Titanic: How can a disastrous ship be celebrated?

[Gerald]

http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/4594/53078678anicinfog624.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/834/53078678anicinfog624.jpg/)

More than 1,500 people died when the Titanic sank. So why is the centenary of its launch being proudly celebrated in Northern Ireland, asks Tom de Castella.

No other ship comes close to rivalling the gigantic shadow cast by the Titanic. A hundred years after its completion, it's still the most iconic vessel to have set sail.

Its tragic maiden voyage has become shorthand for catastrophic hubris - the "unsinkable" ship that hit an iceberg and sank, causing the deaths of 1,503 passengers and crew. And yet in one corner of the UK, the Titanic is a byword not for disaster but a source of pride and nostalgia.

When its hull was launched at Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard on 31 May 1911, it was the largest ship in the world, measuring 886ft (270m) long.

And in Northern Ireland that's where the story ends, says Mick Fealty, editor of the news site Slugger O'Toole.

Rather than a maritime disaster, the Titanic is an engineering triumph. There's a common Belfast joke, says the Irish writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, that taps into this feeling: "It was fine when it left us."

Behind the joking there's a serious point, Fealty says. The shipyards in those days employed tens of thousands of workers while Belfast also had the world's largest rope works and the huge textile machinery firm Mackies.

"The pride is about looking back to the golden days. The Titanic was the pinnacle of Belfast's industrial glory," he says. This was in the days before partition when the majority Protestant city wore industrialisation as a badge of pride, differentiating itself from the agrarian, Catholic and rural south.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13593391


Note: 31 May 2011 Last updated at 10:53 GMT

[Oberon]

I'm getting married on the 100th anniversary of her sinking. Thank God I haven't booked a cruise across the Atlantic as a honeymoon. :yep:

[Jimbuna]

I'm getting married on the 100th anniversary of her sinking. Thank God I haven't booked a cruise across the Atlantic as a honeymoon. :yep:

Classic :DL

[Randomizer]

http://www.theonion.com/audio/titanic-reenactment-club-loses-another-1300-member,18731/

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-titanic-film-told-from-icebergs-point-of-view,5754/

http://www.theonion.com/articles/april-16-1912,10645/

[Platapus]

Perhaps commemorate would be a better word.

[vienna]

It's interesting, the mythos surrounding the Titanic; many people still believe it's the largest ship ever built and set sail. When I first visited the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, I was surprised to hear the tour guide say the Queen Mary was larger than the Titanic. I knew there were larger modern ships (a glance out at the nearby port proved that point), but I thought ships, particulary passenger ships were attenuated in size following the sinking of the Titanic until the WWII era. By the way, after seeing a lot of tankers, container ships and the like when I was growing up, I found the Queen Mary to be rather small...

[BossMark]

I'm getting married on the 100th anniversary of her sinking. Thank God I haven't booked a cruise across the Atlantic as a honeymoon. :yep:
Congratulations on you wedding:yeah:

[Feuer Frei!]

Commemorate. Celebrate.
Whatever word you chose.
Two words as to why:
Human Nature.
/thread

[Gerald]

http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/9550/anicl.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/anicl.jpg/)

[Takeda Shingen]

Too soon.

[Gerald]

Too soon. "Too soon",for what ;) ...I see :yep:

[Penguin]

To me the Titanic desaster represents more the end of an era. The era of blind faith in technology, that technology can beat nature, that technological progress is unlimited and that it will eventually lead to progress for humanity. Especially as said desaster happened on the dawn of WW1 where (industrial) technology was massively used to kill each other in a previously unimaginable scale.

[AdeptCharge]

To answer thread title = Ahem, with the smashing of a bottle on the titanics hull, prior to launch. :shifty:

[Herr-Berbunch]

I'm getting married on the 100th anniversary of her sinking. Thank God I haven't booked a cruise across the Atlantic as a honeymoon. :yep:

I do hope you are not flying, either!

http://www.celebitchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/080920084229_plane-crash-1-web.jpg
Hey, honey, is this York?

[Oberon]

I do hope you are not flying, either!

http://www.celebitchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/080920084229_plane-crash-1-web.jpg
Hey, honey, is this York?

Hey, I resemble that remark! :haha::salute:

[Platapus]

To me the Titanic desaster represents more the end of an era. The era of blind faith in technology, that technology can beat nature, that technological progress is unlimited and that it will eventually lead to progress for humanity. Especially as said desaster happened on the dawn of WW1 where (industrial) technology was massively used to kill each other in a previously unimaginable scale.


I think you are making some assumptions here. There was no blind faith here.

At the time that the Titanic was designed, the worst accident that could endanger a ship like the Titanic was a mid ocean collision with another ship. In 1909 the White Star ship Republic was hit by the Florida. The Florida hit the Republic right at the seam between two watertight compartments. The Republic sank two days later.

No one considered that a ship like the Titanic was unsinkable (what was the media) but naval engineers were convinced that a ship like the Titanic could not sink quickly.

This was why the Titanic only had a limited number of life boats. The expected purpose was to ferry passengers to a rescuing ship and also use the life boats of the other ship. Life boats at that time were not designed to carry passengers adrift for weeks.

This is why the Titanic was designed to stay afloat with any four compartments flooded. No one considered that more than 2-3 compartments could be flooded in any one accident.

The Titanic was clearly not a perfect design, but it did represent the state of the art design for ship safety. A glancing blow buckling plates as what happened with the Titanic was not considered a realistic threat.

Perhaps the designers could be criticized for not considering future accidents that had not occurred. But to say that the designers had blind faith in technology over nature is unjustified.

The designers knew that the Titanic, like any ship, can sink. They designed the ship to survive any anticipated accident, and, in my opinion, did it well.

It is tragic that the Titanic, through human errors, was involved in an accident that was not anticipated. But I think blaming the designers and builders is unjustified.

[vienna]

I do hope you are not flying, either!


Reminds of the old joke about the man who refused to fly; said it was too dangerous; always took trains; died in a terrible train wreck: a plane crashed into the train...

[Gerald]

Reminds of the old joke about the man who refused to fly; said it was too dangerous; always took trains; died in a terrible train wreck: a plane crashed into the train... You're talking about a very bad luck, if I go fairly straightforward :-?

[CaptainMattJ.]

i agree with platapus.

The ship was so elegant that it was crewed by the finest. The engineers built the ship to withstand any normal accident at sea.

Due to Human error, it sank that cold night.


First off, the Captain and the telegraph operator ignored iceberg warnings. Second, they steamed at full ahead in weather that prevented sufficient view of the surroundings.

And when they faced the iceberg, The officers made the wrong maneuver. The officers went full back AND hard over. Now as most of us at subsim know, the faster a ship goes the harder it turns. those critical knots lost couldve made the difference.

Or, they couldve critically assessed the situation and went full back and actually rammed the iceberg. If the Titanic slowed enough, it wouldve caused major damage but the ship wouldve most likely stayed afloat

could the engineers have built watertight compartments for the entire keel? sure. but it would cost more and wasnt perceived as necessary for the elegant cruise liner that wasnt intended to go into battle or be the victim of a collision amidships or behind the watertight bulkheads.

The irish built em a good ship. However the crew were at fault for its demise. Full speed ahead in a gauntlet of icebergs isnt a very good idea.

[Gerald]

:yep: And those real facts in more detail .... we will probably never know.

[Castout]

If I had the money and space i'd want at least a 2 meter long Titanic model fully lighted ;).

It's a symbol of man's arrogance and folly and man's spirit to survive. A symbol of tragedy and a new beginning. People's lives were changed by it for the better or worse or even perhaps both. I love it. To put it simply it is to me a symbol of life.

[Penguin]

I think you are making some assumptions here. There was no blind faith here.
[...]
No one considered that a ship like the Titanic was unsinkable (what was the media) but naval engineers were convinced that a ship like the Titanic could not sink quickly.
[...]
Perhaps the designers could be criticized for not considering future accidents that had not occurred. But to say that the designers had blind faith in technology over nature is unjustified.


I did mean my statement more in a philosophical way, as a spirit of the times, beliefs of the masses and - what you also pointed out - what the media suggested. In a way, you can find this again also in the 1950's spirit, like the belief that we will soon live on the moon, drive cars powered by nuclear reactors and stuff like this.

Certainly the designers were also children of their time, but it is also a design principle that one always has to think of the "unthinkable", behind the borders of known accidents and faults - hell, even as a software designer one has to do so. Maybe this is one of the lessons learned through an accident like this.

Btw, I work as a technician - so it's not an anti-technology mindset that drove me to assumptions like this ;)