Continuing allure of Titanic

April 15, 2018, marked the 106th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Titanic was the pride of the White Star Line and when she departed on her maiden voyage was the largest, most luxurious ship on the seas. Constructed in the shipyards of Belfast, she sailed to Southampton, England for the boarding of the majority of the passengers. One of the big selling points of Titanic was the fact that she was unsinkable.

The allure of the Titanic has continued to fascinate and intrigue people the world over ever since the tragedy. Part of the allure is the number of wealthy and famous people who were on board the vessel. There are amazing stories of heroism and also stories of greed and cowardice. It is the stories that have continued to surface over the years that have kept alive the fascination with this one tragic ship. In more recent times, the search for and discovery of the liner has rekindled the interest. More and more artifacts have been recovered and more stories of the passengers, especially those who didn’t survive have come to light.

More than 2,200 people were on board the doomed liner when it left Cobh, Ireland for New York to great fanfare on April 10, 1912. While most of the first class passengers boarded in Southampton, in Cobh it was almost entirely third class passengers who got on. Of the 100 people who boarded, 94 were Third Class and of those 100, 79 would perish when the ship sank.

Of the 900 crew members, 600 were from Southampton. In total, more than 500 people from this one city lost their life and of those, only one was a paying passenger. In the face of this great tragedy, White Star Line charged the families of those crewmen lost in the sinking to ship the bodies home. Since they were no longer being paid, most of the families were unable to afford to have their loved ones returned to England, another tragedy heaped on top of an already great one. Halifax, Nova Scotia has become the final resting place for many of those lost whose bodies were recovered.

The richest passenger to perish was John Jacob Astor IV. His 18-year-old pregnant wife made it onto a lifeboat. Benjamin Guggenheim procured a seat on a lifeboat for his mistress and her maid and then went down with the ship. He was later quoted as saying "No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward." Among the not so brave was J. Bruce Ismay, the director of the White Star Line, who managed to slip onto one of the lifeboats. Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon also was reviled for not only saving his own life but refusing to allow freezing passengers in the water to be rescued by the almost empty lifeboat he was in.

Among the over 1,500 souls who lost their lives were men, women, children and even infants. A particularly poignant love story which is portrayed in the movie Titanic is the story of Isidor and Ida Straus. When the 67-year-old Isidor refused to get on a lifeboat, his wife Ida remained on the ship with him and is quoted as saying, “Where you go, I go”.

While the 1985 discovery of the ship refueled the allure of Titanic, it was the 1997 release of the James Cameron epic movie, “Titanic,” which made the tragedy universally known around the world. The release of the film in 3-D, for the 100th anniversary, brought the story to a whole new generation who were too young to remember the original release.

The number of deaths pales when compared to more recent tragedies, however, there is romance and allure about the sinking of the Titanic that has captured the interest and hearts of millions of people and appears poised to continue to capture the attention of the world for a long time to come.