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At nearly 11 pm, the California was somewhere between 10 and 19 miles north of Titanic and had stopped in an ice field. California began transmitting warning on its wireless, but Titanic’s radio operator signaled back: “Keep out! Shut up! You’re jamming my signal. I’m working Cape Race...” Titanic was moving at over 22 knots.
At 11:40 pm, on 14 April 1912, Titanic struck an iceberg which had been sighted moments before impact. While the lookouts and other crew reacted swiftly, and a “hard-a-starboard” order given to divert the giant ship, momentum and little warning time condemned Titanic to its calamitous fate. Several seconds prior to impact, Titanic’s 16 watertight doors were activated. The iceberg struck on the starboard (right) bow side. It is estimated that 37 seconds elapsed between the first sighting of the berg and the impact which dragged along Titanic’s hull. For years, historians, naval architects, and others debated the extent and nature of the damage. The doors worked as planned, and Titanic was designed to stay afloat with some compartments flooded; but the interior compartments were designed with a flaw. As Titanic gradually sank at the bow, water spilled over the interior compartments.
History was made, and official investigations, books, articles, and movies about the voyage of the Titanic have recorded - with varying degrees of accuracy and literary embellishment - the events of the next 150 minutes. By 2:05 am on the morning of April 15, 1912, there were over 1500 people remaining on board the Titanic, as the last of the lifeboats - known as Collapsible D - pushed away with 44 aboard. The prominent forecastle of Titanic was sinking under the cold North Atlantic, and the tilt of the ship’s deck rapidly grew steeper. At 2:18, a thunderous roar was heard. Titanic reared up, her props out of the water, as objects within the ship broke loose and crashed toward the submerged bow. Titanic’s power plant had remained operational since the collision with the iceberg, but now the lights blinked, then went out. There was a screeching, groaning sound as Titanic broke in two.
At 2:20 am, the broken-off stern section settled back into the water, but it, too, quickly began to flood and soon hurtled to the sea bottom. Over 1500 lives were lost in what became known as “the greatest maritime disaster in history.”
Aftermath
In the wake of the Titanic disaster, two investigations (one in Britain, the other in America), books, articles, lectures, and sermons attempted to divine the circumstances and meaning of what happened on the night of April 14, 1912. Some of the answers were not revealed until after the wreck of Titanic was found, by a Franco-American expedition in 1985 led by Dr. Robert Ballard, lying at a depth of 12,460 feet on the ocean floor. But within days of the sinking, the saga of Titanic became a metaphor and object lesson, particularly for America’s religious community. This aspect remains one of the backwater eddies in the Titanic story, a curious fact since the sinking triggered an outpouring of national (even international) grief and reflection comparable to other tragedies of similar scale, such as wars or the deaths of popular leaders.
Titanic’s name, of course, was incendiary in prompting speculation about the tragedy. “A surprising number of people indicted the Titanic’s name,” noted writer Wyn Craig Wade in his book The Titanic, End of a Dream.2 And why not? In Greek mythology, the Titans were the twelve children of Uranus and Gæa, and were the supreme forces in the universe.3 Was not this name, so indicative of an arrogance which would “tempt Providence” simply asking for trouble?
“On Sunday, the churches of the American nation were filled to capacity,” adds Wade, as a variety of explanations were offered from pulpits as to the significance of the Titanic disaster. Comparable numbers of faithful filled pews in England. In Southampton, the Bishop of Winchester delivered an evocative sermon, asking “When has such a mighty lesson against our confidence and trust in power, machinery and money been shot throughout the nation... God grant that we and our sister nation of America may take to heart and profit from the lesson. The Titanic, name and thing, will stand for a monument and warning to human presumption.”4
The religious reaction to the Titanic sinking represented a number of positions, often reflecting the peculiar doctrinal assumptions of each church. As Wade and others have observed, Protestant sects which had embraced the Social Gospel often portrayed the disaster as a leveling of class and other distinctions in the face of death. The Victorian dream which embraced successive waves of industrialization had both a secular and religious component. Class distinction was often rationalized as both a reflection of superior ability and talent - a kind of social Darwinism - and a necessary, even helpful component in fueling economic development and prosperity. Wealth was perceived as an entitlement of economic activity, diligence and other moral attributes, and religiosity. Indeed, for some - intoxicated by the prosperity of the age - the concentration of wealth was proof that mankind was slowly crafting a New Jerusalem and that “Suffering and tribulations could be borne as long as it was believable that mankind was improving and the Kingdom of Heaven was being materialized on earth.”5
And such suffering was endurable, as Reverend R.J. Hutcheon of Toronto declared. “We are... taught anew the truth of the old saying that suffering makes the whole world akin, and Great Britain and America are nearer today because citizens of both countries are lying together in a common ocean grave.”6
But there was another side to the Janus-like ideology of the Social Gospel, one that while lamenting the terrible loss of life that had befallen Titanic, likewise criticized the presumptive elegance, ostentatiousness and arrogance that the ship seemed to embody. The Social Gospel had an ambivalent relationship with insurgent industrial capitalism: on one hand proclaiming the New Jerusalem, on the other warning of the excesses and pitfalls of labor exploitation and dislocation. Many ministers took comfort in the claim that in the final moments of the Titanic drama, “social caste had disappeared and all stood on the decks as equals.”7 That perception became suspect, however, when debate began over whether or not a disproportionate number of first class passengers had been rescued in contrast to those in second class and steerage. The question remains a lively one to this day.
Sexual Politics: “Women and Children First!”
Along with a hunt to identify who and what might bear ultimate responsibility in Titanic’s sinking was a debate over the “women and children first!” policy. Descriptions of men (inevitably upper class) graciously and stoically standing on the decks of the ill-fated vessel while women and children were hurriedly loaded into the few lifeboats reached hyperbole. 8 One minister assured his listeners that all might have perished had not such self-sacrifice and restraint been exercised and “unless the spirit of ‘women and children first’ been made possible.” The images soon translated into a wider attack, however, against the suffrage movement. The Rev. Leighton Parks of St. Bartholomew’s Church preached:
You and I will be better in life and in death because of (the men’s) good example. The real message of this great and overwhelming affliction is that it is the latest revelation of the power of the cross... The men, who stood on that deck, in the presence of disaster, exhibited a power of self-restraint, exhibited it so quietly, too, that it can not be explained on any ground of mere evolution... But the Son of Man came into a world that was lost. And so the men on the Titanic sacrificed themselves for the women and children. The women did not ask for the sacrifice, but it was made. Those women who go about shrieking for their ‘rights’ want something very different.9
The “women and children first” policy added fuel to an already heated debate over suffrage and women’s rights. American women were still eight years away from having the right to vote, a goal not achieved until the final ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was made and female suffrage became the law of the land on 26 August 1920. Religious groups were deeply divided over the question of extending such rights to the “fairer sex,” and seemed to have found ratification of antislavery accords and legislation such as the Fifteenth Amendment a less demanding task than taking up the more visceral question of suffrage. Indeed, male abolitionists had voiced their fears that the demands of “shrieking women” for equal rights might well impede their campaign to gain voting rights for male ex-slaves. Clergy had long maintained that even the debate over suffrage was an affront to the will of their god. As a consequence, at the London Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, two American feminists - Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, were actually made to sit behind a curtain during the proceedings, forbidden to speak.
Things had progressed only slightly by the 1900s. Curiously, some of that progress resulted from growing industrialization where women were torn from agrarian, domestic environments and catapulted into the mixed-blessing environment of industrial capitalism. Along with sweat-shop conditions came at least one redeeming feature: women began to have their own money, such as it was. Women, of course, expressed their own diversity of opinion on the Titanic disaster and on what soon became a cliché, the idea of “women and children first!”
“I would a thousand times rather go down with the ship under similar circumstances,” declared a British Suffragette, Mrs. Cecil Chapman,10 a claim questioned by the New York Times, which noted her “jangling note.” Indeed, such assertions by women’s rights advocates were often translated by media and clergy as an attack on the more noble and uplifting attitudes exemplified by the heroic men of Titanic who, it was said, gladly gave their lives on behalf of women and infants. Harriet Blatch (1856-1940), the daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and President of the American Political Woman’s Union, was more realistic. Since men had crafted the safety regulations that applied to Titanic, they should have been the ones to go down with it, she argued. When asked what her position would be in similar circumstances - but with women given the vote - she deftly replied, “Then we would have laws requiring plenty of lifeboats.”11
Ministers, political leaders and news pundits were quick to declare that the actions of men on Titanic carried on a tradition known as the “Birkenhead Drill.” In 1852, a British troop carrier, Birkenhead, sank off the coast of South Africa. On board were more than four hundred soldiers, fifty wives and children, and crew. It was said that the men of the Birkenhead lined up on the deck of the ship in formation as the women and children were off-loaded to the few lifeboats. After “stepping back,” they sank, along with their ship, into the shark-infested waters, and sure death.
“Stepping back,” surrendering their place to helpless women and children, became a metaphor that captured the public imagination and was endlessly debated. One St. Louis newspaper ran an article featuring a sketch of a women in a lifeboat from Titanic, imploring a man to take the one available space remaining. “Should the bridegroom take the last seat with his bride, or surrender it to an unknown woman behind him, and make his bride a widow?” asked the caption.12
There were indeed evocative, tearful episodes concerning who would perish and who might survive. Colonel John Jacob Astor, heir to the giant real estate fortune, placed his young bride into one of the lifeboats and “stepped back” to the deck. Nearby, Ida - wife of Isidor Straus, the department store magnate and former US Congressman - refused to take a seat, and instead joined her husband on nearby deck chairs while the calamity of the sinking whirled around them. “I have lived this long with my husband, I’ll not leave him now.”
But there was also the rigid behavior of men such as Benjamin Guggenheim who, as Titanic’s ultimate fate became obvious, told a steward, “We’ve dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen. Tell my wife I played the game straight to the end.”13
Victorian roles of behavior - helpless, near-hysterical women and heroic, stoical men accepting death and their final obligations on earth - became metaphors glorified in songs, illustrations, and sermons about the Titanic. Those men who survived until the final moments, when Titanic’s enormous stern was lifted into the air as the ship broke apart, and then were to perish as it, too, filled with water and plunged into the depths, were embraced as masculine icons of respectability and decorum. Passenger Lawrence Beesley attributed the seeming calm to “an inborn respect for law and order and for traditions bequeathed to them by generations of ancestors...”14
Other Reactions:
Press and Pulpit
In 1912, with commercial radio very much in its infancy, news of events such as the Titanic disaster was delivered through papers that competed furiously for readers and advertising, even to the point of fabricating whole stories. Titanic generated a stampede of special editions, particularly in major metropolitan areas such as New York City, and books about the disaster have documented this incredible rush to deliver the latest news of the ship’s fate - and that of its passengers - into the hands of a voraciously curious public. But equally revealing was how newspapers - both reflecting and molding certain cultural assumptions of early twentieth-century society - treated this story and reported the musings of survivors and others who commented on the tragedy surrounding the Titanic.
Thanks to telegraphy, news spread at a rapid clip, and the story was rendered all the more dramatic by the use of photographs which found their way (along with cartoon renderings or other illustrations) into the steady stream of newspapers, posters, books, song sheets, and other materials pertaining to Titanic.
Accounts from passengers, or other commentators, often drew parallels between the fact that Titanic was the most luxurious, the largest, the “unsinkable” ship, and that her sinking was, likewise, “a symbol of the approaching fate of Western Civilization.”15
Another metaphor was that of “man versus nature,” a discussion made all the more poignant by the odd string of coincidences which surrounded the Titanic’s sinking. The impact with the iceberg was certainly avoidable had the liner proceeded at a slower clip, taken a slightly different route, even if binoculars had been provided for the lookouts in the crow’s nest. There was added speculation in addition to these stark facts... what if a nearby ship, the Californian, had not misinterpreted Titanic’s flares and distress calls? The peculiar alignment of circumstances - and the gnawing “what if?” that was being asked about so many events linked to Titanic - gave rise to a sentiment that with the sinking came the “end of an age of innocence.” Survivor John Thayer was later quoted, “The event which not only made the world rub its eyes and awake, but woke it with a start... To my mind the world of today awoke April 15, 1912.”
This notion that Titanic was the demarcation between an age of innocence (or arrogance) and something else resonated throughout media. It was also a sentiment expressed vocally from pulpits and in tracts, as in the writings of Alma White in her book The Titanic Tragedy: God Speaking to the Nations.16
White, born Alma Bridwell (1862-1946) was a prominent evangelist whose Pillar of Fire Church and ministry was a major source of anti-Roman Catholic sentiment throughout the early twentieth century in America. Concerns about Vatican encroachments into the American political system - real, imagined, exaggerated - had long stimulated antipapist groups such as the Know-Nothing movement or the American Party. By the late 1800s just one anti-Catholic organization, the American Protective Association, had swelled to over one million members. Most literature from these groups alternated between dark warnings over papal plots to manipulate Congress and lurid tales of debauchery involving priests and nuns.
“Is it any wonder that Major Butt, with his message from the Pope to the President, went to the bottom of the sea on the sinking Titanic?”
White emerged as a religious spokesperson defending Protestant values against Catholicism, and in 1901 she founded her Pillar of Fire outreach based in Denver, Colorado, and Zarephath, New Jersey. From coast to coast there were colleges, training schools, and churches organized under White’s banner, and she ground out a steady stream of books focusing on Biblical prophesy and history, as well as her travel adventures (With God in Yellowstone) and even her distrust of other Protestants, especially certain Pentecostals.
For White, the Titanic symbolized many of the portents other religious seers had divined: a chastisement of humanity for its technological arrogance, a warning that the Victorian age, with its wealth and splendid opulence, (surely, this was embodied in Titanic!) was losing its spiritual moorings and floating into a dangerous sea of lust and material indulgence. The Titanic Tragedy also included White’s message of anti-Catholicism, such as her description of President Taft (whose friend, Major Archie Butt, perished in the sinking), “a Unitarian (who) made his administration obnoxious by courting the favor of Roman Catholics, for no other purpose, it seems, than to gain their political support...”17
The Stuff of Legends
More than any other maritime tragedy, the sinking of Titanic has captivated the public imagination over decades, and spawned numerous legends, and a surprising amount of misinformation. Two of the major ones:
1) Those left behind sang, to the accompaniment of Titanic’s band, “Nearer My God, To Thee” as the vessel sank.
Think of the Titanic slipping beneath the sea, and Hollywood images often come to mind - the giant liner, the water steadily rising, and the unfortunate souls huddled by the stern singing bravely as they enter their final moments. While some continue to believe in this legend, evidence suggests that this did not, in fact, occur, at least in real life. It did happen in the Hollywood versions of the Titanic disaster, though, starting with the 1953 epic production TITANIC, with Clifton Web, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner, Richard Basehart, and others. The script won the Academy Award for “Best Original Screenplay,” testament to the departure from fact which took place in the imagination of Tinseltown writers. As a series of unlikely characters and sub-plots are woven together, Titanic sinks beneath the waves. An alcohol-besotted priest rediscovers his holy calling, a man surrenders his seat heroically to a woman, Barbara Stanwyck yells for one of her children (“NOOOORRRRMAAAANNNN...”), and the ship explodes as the last passengers sing “Nearer My God to Thee.”
James Cameron’s blockbuster TITANIC repeats the legend, as the ship’s band hastily assembles, plays a series of upbeat tunes and, with the ship’s demise imminent, strikes up the music to the somber hymn.
Walter Lord was the first to question this scenario, though, in his classic work A Night to Remember, published in 1955. He stated that Harold Bridge, Titanic’s radio operater, said that as he swam away from the ship, he heard the band playing “Autumn.” A wave of Titanic interest in the mid-1980s, spurred on by the search and eventual discovery of the Titanic wreck, saw publication of Mr. Lord’s next book, The Night Lives On.18 There, Lord suggested that Harold Bridge had heard “Songe d’Automne,” a waltz by Archibald Joyce.
Titanic buffs and researchers disagree over what was played that night on board the stricken liner, and precisely when. One contemporary claim is that as the lifeboats pulled away, the men on the Titanic sang the Gospel song “Rock of Ages.” But leading accounts discount these claims. The role of the band in the Titanic story was intertwined with other elements as well. A broadside sold by the British Musicians’ Union to raise money for the families of the lost instrumentalists depicted the eight men as “The Heroic Musicians of the Titanic who died at their posts like men - April 15, 1912.” At the bottom of the poster can be found the words, “Nearer, my God, to Thee...” with four lines of lyrics from that piece. This, no doubt, contributed to the growth of the legend about what took place on the deck of Titanic during the final moments.
Postcards of the time helped to reinforce the myth of “Nearer My God to Thee” and other religious motifs. One illustration depicted Titanic upright, sliding into the water as a glowing cross hovers above it with the “Nearer My God To Thee” legend. Another depicted Titanic in similar condition, with Jesus imposed over the cross, and a veiled woman/goddess off to the side. At the bottom can be found the words:
“Save Lord, we Perish,” was their cry,
“O save us in our agony!”
Thy word above the storm rises high
“Peace, be still.”
2) The Titanic disaster was foretold with astonishing accuracy by an English novelist in 1898.
This claim appears frequently in regard to a book titled Futility or The Wreck Of The Titan, depending on the printed copy. The book was authored by an English writer, Morgan Robertson, and underwent numerous printings on both sides of the Atlantic, and was popularized in America by McClure’s Magazine.
Considerable misinformation exists about Robertson’s book, suggesting that many claims made about it come from persons who have not taken the time to sit down and read its somewhat turgid story. Robertson describes an enormous ship (especially for its time) which he calls “The Titan,” a behemoth 800 feet long with 70,000 tons displacement, compartmentalized bulkheads (supposedly to render her “unsinkable”) and luxurious appointments which do, indeed, seem to presage descriptions of the Titanic. But contrary to legend, Robertson’s Titan is not on her maiden voyage when she happens to strike an iceberg. Barely three pages into his story, Robertson tells readers, “She has beaten all records on her maiden voyage, but, up to the third return trip, had not lowered the time between Sandy Hook and Daunt’s Rock to the five-day limit...” In fact, there are numerous discrepancies between Robertson’s novel and the actual story of the Titanic. Both ships collide with an iceberg, both vessels are enormous in size, said to be unsinkable thanks to compartmentalization, and offer amenities to the passengers. Similarities end by the seventh chapter, barely 20 pages into the 243 page text before me. The Titan strikes an iceberg while traveling at 25 knots (faster than the actual Titanic), and on the port side. The ship falters and sinks, as the hero - grabbing the daughter of a former love interest he has never forgotten - leaps onto the offending iceberg where he kills a polar bear in order to survive, rigs a small boat, is discovered by a passing vessel, experiences fame and, eventually, gets the girl.
Curiously, this hero - John Rowland - is introduced to readers as a drunk and professed atheist who is bitter at life. The former lover, on board Titan with her husband, recounts how she had met Rowland: “I liked him at first, until I found out that he was an atheist - why, George, he actually denied the existence of God - and to me, a professed Christian.”
“He had a wonderful nerve,” said the husband, with a smile; “didn’t know you very well, I should say.”
Rowland “gets religion” on the ice berg, striking a bargain with the deity in hopes of saving the waif, the daughter of his former passions.
“Sinking to his knees the atheist lifted his eyes to the heavens, and with his feeble voice and the fervor born of helplessness, prayed to the God that he denied. He begged for the life of the waif in his care - for the safety of the mother, so needful to the little one - and for courage and strength to do his part and bring them together...”
Following the actual Titanic tragedy, at least one American newspaper began serializing The Wreck of the Titan.19
There is actually very little content in Robertson’s novel which deals with ships, or truly can be said to presage in some way the Titanic, or the events that happened on April 14, 1912.
Dénouement
Why do so many remain captivated by the story of Titanic?
Some of the answer must reside in the human penchant to romanticize an event surrounded by so much irony - in the case of Titanic, that so magnificent a vessel could encounter so calamitous an end under such unusual circumstances. Even without the Hollywood glitz, or the literary wanderings of writers, Titanic possessed all of the charms and extremes of its day. What could not happen did happen. And this mighty ship embodied so much of the ethos of its time: adventure and daring (in putting so spectacular a vessel afloat), the fascination with machinery and science, a sense that mankind was both mastering the universe and constructing the New Jerusalem - a floating city or palace, in the case of Titanic - all of this mixed with amounts of arrogance, lack of caution, and a sense of invulnerability.
Titanic rests on the floor of the Atlantic, 12,460 feet below the surface. The same ingenuity that launched her evolved a technology which found her, and her wreck has been photographed and explored with submersible craft. Items have been recovered from Titanic, but the remains of the two portions of her hull will probably never be raised. She sails still, though, in our longings and imaginations. But if that is not sufficient, a British tourist agency has just begun to promote the ultimate in adventure vacations: minisubmarine deep-diving trips to view the wreck on the ocean floor. Just $30,000, starting in early August.
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1Geoffry Marcus in Titanic, The Maiden Voyage, (Viking, 1974) observes “The perennial danger of ice in these waters had been known to seamen for centuries, as is amply clear from successive editions of the sailing directions.” Other ships had perished in these same sea lanes with loss of life, and less than twenty years before Titanic’s illfated trip, the “Naronic,” also bound to New York on her maiden voyage, disappeared. Other ships, “Allegheny,” “State of George,” and “Huronian” were also listed as “missing.”
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2Wade, Wyn Craig, The Titanic, End of a Dream, Penguin, 1979, p. 103.
3The Titans were Kronos (dethroned by his son Zeus), Oceanus, Tethys, Mnemosyne, Themis, Hyperion, Iapetus, Prometheus, and Atlas. The White Star Line named Titanic’s sister ship, Oceanic, after this class of gods; but the third ship was called Britannic.
4Geoffry Marcus Titanic, The Maiden Voyage, (Viking, 1974), p. 298.
5Wade, Wyn Craig, The Titanic, End of a Dream, Penguin, 1979, p. 107.
6As Wade notes, however, this reconciliatory tone was soon lost as political and financial interests on both sides of the Atlantic began hunting for scapegoats in Titanic’s sinking. American interests actually owned the ship - J. P. Morgan held paper ownership - but White Star was still identified with Britain and considered a “British” concern. Titanic also fell under the woefully outdated regulations of the British Board of Trade which were equally as lax as their US counterparts.
7Wade, Wyn Craig, The Titanic, End of a Dream, Penguin, 1979, p. 107.
8There can be little doubt that far more women than men were saved, but when measured against the breakdown in class, the figures become more complicated. Survival rates on Titanic were approximately 20% for men, 74% for women, and 52% for children. Sex appeared to play more of a role in who was saved than did economic class. Third-class women turned out to be 41% more likely to survive than males in first class. Curiously, men in the third class or steerage were twice as likely to survive as their second-class counterparts. The demographics in the Titanic disaster, though, are problematic, and depend on whether one views percentages or sheer numbers: 44% of first-class passengers were women, for instance, while only 23% of those in third class were female. For an exhaustive breakdown of survival rates and numbers, see Lord Mersey’s Report British Parliamentary Papers, Shipping Casualties (Loss of the Steamship "Titanic"), 1912. on the Titanic incident.
9Wade, Wyn Craig, The Titanic, End of a Dream, Penguin, 1979, p. 108.
10Wade, Wyn Craig, The Titanic, End of a Dream, Penguin, 1979, p. 108.
11Ibid. Blatch wrote numerous books and essays in subsequent years, including Mobilizing Woman Power (1918), A Woman’s Point of View (1919), and a biography of her mother, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in 1921.
12American History Illustrated, April, 1986. “As a sense of impending disaster began to pervade one and all, the code of ‘noblesse oblige’ evidenced itself in quiet, stirring scenes.”
13One area of inquiry for future generations of Titanic enthusiasts might be the perplexing question of why so many of these otherwise dynamic, innovative and self-started individuals spent their final hours and minutes maintaining a posture of composure and noblesse oblige rather than attempt to find ways of saving themselves given the resources available. Titanic was festooned with objects and materials which might have been fashioned into floating platforms of some kind, perhaps giving people a better chance at survival. In my readings on the Titanic sinking, I have encountered no evidence of people tearing up planking or wall materials in order to construct improvised lifesaving platforms of some kind.
14See Lawrence Beesley, The Loss of the SS Titanic, Boston, 1912.
15Osbert Sitwell, quoted in the Virginia Newspaper Project, a catalogue of press coverage about the Titanic sinking.
16Alma White, The Titanic Tragedy: God Speaking to the Nations, rev. ed, Pillar of Fire, Denver, 1945. The book is a curious blend of published accounts and White’s own religious musings on the subject
17Ibid, p. 156. “Is it any wonder that Major Butt, with his message from the Pope to the President, went to the bottom of the sea on the sinking Titanic?”
18Walter Lord, The Night Lives On, New York, Wm. Morrow & Co. (1986). Lord notes that a newspaper which interviewed Harold Bridge stated that the Titanic went down as the musicians were playing “the Episcopal hymn, ‘Autumn’.”
19The Times-Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia, did so beginning on April 28, 1912.
Conrad F. Goeringer is an antiquarian bookseller and freelance writer who lives on the cape of New Jersey. A frequent speaker at American Atheists national conventions, he is director of American Atheists On-line Services and a contributing editor of American Atheist.
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hen James Cameron’s epic film TITANIC was released in December of 1997, its impressive success at the box-office testified to the enduring quality which that mighty ship and its calamitous fate have exercised on the human imagination. Over eight decades separate us from the time from when the giant ocean liner struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on the night of 14 April 1912 and sank, claiming the lives of over 1500 persons. In that period, the Titanic has been immortalized in songs, books, films, and legend. Historical groups exist for generations of enthusiasts who study every intricate detail of the ship and her one, maiden voyage. Indeed, in September of 1985 a French vessel discovered the wreckage of the leviathan in its underwater tomb, prompting a new wave of interest in Titanic. If anything, time itself seems to kindle a renewed curiosity about the ship, its passengers, and the events that culminated on that dark, clear April evening as Titanic - a ship of which it was “God himself could not sink it” - headed on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York.