Titanic Alive

I woke up September 2nd, 1985 as any 10 year old would. I came to the kitchen to get breakfast. My dad as per usual was looking at the newspaper. He called me to where he was and handed it to me. The headline was simple and unmistakable.

Titanic Found!

Robert Ballard and his French counterpart, who we never hear of in America, found the wreck under two miles of rolling Atlantic Ocean somewhere not too far off Newfoundland and my dreams were crushed.

I wanted to find Titanic.

Dr. Ballard of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute had a leg up on me, a 10 year old suburbanite from the middle of the country. He had a ship, funding, time and luck, an education, reams of data and more than a little intuition. I was a 10 year old boy locked in by hundreds of miles of land before I could even see the ocean. I was captivated by the ship, the sinking, the aftermath and most of all the idea of finding of and subsequent raising of the wreck itself.

Did I fail to mention that? Yep, I saw the bad film adaptation of the Clive Cussler novel Raise the Titanic, which has a magnificent cast but is so very flawed, and I was inspired. From then on, I knew I wanted to grow up to be a sultry bearded man who found and rose the wreck of the greatest liner ever, just like Dirk Pitt.

What I did with it from there, I don't know. Even dreams have their limits.

Dr. Ballard is a famous person now. A rock star among scientists. He can get all kinds of money and grants for any piece of research he wants to do. He snaps his fingers and his pick of well- equipped ships are there for his use. He has a bit of a big head, reading his books will confirm that. But there is one thing upon which we both agree. The site of the wreck is sacred. It is a burial. It is where 1,500 and more people lost their lives in a heinous and ghostly way not by drowning, but by slowly succumbing to the sub-freezing waters of the pernicious North Atlantic.

Therefore I have always been leery of RMS Titanic Inc. and their owners Premier Exhibitions. I can't find out anything about the ownership of Premier Exhibitions to confirm this, but I heard they were essentially owned by the Russian Government. They have a single red star as a logo, which may be where that whole rumor started. Do not take my nod to this rumor as any kind of confirmation of this. I do believe Premier Exhibitions is an entity that exists only to add an additional layer of protection and shield from liability for the operators of RMS Titanic Inc. An internet search, albeit a quick one did not yield any single large single investors behind either RMS Titanic or Premier Exhibitions, which is traded publicly on Nasdaq.

I bring all this up, because yesterday, we went to the Titanic artifact exhibit at the Indiana State Museum. It was well done. The exhibit hall itself in spots is evocative of what it would have been like in some of the common areas of the ship, like companion ways and engine room entries. There were serviceable mock-ups of a first-class woman's sleeping room and a steerage bunk room.

As I expected, there was little new information here. In fact for someone who has devoted more than a little time researching every facet of this ship and her star-crossed end since he was a kid, there was very little old here. No mention of the coal fire aboard, or the near collision with HMS Hawke, nor the incredible story of Violet Jessop, a stewardess for White Star Line that survived the sinking of both Titanic and later Brittanic. There was nothing of the callous treatment of the surviving family of the crew who perished at the hands of White Star who sent bills for non-returned uniforms and made payroll deductions for items owed to the company store.

The draw, as the exhibit states, is the artifacts found and brought up from the bottom of the sea.
Many of these were fascinating and a bit surreal. I can wrap my mind around china and bottles and iron and bronze castings and the like, but the fact that post cards with their pictures not at all dulled by time, currency and personal letters in some cases still entirely readable were recovered is astounding to me. Reading the lines on letters posted only the day before the ship was stricken and lost all so full of hope and great expectation. They had no idea of what we have known for almost 100 years. Some items had pictures with them of what they looked like sitting on the bottom of the ocean. While they were captivating, the items lost their ghostly mystery sitting in plexiglass cases under the bright lights of the museum.

There are all manner of items brought up from the mechanical to the decorative. It was near the end of the exhibit though, that you could touch a piece of angle iron that was part of the great ship.

I touched Titanic. And suddenly, the whole idea of grave robbing washed away. My 11 year-old niece got to touch Titanic, too which as a young boy would have been enough to make me explode. There is something archetypal about this wreck. Titanic is a shared mass experience that is globally understood. It was a turning point in a lot of ways for our burgeoning global industrial revolution. We will not go into all the ways Titanic changed not just shipping, but the world. Suffice it to say, This was a worthwhile exhibit and I am satisfied that the items recovered are carefully documented, handled and preserved.

The big hook (there is always a hook) is you are given a boarding pass with the name of a passenger and their information. Where they were going, from where they were coming, who they were with, what they were doing, etc. At the end is the wall. Who made it, a short list indeed when compared to the whole, and who didn't. The women among us all made it. The men? None.

A simple gimmick, but one that helped send home the message. Most people who sailed on this ship died. Those that lived were forever changed. The last survivor, Mulvina Dean died in May, 2009 well into her 90's. She was an infant at the time and as such had no firsthand memories. Those who actually experienced Titanic have been gone for many years. Yet we still flock to the legend as though it happened recently. This exhibit helps keep that knowledge and hunger alive. For that, I am a convert.

There is a log book at the end of the tour where people can put their thoughts down. Most thoughts were limited to "Thank you for letting me live," or, "Why did I die?" I would have liked to enter something deep and profound in among the childish scribblings of the masses, but refrained from leaving my thoughts. They would have betrayed what I was feeling at the time... I got to touch Titanic!

Every man has his price. I found mine.