Part of why I'm glad the sub never made it to the Titanic

One of the things that I feared about the Oceangate trip was that they’d break with tradition regarding the engine room.

You see, since the first expedition to the wreck, it has been considered absolutely taboo to go near it.

This is because the engineers volunteered to stay behind to keep the lights going as long as possible to make it more likely that help would arrive on time. As a way of showing respect for those men who knowingly chose to die to help others, their area of the ship is considered taboo for exploration.

And I sincerely doubt that the Oceangate dudebros would have cared about keeping up the tradition of respecting the sacrifice of those men.

At this time 111 years ago today, 2,240 people were preparing to sail on the grandest ship in the world. Bags were being packed, goodbyes said and well wishes given as Titanic's passengers set off for her three ports of call: Southampton, Cherbourg and Queenstown. For 1500 of those people, it would be the last goodbye they ever gave their loved ones 💔

How They Rescued Titanic's Passengers: Carpathia's Wild Dash

In the early hours of April 15th, 1912 the RMS Carpathia's lone wireless operator Harold Cottam picked up his headset for one last listen before turning in for bed. What he heard shocked him to his core; RMS Titanic, the newest liner of the White Star Line, was sinking fast. Carpathia's story as a hero rescue ship is a fascinating one, and in this episode we explore how the night of the disaster went down from the decks of the Carpathia as she rushed to the rescue of RMS Titanic.

"FIRST PICTURE OF THE BAND OF SS. TITANIC," Toronto Star. May 1, 1912. Page 1. ---- NEARER MY GOD, TO THEE. ---- In the recent tragedy of the Atlantic, these men showed wonderful courage. By continuous playing they prevented panic, which undoubtedly saved many lives, and gave consolation in the black hours of night as the ship sank with her 1,635 souls into the depths. Their last minutes as they stood knee-deep in water playing "Nearer My God to Thee" form one of the most glorious chapters in the world's story of self-sacrifice and heroism.

I know much has been said about the whole Titanic disaster. But since I've been studying the warping nature of reality in postmodernism, here are my few cents:

So one of the arguments that the Oceangate CEO made was how safety stands in the way of innovation. This reminds me of that scene from Don't Look Up where yet another billionare discredits all claims about safety...vouching for future and innovation (two delusional symbols of capitalism, I must add).

But when did innovation became synonymous with impulsive risks? There has been many risks in the history that took many lives, but it is safe to say that the scientists didn't hand their lives. They took calculated risk.

But this billionaire rhetoric towards actual physical safety becomes warped into a mere stock market gamble.

And all will be fine in the end. Why? Because rich never imagine themselves dying a horrible death. They live in a "future" that is away from all the climate change problems and migrant deaths.

Abercynon and the RMS Titanic

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Preview pics of the new book Recreating Titanic and Her Sisters

people saying that users aren’t being compassionate enough towards the billionaires stuck in the death coffin at the bottom of the ocean and calling us “ghouls” for bringing up the absolute absurdity of the entire situation and it’s like……of course no one ever deserves to die by suffocation or freezing to death and it’s a hope that by some miracle that these people are found and somehow saved. however people are aloud to point out the irony of how our current wealth gap is so high that there are people who are able to spend 250k, an amount that most people don’t see in their entire lives, like it’s a movie ticket. except instead of seeing a movie they are entering a death chamber to the bottom of the ocean so they can gawk at the mass grave of over a thousand people

“the CEO of the company tricked them and he’s the real capitalist villain while the other passengers are blameless” I agree that the CEO (who is also stuck in the submarine with them) is as grimy as they come and cut corners in order to make as much money as possible. that’s a given. but as we are seeing now, most people who have never even stepped foot in the ocean their entire lives could see that this was a disaster waiting to happen. you don’t have to be a maritime expert to see that. the submersible has no emergency beacon, is controlled by an off brand game controller, made from parts from a camp store, navigated by texts from above, is bolted in from the outside, and has a contract that passengers sign that mentions “death” three times on the front page. most people couldn’t be paid to step foot in it - and these people paid 250k to go to the bottom of the ocean in it

once again, no one is relishing at people dying stuck in an essentially gutted out minivan at the bottom of the ocean. especially when one passenger is 19 and the other is a legitimate titanic researcher. but people are allowed to be mad that thousands upon thousands of dollars of taxpayer money and resources are being used to try and literally pluck these people out of the ocean and save them from a grave that they literally helped dig themselves into without a care in the world. they are the 1% who can put themselves in peril as much as they please and spend money and waste resources like it’s water but will always expect to be saved from the brink of death by us regular folk so they can call themselves an “adventurer” at their next luncheon

Let's Read...The Doctor Underwater: A 12th Doctor Adventure

Not crazy about people writing off the Titan submersible incident as some schadenfreudic buzzstory they can rag on for a handful of internet funny points. I get the frustration, I really do. At least three of the passengers had to shell out $250,000 a ticket for a glorified deep sea Disney ride. The CEO of OceanGate is a capitalist wackjob who has been complaining about and bypassing safety regulations for years, despite multiple warnings, and now the retrieval is taking up time and resources from multiple countries that could have been put to better use. But one of the crew members on board was also the nineteen year old son of another passenger. I doubt his involvement extended much beyond “I’m going on a fun trip with my dad.” Another was an unaffiliated researcher who joined the expedition to collect environmental samples for DNA analysis. Not everyone on board was a high-rolling corporate yuppie. (And even if they were, it’s still a pretty objectively horrific way to die.) Instead of memes, I’d rather see this prompt a discussion on the ethics and potential regulation of scientific tourism.

The above also doesn’t change the fact that this is dragging media attention away from more pressing issues, such as the sinking of the Andriana. I guess “THE TITANIC CLAIMS ANOTHER FIVE VICTIMS” is a more colorful headline than “the EU’s xenophobic migration policies have led to the deaths of hundreds of migrants seeking asylum in Italy, and an active cover up is now taking place, headed by Greek authorities.” Seeing all this energy be funneled towards dragging this tiny capsule out of the Atlantic when up to five hundred refugees - mostly women and children - were locked in the hull of a ship and left to suffer the exact same fate, while Coast Guard vessels looked on and did nothing (or even had an active role in the capsize after a botched attempt to tow it, according to some testimonies), illustrates the sway money and race have in what we pay attention to. It’s a gruesome example of inequity in action.

I had compared what happened to the Titan to the Kursk incident, but the Andriana doesn’t have the luxury of being a freak accident. Over 25,000 migrants have disappeared or drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean since 2014, with over 2,000 deaths taking place in 2022 alone. Those are staggering numbers. Protests have broken out across Greece over the past week in the wake of the tragedy, advocating for migration reform.

While these sorts of mass casualty events tend to leave us feeling disheartened and helpless, there are ways to help. Below is a link to SOS Humanity’s donation page. Reputable search and rescue organizations such as SOS Humanity or SOS Mediterranée built their mission statements around helping migrants like the ones on board the Andriana. Donate if you can, spread the word if you can’t.

Why was Oceangate visiting the Titanic an issue but visiting other disaster sites isn't?: Thoughts from a Titanic nerd

Alright, as someone who’s had a special interest on the Titanic for well over 20 years, here’s my take on the Oceangate incident.

Part of why it took me so long to say something was that I felt the need to think about why the idea of the “expedition” enraged me so much. It’s not like we don’t visit disaster sites as tourists regularly. Take Pompeii and Herculaneum, for instance – as disastrous as it gets, yet no one would argue that it’s tasteless to visit those sites. So could it be just a matter of how much time has passed?

That may be an aspect of it, but there are plenty of modern disasters that we visit, such as the Frank Slide site not too far from where I live. Half a town was buried alive in 1903, with most of the victims still being under the rubble to this day. But there’s a visitor’s centre where you can see the slide site from the windows and learn about the event. 

So what gives? Why was the Oceangate trip so enraging?

And here’s the conclusion I’ve come to:

In the case of Pompeii and Herculaneum, we visit the sites of disasters that affected everyone – rich and poor, slave and master, animals and humans. And we do so to learn about the past, to see what life was like over 1,000 years ago. Because, like it or not, those sites are pristine windows into the past.

In the case of Frank Slide, we visit to learn from the mistakes of the past (the local Indigenous folk had vehemently warned white people to not build so close to Turtle Mountain, as it had a history of “moving” and white people said they were just being superstitious) as well as to remember the stories of the people who died (most of which were poor working families of miners).

Then there’s the Titanic.

Proper expeditions for study and retrieval fit into the same categories as the disasters mentioned above. When a disaster site is being disturbed in order to learn about what happened and to uncover more about the stories of the people lost in the event, disturbing the site is acceptable. It’s necessary and done with a sobering level of respect; that this isn’t about gawking at a gravesite. Note that the descendants of Titanic victims don’t typically have a problem with exploration of the site done for educational purposes, but they did have an issue with turning the site into a tourist travel spot.

Another aspect to why the Oceangate tourism trip was problematic and that breaks from the categories listed above is that the trip involved obscenely rich people going to gawk at what is primarily the resting place of thousands of poor people. Most of the Titanic survivors were rich, because the poor were kept locked in their areas while the rich were escorted to safety in half-full boats when there already weren’t enough boats to go around (more on that in a minute). If the “expedition” were for everyday people to view the site then maaaaybe it’d be acceptable. But it wasn’t. 

It was a trip for the obscenely rich to gawk at the gravesite of poor people whose deaths were largely caused by rich people repeatedly ignoring safety precautions. From the fact that the Titanic didn’t have enough lifeboats as it was (largely because the company thought they messed with the ship’s aesthetic and made the deck look cluttered) to the lookouts not having enough binoculars because they lost one of them and no one thought to bring extra or ask a passenger to borrow theirs, to ignoring iceberg warnings and still going fast despite knowing it wasn’t safe to do so, and more.

So while I feel bad for the 19-year-old who didn’t want to go in the first place, I don’t feel sorry for the others. Not even the Titanic expert. Because by being a part of this trip he was condoning both the disrespect of the dead as well as condoning the behaviour of the CEO who mocked safety regulations. And as a Titanic expert, he should have been aware that lack of safety precautions were not only the primary reason the ship sank, but also the primary reason why naval safety regulations (such as ships being required to have at least enough lifeboats for everyone on board but ideally a couple extra as a buffer) were first set in place.

Hate watching Titanic documentaries that try to pin blame for the sinking on my favorite crew members. Like the one that tried to blame hitting the iceberg on Harold Bride. First of all, Bride never did anything wrong in his life, so write that down! My boy didn't stay in the wireless room until the power went out, get pinned under Collapsible B, spend the night with his feet in the freezing water, end up unable to walk due to frostbite and then spend days helping Harold Cottam send wireless messages instead of resting, only to be blamed for the sinking! 😡

Dragos Bucur as Peter Lubov in "Titanic"(2012) mini series

Episode 3

Second-class passenger Peter Lubov is an anarchist and a wanted man. Theresa Maloney is instantly attracted to him and they kiss, only to be caught by her husband Jim. Paolo got his position on board as a steward courtesy of his brother Mario who got one of the regular employees drunk. He has a dream of living in America where everyone has the opportunity to improve himself. He and Annie become close. Mabel Watson admits to having taken a brooch from her mistress' jewel case. After the Titanic hits the iceberg, Lubov and Jim put their differences aside to ensure that Theresa and the children get safely aboard one of the boats. When Mario tries to intervene and open the doors for second-class passengers, he finds himself locked away.

"A flashlight of the interior of the temporary morgue at Halifax, showing the provision-made for identification of Titanic victims. The bodies are inside the white enclosure." - from the Toronto Star. May 1, 1912. Page 1.

Well, the titan "submarine" is your local fucking reminder that "Regulations are written in blood" Is NOT a just a fucking saying or just a fucking joke.