it had been made was not black, as he had imagined it would be, but soot-colored. Narrow, slitted windows marched about it in a rising spiral; below the windows ran an almost endless flight of stone stairs, circling up and up. The Tower was a dark grey exclamation point planted in the earth and rising above the field of blood-red roses. The sky arched above it was blue, but filled with puffy white clouds like sailing ships. They flowed above and around the top of the Dark Tower in an endless stream.
”
”
Stephen King (The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3))
“
Desperately. Tally searched her brain for a prayer. Any prayer. Now I lay me down to sleep... No! Not that one. Hail Mary something, something. She wasn't Catholic. Oh, God, she should've gone to church more often. And Jesus, now definitely wasn't the time to blaspheme.
Fingers completely numb from gripping the chair, she kept her gaze pinned, with manic attention, on the pirate's large, strong hands on the wheel. Backlit eerily by the red lights on the instrument panel, those few teeny, tiny red lights were all that held her together.
She hated the dark. Hated, hated, hated it.
She wasn't that fond of roller coasters, either, and this was about seven hundred times worse. Putting the two together was overkill and proved that God had a sense of humor. Maybe she didn't want to pray after all. The boat hit a trough with the force of a ten-ton cement truck slamming into a granite mountain. Every bone in her body jarred.
Dear God, how long could the pirate ship last in this onslaught? Her brain pulled up every water movie she'd ever seen. Titanic. The Abyss. The Deep. Jaws... Oh, Lord. The Perfect Storm...
There were things she still wanted to do in her life. Off the top of her head she couldn't think of a one right now. But topping her list was dying in her own bed in Chicago. Dry. Of old age.
”
”
Cherry Adair (In Too Deep (T-FLAC, #4; Wright Family, #3))
“
Exposition: the workings of the actual past + the virtual past may be illustrated by an event well known to collective history, such as the sinking of the Titanic. The disaster as it actually occurred descends into obscurity as its eyewitnesses die off, documents perish + the wreck of the ship dissolves in its Atlantic grave. Yet a virtual sinking of the Titanic, created from reworked memories, papers, hearsay, fiction - in short, belief - grows ever “truer.” The actual past is brittle, ever-dimming + ever more problematic to access + reconstruct: in contrast, the virtual past is malleable, ever-brightening + ever more difficult to circumvent/expose as fraudulent.
The present presses the virtual past into its own service, to lend credence to its mythologies + legitimacy to the imposition of will. Power seeks + is the right to “landscape” the virtual past. (He who pays the historian calls the tune.)
Symmetry demands an actual + virtual future, too. We imagine how next week, next year, or 2225 will shape up - a virtual future, constructed by wishes, prophecies + daydreams. This virtual future may influence the actual future, as in a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the actual future will eclipse our virtual one as surely as tomorrow eclipses today. Like Utopia, the actual future + the actual past exist only in the hazy distance, where they are no good to anyone.
Q: Is there a meaningful distinction between one simulacrum of smoke, mirrors + shadows - the actual past - from another such simulacrum - the actual future?
One model of time: an infinite matryoshka doll of painted moments, each “shell” (the present) encased inside a nest of “shells” (previous presents) I call the actual past but which we perceive as the virtual past. The doll of “now” likewise encases a nest of presents yet to be, which I call the actual future but which we perceive as the virtual future.
Proposition: I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey.
”
”
David Mitchell (Cloud Atlas)
“
Friendship is a great ship but not a titanic ship.....
”
”
Douglas Self
“
The discussion proceeded very similarly to the first, although this time things were a bit more technical in nature. The advantage of using the new Welin davits was clear: by installing them right from the start, there would be ‘no expense or trouble’ in case the Board of Trade imposed new regulations ‘at the last minute’.79 Then the conversation turned once more to other matters. There had never been any discussion about the number of boats that the ships would actually carry80 – that was being left entirely to what requirements the Board of Trade had in place when they entered service.
”
”
Tad Fitch (On a Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic)
“
the crew of the Titanic didn’t fire the correct distress signals after the ship’s collision with the iceberg - instead they released flares at random. The message sent by the rockets was supposed to say ‘distress’ but in fact it signalled ‘I’m having navigation problems; please stay clear’.
”
”
Jack Goldstein (101 Amazing Facts)
“
Despite the call for “women and children first,” many of these casualties were women and children.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
it was standard practice for the ship to continue on at fast speed even through ice-infested waters. Collisions of large ships with icebergs over the preceding decades had not resulted in disaster, and most ships depended on their reliable lookouts in the crow’s nest to warn them about ice in their path.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
Ironically, the third class passengers would be last to reach the lifeboats but first to realize the severity of the situation.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
While so many people floated on the sea, dying, most of the lifeboats did not sit idly by. They had to confront the excruciating moral question of whether to put their own lives at risk and row back to pick up survivors, or whether to preserve their safety at a distance, and either hope that a ship would arrive soon (doubtful, since none appeared to be on the horizon), or let the others die. Most opted for the latter. Famously, Margaret Brown (discussed above) forced her boat to return, but by the time she had taken charge, they were only able to pull a few people from the icy water. The rest had already perished.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
they fired rockets to give hope to the stranded passengers, which were first spotted at 3:30 am. They began picking up lifeboats at 4:10 am. The process took several hours, and in all, 705 people were saved of the 2,223 on board.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
Margaret Brown used the notoriety she got from her involvement in the event to bring attention to her numerous causes. Two of those causes became the reform of sea-going to make it safer and honoring the valiant of the Titanic disaster. She would be the one to personally hand Captain Rostron of the Carpathia the Congressional Gold Medal for his role in the rescue.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
The first ship to reach the site of the wreckage was quickly overwhelmed. They preserved the bodies of first class passengers first, justifying their decision by claiming that these would be most likely to have property disputes ensuing from their deaths, and confirmation of death was needed. They wound up burying many crew members and third class passengers at sea. The other ships picked up dozens more bodies, and the last body was retrieved in late May. By then, officials concluded, life vests would have begun to disintegrate, and remaining corpses would have disappeared beneath the waves. In total, only about 300 bodies of the more than 1,500 dead were recovered.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
As a result of the tremendous loss of life, international regulations were passed regarding lifeboats, telegraphs and communication, and ice. All ships would be required to carry enough lifeboats, crew would be trained to use them and evacuate, and passengers would have a drill so that they knew where to go and when in the event of a disaster (which anyone who has taken a cruise is well aware). Also, it was mandated that telegraph machines and later, other forms of communication, be manned 24-hours a day (had someone been at the telegraph machine on the California, they would have confirmed the emergency). Finally, patrols were set up to better survey ice fields and warn vessels about dangerous areas.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
even finding a ship at such a depth (about 12,000 feet below the surface) was a formidable obstacle. It was not until the 1980s that technology to withstand the amount of water pressure that deep was available. Then, in 1985, more than seventy years since it had sunk, an explorer named Robert Ballard located and photographed the site of the wreckage. Part of the reason that it was so hard to find was that it was several miles away from where it was thought to have gone down.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
The ship retains much of its original structure, meaning that she has not disintegrated or collapsed. In addition, many artifacts have been discovered in the miles surrounding the wreckage: everything from toys to furniture to dishes to personal items (the remains of anyone on board would have been consumed by sea life and bacteria long ago). Talk about raising the ship has also circulated. However, such an undertaking may not be possible: first of all, while vessels can reach such depths, the kind of equipment needed to lift such a heavy load probably cannot (not to mention the power needed to supply it). Secondly, the ship is undoubtedly in fragile condition, and attempting to move it in any way may destroy it. Finally, many people view the undersea wreckage as a kind of gravesite or memorial to the people who lost their lives. Moving it would be akin to digging up the bodies. The wreckage is actually protected by United Nations law, much as other historical sites are similarly protected.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
The amount of coal required to propel a single 10,000-ton ship across the ocean was far less than the amount required to drive two 5,000-ton ships across the same distance.
”
”
Bradford Matsen (Titanic's Last Secrets: The Further Adventures of Shadow Divers John Chatterton and Richie Kohler)
“
Seriously, she asked me what the name of the ship was in the Titanic movie.
”
”
S.M. Shade (Scarlet Toys (Violent Circle #1))
“
after the Committee had scuttled former Chief Counsel Dick Sprague, that he’d be crazy to take the job. “I told him,” said Wolf, “that it was like the owners of the Titanic giving a guy a call and saying, ‘Hey, our ship is sinking, we need a new captain.
”
”
Gaeton Fonzi (The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know about the Assassination of JFK)
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
”
”
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
“
The ship name. It’s unusual. I swear, if I board one more ship named after someone’s kid or the girl they left behind after that magical weekend on Titan, I’m going to start fining people for general lack of creativity.” Holden
”
”
James S.A. Corey (Caliban's War (Expanse, #2))
“
speculation in history is never rock-solid, it is reasonable to think that had the Titanic been launched on schedule, she may not have hit the iceberg.
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
With nine compartments flooded the ship would still float, and as no known accident of the sea could possibly fill this many, the steamship Titan was considered practically unsinkable.
”
”
Morgan Robertson (The Wreck of the Titan)
“
The RMS Titanic struck an iceberg on the night of April fourteenth 1912, and sank in the North Atlantic waters in the wee hours of the following morning. She took more than 1,500 souls with her. While this death toll is devastating, it is by no means the greatest at-sea catastrophe in western history. Even besides wartime disasters, the explosion of the Mont-Blanc in Nova Scotia killed almost two thousand in 1917, the 1707 Sicily Naval Disaster killed almost the same number of people, and several other shipwrecks with smaller death tolls were arguably more dramatic. Yet fascination with the Titanic has persisted since she rested on the ocean floor, long before James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster film. Why?
”
”
Henry Freeman (Titanic: The Story Of The Unsinkable Ship)
“
… yet a little colder, gray sky deepening into haziness as evening fell, making the water look like molten silver as it caught the soft beams of a misty moon. A soothing peace and an ever increasing chill set in that drove one indoors, an excuse for bed and a good book. I slipped out on deck, my nightly custom before retiring, for a few moments alone with my thoughts. It was all so quiet, but how penetratingly cold it had become! Little wisps of mist like tiny fairies wafted gently inboard from the sea and left my face clammy. I shivered. It was indeed a night for bed, warmth and cozy thoughts of home and firesides.
”
”
Violet Jessop (Titanic Survivor: The Newly Discovered Memoirs of Violet Jessop Who Survived Both the Titanic and Britannic Disasters)
“
Norris met another survivor on board who told him that he had been bringing home a prized dog on the Titanic and had gone to the kennels and released all the dogs a half hour before the ship went under. Norris described to him how when he was swimming away from the sinking liner he had spied the black face of a French bulldog in the water.
”
”
Hugh Brewster (Gilded Lives, Fatal Voyage: The Titanic's First-Class Passengers and Their World)
“
As Borgerding told me, nefarious forces led by the most powerful people in the world—titans of Hollywood, the Democratic Party, and big business—had forced these children to live in thousands of miles of underground tunnels. Hidden out of sight, these “mole children” are terrorized by pedophiles until their bodies produce adrenochrome, a highly coveted liquid that celebrities and the world’s richest financiers drink to stay young. Now Trump and the military were using the global Covid-19 pandemic as a cover to rescue the children. The Navy hospital ships deployed to respond to the virus were secretly treating the rescued mole children. For that matter, most earthquakes aren’t even earthquakes—they are seismic events created when the Army demolishes the pedophile lairs underground.
”
”
Will Sommer (Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America)
“
DINOSAURS BEFORE DARK #2: THE KNIGHT AT DAWN #3: MUMMIES IN THE MORNING #4: PIRATES PAST NOON #5: NIGHT OF THE NINJAS #6: AFTERNOON ON THE AMAZON #7: SUNSET OF THE SABERTOOTH #8: MIDNIGHT ON THE MOON #9: DOLPHINS AT DAYBREAK #10: GHOST TOWN AT SUNDOWN #11: LIONS AT LUNCHTIME #12: POLAR BEARS PAST BEDTIME #13: VACATION UNDER THE VOLCANO #14: DAY OF THE DRAGON KING #15: VIKING SHIPS AT SUNRISE #16: HOUR OF THE OLYMPICS #17: TONIGHT ON THE TITANIC #18: BUFFALO BEFORE BREAKFAST #19: TIGERS AT TWILIGHT #20: DINGOES AT DINNERTIME #21: CIVIL WAR ON SUNDAY
”
”
Mary Pope Osborne (Mummies In The Morning (Magic Tree House #3))
“
The Titan's Fall by Stewart Stafford
Colossus ship of the Titans,
Flames of Tartarus in its belly,
Unsinkable beneath the stars,
Champagne popped too soon.
In infinite glacial hubris,
Collided with its own ambition,
Immortal Gordian Knot slashed,
And freezing death crept aboard.
Cantering up Scotland Road,
Trojan Seahorse's Achilles' Heel,
Solitary children drowning,
In heartbroken submersion.
The River Styx fell silent,
But for whimpered prayers.
As Charon's boat of death,
Ferried them to Hades.
The tangled Medusan wreckage,
Once a great wonder of the earth,
Plunged into an underworld abyss -
A terrible beauty on the seabed nests.
© Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.
”
”
Stewart Stafford
“
You don’t know it, but these are the last moments of the brief courtship you get to have with yourself as a female human being in 1990s America, a courtship in which you do not “love yourself” or “hate yourself” (because those terms would not have made sense to you) but instead have a profound sense of satisfaction with the world around you and your apparent role in it. Then something happens to you. It’s not a single-event trauma. Your parents do not get divorced. No one dies. You are not abused. And yet. Something happens to you. And because you cannot trace what happens to you to a single, traumatic event, you struggle to explain it, struggle for years to admit that anything happened to you at all. But it did. It’s obvious, visible in your face, your posture. A friend in middle school tells you that her mom has asked her, “What happened to Jessica?” What happened to you? It’s a big fish of a question, large and slippery. When you are twelve years old, a book titled Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls becomes a national best-seller. The author, Mary Pipher, writes, “Something dramatic happens to girls in early adolescence. Just as planes and ships disappear mysteriously into the Bermuda Triangle, so do the selves of girls go down in droves.” Pipher argues that while adolescence has always been a difficult transition for boys and girls alike, there is something in the cultural air of the early 1990s that has spawned an epidemic of depression, self-mutilation, and eating disorders.
”
”
Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman (Sounds Like Titanic)
“
We positioned Northern Horizon, our command ship, 11 miles off Ireland’s southern coast. We knew where Lusitania lay—that wasn’t the issue. Our goal was to investigate the mystery of what had sent the grand ship to her watery grave, taking the lives of about 1,200 passengers and crew members in May 1915.
”
”
Robert D. Ballard (Into the Deep: A Memoir from the Man Who Found the Titanic)
“
I wanted to get a look at the area near that forward magazine, but I wasn’t sure if that would be possible, because Lusitania was resting on her starboard side. The wreckage also had become a favorite place for local fishermen to set their nets, and some of the nets had broken off and gotten caught on the ship’s superstructure, forming a giant spider’s web that could endanger our manned mini-sub Delta, our newly developed Jason robot, and a smaller remote-controlled vehicle called Homer. The first step was to use Jason and its sophisticated sonars to make a 3-D model of the wreck. We could then superimpose the ship’s original engineering drawings onto that map to locate the forward magazine precisely. Fortunately, the angle of Lusitania’s hull made it possible for Homer to slip under the bow and determine that the forward magazine was completely intact. Whatever had caused the second explosion had not been stored there.
”
”
Robert D. Ballard (Into the Deep: A Memoir from the Man Who Found the Titanic)
“
From The Titanic Test:
I pulled him back down to me, this time for a slow-burn kiss, the kind designed to set your hair on fire and take all the oxygen out of your lungs. I didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to think. Didn’t want to hear any high school crap. We were on the deck of one of the most famous ships in the world. He was a guy in a tuxedo. I was a girl in a glamorous gown. We’d danced the night away.
It was our movie moment.
”
”
Ann K. Simpson (The Titanic Test: A Love Story)
“
I need to emphasize that Carpathia failed.
A lot of the tags and comments have a tinge of...despair, or guilt, or wistfulness about things like this happening so rarely. Or inadequacy, or just being overwhelmed or unhappy about not being in a position to step up in a comparable way. And I want to gently bring up the fact that this is still the sinking of the Titanic.
They did not get there in time. They did not save the ship. It can be argued that they may not have even saved a single human life; we have no way of knowing. This was still a horrific maritime disaster mired in arrogance and incompetence and a lack of care.
If the response to this story shows anything, it shows this: it matters that they tried.
Even though they got there too late, even though the ship still sank. It matters that they tried. The difference between making the best reasonable speed after confirming the seriousness of the situation, and the miracle they pulled off — it matters. It makes all the difference. Even if it made no difference at all. Not one of you read this and concluded that I was stupid for caring so much when the Titanic still sank and all those people still died.
You don't have to fix the world. You'll likely be cold and sick and miserable and testy and scared, and unprepared, and in over your head, and entirely too small to be of any real use. It feels stupid, passing out blankets and coffee in the middle of an ice field knowing what just happened. It's hard to feel anything but useless when all you can do is tap a wireless transmitter and promise help that you know will come too late.
It matters that they fought for those people. It matters that they cared, and it matters that they tried. It matters that they didn't stop. If it didn't matter, you wouldn't have read this far.
”
”
Anonymous
“
The impact, while not violent enough to disturb the passengers or crew, or to arrest the ship’s progress, rolled the vessel slightly and tore the steel plating above the turn of the bilge.
”
”
U.S. Senate (The "Titanic" Reports: The Official Conclusions of the 1912 Inquiries by the US Senate and the British Wreck Commissioner)
“
White Star liner. The Clarks were booked for passage from New York to Ireland to Cherbourg. This crossing would be a treat, the second voyage of the largest ship afloat: the RMS Titanic.
”
”
Bill Dedman (Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune)
“
Pienso que cada uno es como un libro, con una sinopsis diferente y una portada distinta. Cada libro está en su estantería correspondiente y en su balda adecuada junto con otros libros similares. Yo, en cambio, soy un libro solitario, abandonado en un estante olvidado.
”
”
Audrey Dry (Sin mirar atrás)
“
Robertson called his ship the Titan; the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic. This is the story of her last night.
”
”
Walter Lord (A Night to Remember)